Seasonal printables are the easiest money in the category and the easiest to miss, because almost everyone lists them too late. Here is the calendar that actually matches when people buy.
The rule: list 8 weeks early
Buyers of seasonal printables are makers. They are not printing Christmas ephemera on the 23rd of December - they are building the journal in October and filling it through November and December.
Add to that the time a new listing needs to get seen at all, and the working rule is: your Christmas listing should be live by the start of October, not December.
The year, in listing dates
- Halloween - list by late August. Peak searching runs from mid September to mid October.
- Christmas - list by late September. This is the biggest season in printables by a wide margin, and it runs from October right through December.
- Valentine's - list by late December. Short, sharp season, mostly January.
- Spring and Easter - list by early February.
- Back to school and planners - list by early July.
- Autumn and harvest - list by late July. Longer season than Halloween and less crowded.
Evergreen is what pays the rent
Seasonal listings spike and die. Botanical, vintage papers, ledger and dictionary backgrounds, plain ephemera, wall art - these sell all year at a lower rate, and they are what keeps a shop alive in the gaps.
A workable split is roughly two thirds evergreen, one third seasonal. A shop that is all seasonal has four good weeks and eleven quiet months.
Do not delete last year's seasonal listings
Leave them up. A Christmas listing that has been live for a year, with reviews on it, will outperform a brand new one next season - and it costs nothing to keep. The listing gets stronger with age; the design does not expire.
Prepare in the quiet months
The reason people list late is that they start making in the season. Make in the quiet months instead: build the Christmas set in July when nothing is happening, list it in September, and spend the actual season answering messages rather than designing.
Where to start for this year
If it is currently late summer, the two that matter are Halloween (list now) and Christmas (build now, list within weeks).
Guides for both:
Halloween junk journal ideas: the vintage palette
And if you need the material rather than the plan, the Complete Bundle has the seasonal and evergreen sets together.
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