How Much Do Greeting Card Companies Pay Artists?

Kevin Hayler: Professional Wildlife artist, author, and traveler.

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

Greeting card companies are always in need of new designs, however, it is important to understand how much money greeting card companies pay artists for their designs so you can decide if it’s worth the effort.

Greeting card companies generally pay a flat fee which ranges between $275 and $500 in the US. In the UK the industry standard flat fee is around £150–£250 per design. Artists can expect 3% – 6% royalties with a typical minimal advance of $150 or £100.

The greetings card industry is huge, it’s a $7.5 billion business in the USA and worth £1.75 billion in the UK.

They are the best markets in the world with the average American buying 30 cards a year and the average Brit buying 33.

Sound interesting? Let’s dig a little deeper.

Disclaimer: When you buy something via my affiliate links I earn from qualifying purchases and sometimes earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. I am an Amazon Associate among others. I only recommend trusted sites.

How Do Greeting Card Companies Pay Freelance Artists?

The most common way for designers to license their work is either on a flat-fee basis or in exchange for royalties.

A publisher will issue a contract covering the copyright/license period, terms of payment, rights of usage, and worldwide rights.

The payment options are as follows:

Flat Fee

The artist is paid a one-off fee for the ownership of a design for an unlimited period of time. When that period comes to an end the full rights revert to the artist.

Licensing Fee

Typically, greeting card publishers have the right to use a piece of artwork for an agreed fee ($150/£100+) for an agreed period of time. When the period expires, the full rights revert to the artist.

Licensing Fee + Royalty

The artist receives an agreed fee ($150/£100+) plus a royalty payment on each card sold, typically about 3+% of the trade price.

Advance Royalty Fee

A goodwill advance payment is paid to the artist in the range of £500- £1000 with another 5% royalty on top when an agreed threshold has been met.

Royalty Only

The artist receives 5% royalties depending on the number of sales. The artist can expect to be paid quarterly and receive a sales report and a statement.

This post is closely related: How to License Your Art: Best Guide For Beginners

If you need some help with licensing and what it’s all about, this is a popular course by Alison Cole on Domestika

How Do You Approach a Greeting Card Company?

You will have to do some research and find out if the publisher accepts work from freelance artists. Their websites will detail their requirements for submissions.

Note the companies range, if your art is not a good fit, don’t waste your time, and theirs, by submitting unsuitable art.

When you find a potential company, select a portfolio of 10-15 designs covering a broad spectrum of your work and send the files as Jpgs or Pdfs. Multiple files are best sent as a zip file.

Ring up the company and ask if they accept freelance work and then ask how they prefer to accept submissions. Find out who to talk to and their email address.

Don’t send hi-res master files at this stage and never send the originals.

Include your website address and contact details.

If the company is interested they will probably ring you back. Be patient because some companies deal with submissions in batches. It may take weeks to hear a reply.

They may want to see more examples of your work submitted in the same style. They are looking for your professionalism, creativity, and market awareness.

TOP TIP: Successful images are ‘above the fold’, and that means the top half of the card will be prominent on the card rack and must attract the eye.

You can submit your designs to as many publishers as you like but once you are accepted by one company you should never sell the same style of work to anyone else, not whilst under contract. This is considered a very bad practice and destroys your reputation.

Can You Make a Full-Time Living by Designing Greeting Cards for Companies?

It’s easier said than done. An artist can make a living designing greeting cards but they need to be prolific and have the ability to create a large number of popular designs consistently.

Realistically, it’s unlikely that most freelance workers will be able to generate enough money from their designs to make a living through publishers alone.

It’s much more practical to think of the card industry as a sideline for most artists and view it as an extra revenue stream.

The alternative way of making money is to experiment with DIY publishing. If you want to create your own greeting cards, then the internet is a great place to experiment.

There are many companies that will print and ship your designs for you if you can’t find someone who is willing to take them on as in-house work.

Many people start out by trying their luck with sites such as:

• Etsy,
• Redbubble
• Society6
• Zazzle

There are any number of print-on-demand companies but the margins are small, and standing out in a sea of competition is a tall order.

The best place to start is with a site like Etsy. This is an online marketplace for handmade goods, including digital products that don’t require physical production.

These are my posts about Etsy:

• Is Selling Art on Etsy Worth it? I Found Out
• How to Sell Art Prints on Etsy: Mega Selling Guide
• Where and How to Print Art Prints From Etsy (Downloads / Printables)
• Does Printful Work With Etsy? Your Integration Guide

They offer tutorials on how you can upload your designs and set up listings so that people might buy them.

Sites like Zazzle offer pre-made templates that you can customize and print, but everything is sold at a fixed price and you’ll be required to produce high volumes of cards in order to make a decent amount of money.

I also wrote these posts:

• Is Print on Demand Worth it? The Pros and Cons of a POD Business
• Is Redbubble Worth it? Pros and Cons For Artists (2023)
• How to Sell Art on Society6 in 2023: Is it Still Worth it?
• Is Printful Worth it? Print on Demand Review (2023)

You could try selling digital downloads of your designs. This is a popular trend with the advent of online print-on-demand companies and social networks, and it lets you sell right from your own website.

If you are lucky enough to generate enough traffic to your site this could be a lucrative, inventory-free passive income. A very attractive thought.

Where to Find Greeting Card Companies

The first and most obvious option is to look through card racks and take notes. You’ll find plenty of companies producing your kind of work.

It’s important that you focus on your strengths. For example, if you’re skilled at illustrating animals but not so good at drawing buildings or people, then choose a card company that specifically wants an illustrator who can draw animals. If you are not a Jack-of-all-trades, don’t try to be one.

If you are very determined you can always visit a trade fair and find out what’s trending and collect a few cards and follow up after the event.

There are numerous British Trade fairs and GCA Noted Expos seem to dominate in the US.

Make Your Own Greeting Cards

You can expect to get rejected by publishers. I’ve been knocked back many times. So does that mean your art will not sell? Not at all.

If you want to learn how to turn your art into cards and sell them online, this is the teacher you need. Lauran Radley will show you everything you need to know, watch her video and you’ll see what I mean. Click the image and it will redirect you to her page on Domestika.

The courses are dead cheap and you’ll save so much stress in trial and error.

Or you can follow my way if you want to sell offline.

You can make your own cards and sell them yourself from a market stall.

You have 3 obvious options:

• Use an online publisher and take advantage of their promos and discounts
• Use a printing company and buy in bulk
• Print them yourself with a dye-based injet printer

I work and sell my own art and selling my art as cards is a viable sideline. The portrait artist next to me does just that. His cards supplement his portraits. He even prints his 7-year-olds cards and they sell pretty well!

I don’t want to compete with him so I make fridge magnets instead of cards. The economics are similar.

Cards (and magnets) have a maximum price people are willing to pay. To make money you must keep the costs down. Here in the UK, it’s hard to charge more than about £3. That’s about $4.

I did my research and these are the printers that stood out for me: Printing Art Prints DIY Epson ET 8550 vs SC-P700 – Hobby vs Pro?

Buying your cards from an online publisher is very easy. You upload your image file and use their platform to design your card. My friend uses Photobox to sell his cards here in the UK, and they have an exceptional service.

He orders what he needs as, and when, they bring out a new promotional offer. He treats his sales as a fun sideline so it suits him well. There’s no packaging to worry about and the quality is good.

Making cards at home on your own printer is another very easy way to produce cards. You can buy pre-cut card blanks and the cellophane wrappers and envelopes are easy to buy online.

It’s a lot more work. You have to:

• Calculate how long it takes to print a card,
• The amount ink you need to buy,
• Source cheap envelopes and wrappers,
• Package them yourself,
• Maintain your printer.

If your cards sell very well you will be better off outsourcing the work.

Printing companies can produce your cards for pennies if you buy them in bulk. Once you have a few bestsellers, there is less risk in buying wholesale.

You gain with convenience and profit margins, you lose in storage space and upfront costs.

If you decide to use a printing company make sure to use a specialist and not a general printer. You need reliable quality prints every time you make an order.

You must know the pros and cons of printing before you commit to anything: How to Make Prints of Your Art – Printing Art Explained in Detail

You are unlikely to make enough money from one small market stall to earn a living. To scale things up you can distribute your own range to independent shops.

I met a chap many years ago selling his wildlife art this way. He chose local gift shops and sub-post offices, Zoos, and the like and became his own representative.

I didn’t follow his lead because it was too demanding. He spent the winter painting and the summer on the road selling and resupplying his cards.

On the face of it, it was a simple model, but as he pointed out, you can’t rely on a new order even when a range has sold out. You have to reach out continually and put up with lazy late payers.

I met another guy who did the same with keyrings, magnets, and stickers and he supplied the display stands and all the stock.

He revealed that most shops want the stock on consignment but knowing the grief it caused, he never agreed to that arrangement.

How Much Do Greeting Card Companies Pay? Final Thoughts

Greeting card companies need illustrators and will pay for your work if you find the right one.

If you are a freelance artist, it’s important to build up relationships with as many clients as possible so that they’ll come back time after time.

The best way to do this is by being professional in how you approach them. Be consistent and be reliable.

If you have reached this far, you must be keen to make some money. That’s great because I can show you how to do it. Check out my guide!

---

If you found this article useful you may like these too:

• What Are Limited Edition Prints and Do Artists Really Need Them?
• Does Art Fade? Does Pencil Fade? Do Paintings Fade? I Found Out
• How Do You Price Your Art? (And Increase Your Profits)
• How to Get Paid For Drawing: 18 Ways to Make Money
• Can You Copy Art and Sell a Painting of a Painting? I Found Out
• Drawing Prompts: 55 Useful Ideas, Techniques, and Exercises
• 25 Platforms for Artists to Sell Their Art Online and Make Money

---

Get to Grips with your Art business with Katy on Domestika

Pin it For Later