How do you sell Procreate brushes?
·Founder, Stakk
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27 September 2026
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7 min read
You sell a brush set as one .brushset file behind a checkout, and the listing does all the selling, because the file itself shows nothing until it is installed. Two facts belong in the title rather than buried in the description: Procreate runs on iPad, so a buyer on a Windows or Android tablet cannot open what you sent, and a brush set is a named set in their library rather than a replacement for the brushes they already have. Checked 13 September 2026.
Brushes are one of the easiest things to sell badly. The product is genuinely good, the file is tiny, and then the listing shows a pretty illustration with no swatches on it and the buyer has no idea what they are getting.
What actually ships when you sell a Procreate brush set?
A brush is a page of settings plus the two images it draws with: a shape, which is the mark the brush leaves, and a grain, which is the texture it drags through that mark. Everything else is numbers. Spacing, jitter, pressure response, how the mark behaves when the pencil tilts.
Export a single brush and you get a .brush file. Export a folder of them and you get a .brushset, which installs as one named set in the buyer's brush library and leaves their own brushes alone. Ship the .brushset. Twenty loose .brush files means twenty imports and no group to find them in afterwards, and it is the difference between a product and a pile.
One more line for the description: say which version of the app you built in. A file made in a newer version of any app is not guaranteed to open in an older one, and a buyer who has not updated in two years would rather know that before paying than after.
Who can open your file, and who cannot?
Procreate is an iPad app. There is no Windows version and no Android version, so the set is unusable to anyone on either, no matter how much they want it. That is not a disclaimer to put in an FAQ. It goes in the listing title, because it is the single fastest way to stop a refund request you cannot argue with.
Beyond the device, two things change how your brushes feel in someone else's hand. Pressure and tilt response need a pencil. A buyer drawing with a finger still gets the brush, but not the dynamics you tuned, so the strokes come out flatter than your samples.
And brush size and grain scale relate to the canvas underneath. A brush tuned on a large, high resolution canvas can read as coarse or faint on a small one. Naming the canvas size you built on is one line, and it saves the message that starts with "it looks different on mine".
How do you show a brush that has no picture of its own?
With three images, in this order, because the file cannot preview itself and a thumbnail of a .brushset is just an icon.
First, a swatch sheet: every brush in the set stroking the same way, on the same background, labeled with the same names they will carry once installed. That is the reference image the buyer will come back to for months, and it is the one that sells the set. Second, one finished piece made using nothing but this set, so the range is obvious. Third, a close crop at full size so the grain is actually visible, because grain is what separates a brush somebody pays for from a default one.
Then write the names properly. Numbered brushes make a swatch sheet useless. If a brush is for rough under-drawing, call it that.
How should you package and price a set?
A set earns its price when it finishes a job, not when it has a big number in the title. Twelve brushes that take an illustration from sketch to texture beat sixty that overlap each other, and the twelve are far easier to write a swatch sheet for.
Keep the ladder short. One set, then a bundle of your sets at a price that makes the bundle the obvious pick. Add a canvas template or a color palette only if you genuinely use it yourself, and put anything extra on the payment screen as an optional add-on rather than folding it into the main price. On Stakk that add-on rides the same charge as the set, which is the difference between one fee and two, and the same mechanic is covered in our list of platforms that ship bumps and upsells without a monthly fee.
Stakk's price range runs from $1 to $999 in US dollars, which covers a brush set and a bundle comfortably and is worth knowing if you were planning a $2,000 mega pack.
Can a buyer use your brushes on work they are paid for?
Only if you say so. A license on a digital file is a sentence you write and nothing else, because the file has no way to enforce anything.
Brush sets usually take one of two shapes. The common one lets the buyer use the brushes on any artwork they make, including artwork they sell or deliver to a client, on the basis that the drawing is theirs and the brush is a tool. The stricter one keeps commercial work behind a separate license, which gives you a second product to sell to studios and busy freelancers. Pick one deliberately rather than copying whatever the last listing you looked at said.
The line almost every seller draws in the same place is redistribution: the buyer may draw with the brushes, but may not pass on, resell or repackage the .brushset itself, including as a bonus inside someone else's product. Write that sentence once and put it in the listing, in a text file inside the download, and on the receipt. This is your own commercial decision rather than legal advice, and if you want to know how the law treats it where you are, ask someone qualified there.
What does it cost to sell brushes on a marketplace instead of your own store?
The difference is not really the percentage. It is that a marketplace charges you for being listed and a store charges you for selling.
Etsy's own fees page gives a listing fee of $0.20, charged when the item is listed and, in Etsy's words, regardless of resulting sales, with a listing expiring after four months. The transaction fee is 6.5% of the total order amount, and payment processing is separate, at a rate that varies by country and is not published on that page.
Our own arithmetic on Etsy's published $0.20 listing fee, not a claim about which is cheaper overall. A marketplace arrives with buyers on it, and nobody can price what that is worth to you.
On your own store the trade is the reverse: no browse traffic arrives for free, and the fee only exists when a sale does. Gumroad's fees article is worth reading closely if you are comparing, because its 10% + $0.50 does not include credit card processing at 2.9% + $0.30, so the all-in number is higher than the headline. If that is where you are today, we compared the alternatives that pay you directly. And whichever you pick, check whether the sale lands in an account you own or a balance somebody else releases, which is the point of the breakdown of who gets to use their own Stripe account.
When is Stakk the wrong choice for a brush shop?
When the per-sale rate is the only thing you are optimizing. Systeme.io charges no transaction fee on any tier, free included, and Whop takes 2.7% + $0.30 with no monthly cost. Both are cheaper than our 10% + $0.50 and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What neither gives you is the checkout shape: the bump rides the same charge as the set so it carries one fee rather than two, the post-purchase upsell is a single tap against the card already on file, and both sit on every account with nothing behind a higher tier. That came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.
There are also things we simply do not do. Stakk has no subscription billing, so a monthly brush club is out. It has no course hosting, so an illustration course delivered as lessons belongs elsewhere. Prices are US dollars only, and there is no bio page builder here, so if you want your links and your checkout on one page then the link in bio comparison is the better read.
Ready to sell your brush set from your own checkout?
If you have a .brushset exported and a swatch sheet made, everything else is fifteen minutes. Upload the file, set a price in the $1 to $999 range, put your second set on the payment screen as an optional add-on, and send the link straight into the post where people are already asking which brushes you used. Stakk is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included and no monthly fee, and the charge is created on your own Stripe account so the money reaches your bank instead of a balance we hold.