Creating and Submitting LINE Stickers

How This LINE Sticker Project—and This Article—Began

First, let me introduce the sticker set I currently have for sale: “Tangerine’s Daily Life.”

If you take a look and think the set is pretty good, you can also use the link below to buy it and show your support XD.

Buy these wonderfully cute stickers

Why did I want to make LINE stickers?

Well, my reason was definitely different from the usual one you hear from illustrators. It was not that I loved drawing so much that I wanted to release stickers featuring my own character.

I wanted to work in marketing, and “making stickers” is one form of marketing, so I had already spent time studying the process and how they are made.

More recently, the launch of Jiaqun Study Room created a need for promotion and marketing, so I used the opportunity to go through the entire LINE sticker creation and application process.

You might ask, “Didn’t you run through the process even once while researching it?”

Hehe, no. A lot of the time, I only glanced at the steps while learning and told myself I would deal with each problem when I actually encountered it. It seemed like a way to save study time.

As a result, I ran into quite a few problems when I truly started making the stickers. Information online was fragmented, and I could not find one genuinely complete article explaining the whole process.

And that is how this article was born!

An Overview of the Process

The usual process from sticker design to release looks like this:

Design the stickers → create a LINE Creators Market account (with many troublesome steps in between) → submit the stickers for review → start selling.

You might expect to design the stickers before dealing with account administration, but LINE has its own requirements for sticker dimensions and the smaller supporting images.

I therefore strongly recommend finishing the administrative setup before designing the stickers. This reduces the chance of thinking the artwork is finished, only to spend ages revising it later to meet the application requirements.

This article therefore follows the sequence below:

Administrative steps for creating a LINE Creators Market account → points to note when making stickers → procedures for submitting the application.

Administrative Preparation

Creating a LINE Creators Market Account

To release LINE stickers, the first thing you need is a LINE Creators Market account.

To reach LINE Creators Market, type “LINE Creators Market” into Google; it should be the first result.

After opening the result, you will see the screen below. Basically, if you see Brown and Cony, you can be sure you are in the right place!

At this point, select the registration button on the screen to open the standard desktop LINE sign-in screen.

Using LINE Creators Market generally requires an existing LINE account, so you simply sign in with your LINE account here.

It will first verify your phone. When the screen below appears, simply grant permission.

After granting permission, you will reach the personal information page. The Creator terms appear first; scroll down to find the form that needs to be completed.

Most fields ask for the account applicant’s own information, but pay special attention to the “Name or business name” field.

If the sticker creator is employed by a business, enter the business name. If you are an independent contractor or making your own stickers, enter your own name.

After completing the form, select Confirm and follow the remaining confirmation steps to finish registering your LINE Creators Market account!

Handling the Income Tax Convention Application

What is an income tax convention?

Because the company operating LINE is based in Japan, sticker creators outside Japan may face taxation that reduces the amount they ultimately receive.

Applying the relevant income tax convention may reduce withholding tax and increase the net amount received from the same number of sticker sales.

For friends hoping to earn some extra income from sticker creation, this is a very important procedure.

Many online articles explain how to apply, but most are old and describe a somewhat complicated process.

The application process was relatively more convenient when this article was written, so the following records that process for reference.

“Can I sell stickers without submitting an income tax convention application?” you might ask.

Yes. Submitting the form does not determine whether you can sell stickers; without it, the amount you receive may simply be lower because of withholding tax XD.

Because I live in Taiwan, the following explanation focuses on Taiwan. The same process may not apply in other regions, so please keep that in mind.

For creators in Taiwan, the form shown at the time was titled “APPLICATION FORM FOR THE MUTUAL EXEMPTION LAW FOR INCOME OF FOREIGN RESIDENT, ETC.”

At the time, the relevant form could be found from the toolbar on the left side of your LINE Creators Market account page: open Account Settings, then Transfer Information, and look for the income tax convention application form.

Selecting the area outlined in red in the screenshot opened the related FAQ entry. You could also open Help from the toolbar and scroll down to find information about the form.

Finding it from the FAQ required a lot of scrolling, so the screenshot shows a quicker route that was available at the time.

In the tax convention information, there was a question about how to submit the application form. LINE provided different forms and sample entries for creators in different regions outside Japan.

Because this example is for Taiwan, locate the PDF for Taiwan. After downloading and opening it, it looked like the screenshot below.

You may open it and feel completely lost, right?

Do not worry—LINE had anticipated that problem and provided instructions and samples for different regions and applicant types.

Following the sample should take care of most of the difficulties.

One important detail was that the entries had to be in English or Japanese. For some reason I entered my address in Chinese, which got the form rejected and forced me to submit it again.

After completing the form, return to the income tax convention section under Account Settings and Transfer Information, attach the PDF, and wait for it to be reviewed!

In the author’s case, once the form was approved, the Payment Request page under Sales/Transfer showed a 10% income tax rate in the area outlined in red. That indicated that this particular application had succeeded.

Incidentally, when there was a problem with the application, LINE sent an email like the one below.

I received two emails in total: one said there was a problem with the application, and the other explained how it could be corrected.

The solution was simply to make the requested changes and submit it again. At that time, a resubmission also required replying to the email to say that the corrected form had been sent.

So it is still best to complete the form carefully the first time XD.

Setting Up a PayPal Account for Payouts

To deal with this part, you first need to understand how the revenue share from LINE stickers reaches your pocket.

Revenue allocated from sticker sales first accumulates in LINE Creators Market and is displayed in Japanese yen.

For creators outside Japan and Thailand, receiving that amount requires linking an eligible PayPal account to LINE Creators Market.

To withdraw the money from PayPal to a bank account, my approach was to link an E.SUN Bank account. Under the current LINE Creators Market guidance, creators outside Japan and Thailand must register a PayPal Premier or Business account; Personal accounts cannot be used. Always confirm eligible account types and payment settings on the current LINE and PayPal pages when applying.

For the PayPal registration itself, follow the steps on PayPal’s official website. That part was relatively straightforward.

For E.SUN Bank, I first opened an account and enabled online banking.

I could then link my PayPal account through E.SUN Bank’s online banking service. E.SUN provides clear instructions for this through its Global Pass service.

The basic process was to find the E.SUN Global Pass PayPal Service in online banking and link the PayPal account.

After completing these steps, the sticker revenue share can be received through PayPal and withdrawn through E.SUN Bank. The author’s income tax convention application showed a 10% withholding rate at the time, but rates, eligibility, forms, and review results may vary by residence, applicant type, and subsequent policy changes. Follow the current information in LINE Creators Market and the result of your own review. LINE currently also states that transfers to PayPal are subject to a 2% remittance fee, capped at JPY 5,000; PayPal may additionally charge a currency conversion fee.

As for how to release the stickers after the artwork is finished, we will cover that later in the article.

What to Keep in Mind When Designing Stickers

I have only designed LINE stickers, so the points below focus on standard stickers.

I mean the truly ordinary kind—not custom stickers, animated stickers, or full-screen stickers.

If you want to learn about requirements for other sticker types, consult other articles or the information in LINE Creators Market. Here is the link for anyone who needs it.

LINE Sticker Creation Guidelines

First, here are some of the most basic requirements to keep in mind when creating standard stickers.

Number of Sticker Images

A LINE sticker set cannot contain just any number of images. Standard static sets use the available quantities listed by LINE.

A set can contain 8, 16, 24, 32, or 40 stickers.

You can decide how many to include based on the price and scope you want for the set.

Required Image Types and Dimensions

You might say, “Aren’t the 8, 16, 24, 32, or 40 sticker images all I need? Why are there different image types?”

In addition to the sticker images themselves, you also need a main image and a chat thumbnail icon!

The main image represents the set on its store page. In the screenshot, it is the area outlined in red at the upper left. Creators generally choose one of the set’s most characteristic images.

For my Tangerine set, I thought the “I’m Just Bad at This” sticker had plenty of personality, so I used it as the main image.

The other supporting asset is the chat thumbnail icon. It represents the set when you use it on a phone or computer and serves as the button used to select the set.

The screenshot below shows where the chat thumbnail icon appeared in the desktop version of LINE.

These three image types each have their own required dimensions.

The main image is 240 × 240 pixels; the chat thumbnail icon is 96 × 74 pixels; and each individual sticker image may be no larger than 370 × 320 pixels.

For individual stickers, 370 × 320 is the maximum, so smaller images are allowed. The main image and chat thumbnail icon, however, use fixed dimensions.

Because I designed the stickers in Adobe Illustrator, I created an artboard of a specific size and kept each design within that area.

This helped keep the apparent size of the stickers consistent instead of letting some look much larger or smaller than others.

Because the main image and chat thumbnail icon have different dimensions and must be prepared separately, I created two additional artboards for them.

Other Sticker Design Requirements

LINE’s Creation Guidelines contain many rules. Below are several of the fundamental requirements listed there.

1. Image files must be saved as PNG files; formats such as JPG and GIF cannot be used for standard static stickers.

2. While the main image and chat thumbnail icon have fixed dimensions, the width and height of each individual sticker may vary but must both be even numbers—for example, 240 × 240 pixels.

3. Resolution must be at least 72 dpi.

4. Color mode must be RGB, not CMYK or another mode.

5. Each image file must be 1 MB or less.

6. Image backgrounds must be transparent.

If these basic requirements are not met, the upload system will reject the files and you will not be able to submit them for review until they are corrected.

If you design stickers in Illustrator, all of these requirements can be handled within the application.

I will not go into further detail here.

For image dimensions, I wanted to prevent the exported size from changing, so when saving PNG files I used File → Save for Web.

In my experience, using Export to create the PNG could affect the resulting dimensions, so this was something to watch carefully.

I encountered another problem while designing the set: Tangerine’s arms and legs were black.

Some users choose pure-black or dark chat backgrounds, which could make Tangerine’s arms and legs disappear.

This would not necessarily cause a review problem, but it would create a usability problem.

I strongly recommend giving every sticker a light outline so it remains visible against most theme and background colors.

Beyond the technical rules above, you must also pay attention to content requirements, such as avoiding inappropriate language.

Of course, you can also wait until the set is rejected to find out what the problem is XD, then revise it afterward.

Uploading, Review, and Sales

Stickers must pass a review before they can be released for sale.

Export the finished sticker artwork as PNG files and upload them through LINE Creators Market for review.

On the interface shown in 2022, there was an Add button at the upper left of the creator’s My Page. Selecting it opened a screen featuring LINE characters.

Because we are adding stickers, select the Stickers option.

This opens the basic sticker information page. The following explains where the entered information may appear.

If I wanted to release a second Tangerine set, I might call it “Tangerine’s Daily Life 2.” Because “Tangerine’s Daily Life” was already in use, entering the same title again caused the system to display a warning in red.

The default form included English. Other languages could be added to create corresponding fields, while English was required.

Because we added another language to the sale information, the creator name appeared in Chinese as well as in the original English field.

The copyright field is the copyright notice. You can follow the example shown here and replace WAKAME with your own name.

For style and character category, Tangerine is a cute orange, so naturally I chose Cute and Food without the slightest hesitation (?).

While researching sale regions, I heard that choosing all available regions might make the review take longer.

I therefore made this sticker set available only in Asian regions.

I do not actually know whether selecting different sale regions changes the review time.

The page also listed special campaigns and similar options. You can decide whether to participate based on your own marketing considerations, so I will not explain them here.

At the time, documentation of rights was needed when photographs were used in the stickers.

Because “Tangerine’s Daily Life” was entirely original and did not use photographs, I did not need to enter anything there.

After completing the fields, select Save. The new sticker set will then appear under Manage Items.

Once the item has been created, you can start uploading the stickers you worked so hard to make!

The numbered image slots on the Sticker Images tab depend on the quantity selected for the set. If you choose eight stickers, the page shows main, tab, and sticker slots 01 through 08.

After selecting Edit, move the pointer over an image slot to reveal its upload button, then choose the image you want to upload.

For the background setting, choose the color that represents the area intended to become transparent.

My images already had transparent backgrounds, so I selected the transparency option.

As noted earlier, LINE has different requirements for the main image, chat thumbnail icon, and sticker images. If an upload does not meet the relevant specifications, the page displays an error like the one below.

A basic format error prevents submission for review. Check the image, correct it, and upload it again.

Once all sticker images have been uploaded successfully, the page looks like the example above without any errors.

Because the chat thumbnail icon uses smaller dimensions, it looks noticeably different from the other images.

Tags determine which stickers LINE suggests when a user types particular words in the message field.

Here, you specify which sticker should appear when a user enters a given word.

The system may assign tags automatically after a few days if you do not set them yourself. Still, because you designed the stickers, you probably know which situations suit each one best.

So take the time to set them properly.

You can assign up to nine tags to each sticker. Whether to use all nine and which ones to select is up to you.

The final decision before submitting the set for review is its price.

The price is your decision, of course, but you can look at the prices of different sticker types and consider factors such as your existing audience.

At the time, I checked the launch prices used by several well-known sticker creators. Many static sets used the lowest NT$30 option, so that was the price I chose.

Once everything is ready, submit the set for review and wait for the result.

The upload system already checks basic file requirements, while the subsequent review considers the actual content, including inappropriate wording or artwork that is difficult to recognize.

I researched many common reasons for rejection while making the Tangerine set, so it was rejected only once.

The reason was that the sticker saying “I dunno” was not recognizable enough. It originally used only gray outlines; after I filled it with Tangerine’s colors, it passed.

Honestly, I still did not quite understand why it had been considered hard to recognize XDDD. In any case, that revision got it approved.

I have seen people online say their sets were rejected more than eight times and still struggled to pass, though I do not know the details Orz.

After approval, whether you need to select Start Selling manually depends on the item’s settings. The current default is to start selling automatically. If you choose manual release, you must select the button after approval. It may then take one to several hours for the set to appear in the Sticker Shop.

To check sales performance, open the Sales Report under Sales/Transfer on the left side of My Page to view daily sales amounts.

If you sell several sets at once, the report can show a line for each one. I had only one set, so my chart contained a single line.

Why did I show the September data? Because after October, when I stopped actively promoting the set, there were no more sales records (sob).

Even if I opened the later chart for the article, it would be one flat line with nothing to see (whispers).

Under the current LINE Creators Market guidance, sales are totaled at the end of each month and the revenue share is generally finalized around the tenth of the following month. A notification is sent through the official LINE Creators Market account, though system processing may delay it.

Why did I still choose the October email?

Because the amount genuinely never increased afterward (sob).

LINE requires the amount to be transferred to exceed JPY 1,000 before you can request a money transfer. My sales remained at a little over JPY 800, so I still could not request one.

Once PayPal and E.SUN Bank are linked as described earlier, the revenue share can be received through PayPal and withdrawn to the linked E.SUN Bank account.

Closing Thoughts

I designed the stickers because I wanted to practice one form of marketing and go through the full process of sticker design, submission, and sales.

During the process, I repeatedly searched for information and kept feeling that no single article brought everything together, so I wrote one myself.

Based on my results over those first few months, getting rich from stickers is relatively difficult for an unknown creator unless they already have an audience.

In my case, purchases rose for a few days after approval when I shared the set on social media, then almost disappeared.

It was difficult to create a long-tail effect.

From a marketing perspective, however, a well-designed sticker set can keep a brand in use and increase recognition. I think it can be both a useful tactic and a conversation starter.

I chose Illustrator because I did not know how to draw digitally at the time.

Now that I have a basic foundation in digital drawing, I could consider using it to design the next sticker set and character IP. That might work quite well.

I hope this article lowers the barrier a little for people who want to design stickers but feel overwhelmed by administration such as review and payouts, so they can begin creating and selling a set of their own :D!

Finally, please allow me to promote my adorable Tangerine stickers one more time.

Buy these wonderfully cute stickers

If you like them, you are very welcome to buy the set!

Sources Used to Verify Current Information

1. LINE Creators Market：Stickers Creation Guidelines
2. Creators App Help Center: Stickers
3. Creators App Help Center: Selling Stickers
4. Creators App Help Center: Money Transfers
5. E.SUN Bank: PayPal Withdrawal Information