For anyone selling PDF products online at Etsy, Amazon KDP, TPT (TeachersPayTeachers) etc; adding watermark to your PDF is one of the easiest and most effective ways to protect your PDF creation while building your brand.
Regardless of your watermark design, they should always be semi-opaque so customers will not be obstructed from reading the PDF content.
While there is no fixed rules on the kind of watermark design you can apply for PDF, here are some design tips that we recommend to keep your PDF professional while still protecting them from being shared irresponsibly.
Instead of using only logo as a watermark, you should include text based watermark to indicate your website or your brand name. This will lead others who discover your PDFs by accident back to your website / page where they can find out more about you and your products.
In your watermark design, you can choose to couple your website or brand name with other elements like a logo, tagline, simple design elements.
Choose a watermark color that has just enough contrast with your PDF content and background so it stands out without obstructing the reading experience. If your PDF is having black text over white background, you should consider making your watermark grey color or other colors in a more pale-ish tone.
If you have a lot of PDF files or have a multi-page PDF file to be watermarked, it can seem like a daunting task.
Good news is there are many tools that you can easily use to add watermark easily in bulk. If you are not sure where to start, we recommend using ILovePDF.com
With ILovePDF.com, you can upload your PDF file (from computer, Google Drive or Dropbox) and have a flexible option on how to apply your watermark.
What we like about ILovePDF.com's watermark feature:
Adding watermark over your PDF products that are publicly available on the internet is one of the easiest and important protection every digital product creator should practice. Just make sure to include your brand name and website URL so it is easy for anyone to trace the product back to you with a simple Google search. There are also a number of free online tools that let you easily add watermark design to your PDF easily - even when it is to be added in bulk.