I’ve never done graphics design before. I always thought it not within my field of expertise (it always seemed to “artsy” for me) and Adobe Photoshop just seems really intimidating requiring hundreds of hours of training. So for the last 10 years, I’ve always used a specialist graphics designer… until Canva that is.
Produce Graphics In Under 2 Minutes
The thing I realized is that in the time it takes me to write a brief for our graphics designer, I can already have made several designs with time to spare for a cup of coffee.
I’m not saying that I can create award winning designs in that time. But I’ve created designs that are good enough for Facebook marketing, email marketing, course images, book covers, illustrations, book interiors and more.
The thing I love about Canva Pro is that it allows someone that’s design retarded like me to be able to produce something semi-decent for any medium quickly.
I’ve literally spent 0 hours in total on Canva training. So how is this miracle possible you ask? This might indeed seem too good to be true. That’s certainly what I would think if someone asked me. Well, my friend, you’re partially right. It is too good to be true because I don’t actually do any of the designs myself. I just use their pre-made designs!
Canva Templates for the Conversions
Canva has templates for pretty much every category under the sun.
You need an Amazon cover? Done. I have friends make millions of dollars per year selling books on Amazon’s KDP. What do they use for eye catching book covers? You guessed it. Canva! That’s also how I found out about Canva.
You’d assume that they’d be using some high end graphics designer that knows the science of creating the best converting eBook covers. But actually being retarded at design might actually be helpful. Why? Because you’re not obsessed with creating the most beautiful design with fancy tools that you’ve spent hundreds of hours learning to create the perfect shadow effect.
As the saying goes, to the man with a hammer, pretty much everything looks like a nail. If you’ve spent your entire career on perfecting designs, your goal is not to sell books but to perfect your designs. To make things look beautiful. If you’re a book marketer that has spent a long time looking at other books in your categories, you’ve started developing an eye for what attracts your readers. And with Canva, it’s just easy enough to use to scrape together some of those elements and put together your own book covers.
It’s the same logic for Facebook ads, Instagram stories, Google Display Ads, YouTube thumbnails, Udemy course covers, etc.
Potential Problem
The downside to this is that if enough people starting using only templates from Canva, pretty soon people will start to recognize the same designs being used over and over again which will make them less effective (they’re no longer eye catching).
To offset that, Canva will need to keep the templates fresh with even more designs (they 50,000+ templates at the time of writing) and rotate them in a way so that fresh designs are used more often. Ideally their designs can be linked to advertising platforms and have the metrics analyzed by AI so that eventually they can have AI driven designs sorted by the kind of audience you’re targeting.
Canva Stock Photos
In addition to templates, you also get access to millions of free stock photos. With sites like Shutterstock and iStock, you need to pay for stock photos on a per image basis. With Canva, you can get access to the entire library for free. Canva acquired a bunch of stock photo websites that has millions of images which you get access to.
If you’re subscribed to the Canva Pro plan, you also get access to their library of exclusive images as well.
Canva Pro Free 30-Day Trial
You can get Canva Pro for free for 30 days here. After that, the pricing is either $12.95 per month or $119.40 per year ($9.95 per month).