Canva is a huge marketplace where you can showcase your creativity in designing graphics, photos, videos, and stickers. This marketplace consists of over 55 million monthly users from more than 179 countries. Creators benefit from creating designs for Canva in many ways, like getting royalties and exposure to 85% of the Fortune 500 companies.
We're going to tell you everything you need to know about getting started with the Canva Contributor program. Let's jump right in.
What Is the Canva Contributor Program?
Like many other online graphic designing platforms, Canva also encourages graphic designers to contribute design assets. The name of this project is the Canva Contributor program. This global level of engagement from graphic designers and content creators helps Canva create a vast library of images and design elements.
You might want to join this program if you're able to create any of the following creative content (if you wish to run a side hustle, you might want to contribute all of this content regularly to maximize your gains):
- High-quality photography for commercial purposes.
- High-quality vector illustrations.
- Images with trending styles and modern looks.
- Graphic illustrations that deliver an artistic and clean look.
- High-quality short video clips.
How to Become a Canva Contributor
You should be above the minimum legal age to work in your country or at least 18 years old to join the Canva Contributor program. Ensure that you're the sole owner of the content that you submit to Canva. An easy way to do that is to create unique content for each submission.
A great benefit of the Canva Contributor program is that you retain the rights on your design submissions, including if Canva accepts your designs and sells licenses to others for commercial or personal use.
The Canva Contributor program is open to anyone who has a Canva account. To access the contributor section:
- Go to the Canva website and click on Log in if you have an account. Click on Sign up if you don't have an account. You can sign up via Facebook, Google, or any email account.
- You'll be directed to the Canva Home section after logging in or signing up. On the left-side menu, click on the Contributor Hub to contribute your designs to Canva.
The Contributor Hub has the following sections to help you with your contribution journey on Canva:
- Upload: You can submit your designs through this section. Simply drag-and-drop files from your computer. You can upload JPG, CSV, PNG, SVG, GIF, EPS, MP4, and MOV files.
- My Items: This tab shows you all approved designs. You can also check your earnings by clicking on the My earnings button on this tab.
- Inspiration: You'll find all content guidance and instructions on this tab. Go through the Learning modules to train yourself according to Canva's content expectations. Become acquainted with content ideas from the Featured categories section, which showcases Canva's recommendation for the month.
Getting Started With Your Contributor Profile Page
The Canva Contributor profile lets you create a personal branding space. You can use your profile as a portfolio to attract more clients from the global market. That's why it's vital that you appropriately update your profile page.
To update your contributor profile, follow these steps:
- Click on the Account settings page at the top-right corner.
- Upload your profile photo, brand logo, or image by clicking on Upload photo.
- Click on Public profile on the left-side menu. Here, you need to fill up the Canva profile URL, Display name, Description, Personal website, and Location.
- You can copy the link to your Canva portfolio by right-clicking on View portfolio and then selecting Copy link address.
- After making the changes, click on Save changes at the bottom of the page.
Making Creative Assets
You need to follow the design guidelines of Canva to increase the probability of design content acceptance. Here are some vital tips that we recommend you follow:
1. Visual Quality
The visual quality of your designs should be realistic, simple, and clean. Let's say you're creating illustrations of humans, animals, or objects; you need to avoid unnecessary shadows, gradients, textures, and layered patterns.
Ensure that the user can recognize your illustrations in one view. There shouldn't be any gaps, missing bits, unusual space, and so on.
For logo designs, you can use imaginary logos with generic designs. But, you can't include any commercial brand logos or any alternate versions of those. Similarly, you can create fictional characters for stickers and illustrations, but you can't use any trademarked characters.
2. Ease of Use
End-users will create content by using your designs as templates, so ensure your designs are user-friendly. For example, graphical labels should be low-contrast and flat with enough negative space so that users can add texts.
If you're submitting photos, ensure there are no grids of images or multiple photos in a scrapbook format. Also, avoid using digital texts, graphical layouts, and emojis on photos to increase usability.
3. Suitability and Inclusivity
Keep in mind that users who are in school and are employed might also use your designs. Hence, avoid designs that consist of violence, racism, over-sexualized graphics, self-harm, and the like.
Create designs that are diverse and inclusive of skin color, sexual orientation, religion, body positivity, and so on for graphics, illustrations, or photos. This strategy might increase content licensing.
4. Metadata
You need to add metadata to your assets. It enables the Canva search engine to showcase your design to the users when they search for any keyword. Metadata should include a filename, title, keywords, artist, locale, and content description.
What Are the Royalty Rates?
When a Canva user licenses your designs, Canva pays you a royalty. The royalty rate is 35% of the licensing fee for any design that you own. There is no upper limit to the number of licenses for a single design.
You could earn $0.35 for one-time use license, $3.50 for a multi-use license, and $35 for an extended-use license. Canva will also deduct a royalty tax from your total payment each month. It ranges from 0% to 30%, depending on tax treaties between Australia and your country.
Attract Global Audiences Through Canva
It's pretty easy to become a successful and high-volume contributor of Canva after going through the above-mentioned guide for the Contributor program. You can earn royalties and gain exposure, as well as improve your graphic designing skills.
While you're at it, you'll also benefit by learning more about graphic design elements and their usage.