Niche Idea 3: Cake Toppers

This weeks niche idea is for printables and digital files. We’re talking cake toppers.

These are like little signs that you put on a cake or a cupcake. They have become especially popular with the introduction of craft cutting machines (e.g. Cricut, Silhouette, and even Glowforge).

These cutting machines make it possible for the home user to make cake toppers with cuts and patterns more complicated than anyone would want to do with scissors or an Xacto knife.

Your end user is usually a home crafter, and they may have different levels of skills when it comes to using their craft machines, so let’s look at 3 ways to format and sell cake toppers.

The first idea is the simplest. sell it as a printable. This could be something a person could cut out by hand, in which case I recommend delivering it as a PDF, JPEG, or PNG file.

Think of any occasions for which someone might have a cake. You could literally create a whole digital shop devoted to cake toppers. Start with birthday by age–create cake toppers for any age from 1 to 110. Create different designs and rinse and repeat–make variations for each age.

Sticking with the numbers theme, try graduation years as well.

Other celebrations might be holidays, baby showers, wedding showers, and baptisms.

To round out a cake topper themed shop, find the top 100 boys and top 100 girls names and create cake toppers for each of them.

One way to differentiate yourself might be to offer custom work. If a person’s name is not in your shop, offer to create one for them. They could choose from one of your existing designs and you would add their name to it.

The first idea was for simpler, pre-made cake toppers. This one targets people with craft machines. You can use all of the ideas from variation #1, but your deliverable become files made for craft machines. SVG is a vector format compatible with uploading to most cutting machine software.

SVG’s are good for layered designs.

PNG can be used with “Print then Cut” settings (for Cricut at least–sorry, that is the only machine I am familiar with).

DXF is a CAD file type that laser cutters use.

Check existing listings to see what types of files are on offer. Most sellers targeting craft machine owners offer several different files types.

I recommend that if you want to create for craft machines, that you invest in one yourself, or beg a friend to test your designs for you. There are some nuances to designing craft files that you just don’t realize until you try it yourself.

The final variation is to sell editable files. You can make these for personal or commercial use (your choice). Editable files are usually more valuable so can be more profitable. When deciding your licensing terms, you will want to consider your audience.

You might think that only other designers & other shop owners would want the editable source file, but reconsider that assumption! Some crafting influencers have courses teaching people to create their own designs in Illustrator, Inkscape or Affinity Designer. You know how much of a learning curve these programs can be, so give people a head start with editable files.

I hope this gave you some ideas for products to sell as digital files. If you want weekly niche and product ideas, plus tips and tutorials for printables and KDP creators, consider signing up for my newsletter. It’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.