Build and Sell a Digital Product in a Weekend

So in the last year,
I have made over $100,000

selling digital products.

I probably made closer to $3 million now

from selling digital products over the years.

My digital products consist

of things like wallpapers, presets,
website templates,

and Notion templates.

Basically, anything I'm personally interested in.

This is as close
to passive income I could find

without actually having to have
a boatload of cash

already on hand.

Even though the video title

might be along the lines

of "In a weekend,"

I don't see why many people couldn't do this

in a day or even in a few hours.

By the way, I've put together a list

of profitable digital product ideas,

I'll leave a link to it

down in the description below.

So the first thing is, of course,

figuring out what digital product

you want to sell.

This is where you need to lean into

what you're good at.

So maybe you have a specific skill set

that you can sell in some way.

Maybe you're an artist,

you could sell some wallpapers

or digital art.

You could even sell posters.

Or maybe you're someone

who's great at playing the piano,

you could make a video course

teaching other people

how to play the piano.

I think a lot of people think

that digital products are limited

to only things like wallpapers
and Notion templates,

when in reality,

you can make digital products

for just about anything.

Tropic Colour is a great example

of a business selling
digital products for video editors.

They sell a huge range of products

ranging from video LUTs,

to video transitions

and just a bunch of other stuff
for video editors.

Putting it up for sale.

Once you have your digital product ready,

it's time to put it up for sale.

There are few platforms out there

that make it easy to sell digital products.

I think Gumroad is the easiest

as they set up a website for you,

handle the payments, handle the taxes,

pretty much everything else.

And they even have like
email marketing and stuff,

which I think is super powerful.

I think that's actually
one of the most powerful things

about Gumroad.

How everything is just there, ready to go.

Gumroad is what I'd recommend

if you're just starting out.

If you're someone who's expected

to make $1,000 or more a month,

then I would instead
recommend something like Sellfly

or Payhip.

They're a bit more work to set up.

Quite a bit more work actually.

But they don't take 10%

of all of your sales like Gumroad does.

When putting up a product for sale,

put together some marketing imagery

like the thumbnail and any images

that show what the customer is getting.

So for example, with my presets,

you see some example imagery

showing the before and after,

just to show the customer

this is what they're gonna expect,

this is the product they're gonna get.

It really helps sell the product.

You've really got to be able to show

what is the benefit of this person

having this product.

And that's literally it.

It's very simple.

And I think unfortunately,

a lot of people overcomplicate it.

They think it takes days, weeks or months

to sort of set up a store,

make digital products, sell them, whatever.

But the thing that's probably
gonna take you the longest

is making the product itself,

because, of course,

you have to figure out
what skill you have,

what unique trait you have,

what's something

that you can sell to other people.

Putting it up for sale

should only really take you a few hours.

I think, with all of these services

that are now available

when it comes to setting up
your shops and stuff,

selling digital products and things,

they've just made the whole process

so much easier.

Marketing.

So now comes the time for marketing.

There's two ways to market a product,

organic marketing through social

and Google is definitely
one of the cheapest

and one of the easiest ways.

Or paid marketing,

if you don't want to spend the time

building the socials and you have money

to spend on paid ads.

Organic marketing through social and stuff

is definitely what I recommend

at the beginning

because I think it's a good way

to figure out

if your product is something

that just a normal person would want to buy

without using any paid marketing.

A lot of people think that

they can force their product
on to a customer

and force their product into a market

by using paid ads.

When I actually don't think

that works quite well,

unless you are somehow certain
you have an amazing product

that no one else can do.

But I really do think
using socials and stuff,

just trying to get some sort of engagement,

trying to figure out

is this a product people

are going to actually buy?

The biggest mistake people make is thinking

that they need an audience first

and then they sell the product.

And I completely get it,

especially when you look
at someone like me,

when you look at other creators online,

they have an audience,

that's how they're getting their products

in front of an audience,

in front of their socials,

whatever it might be,

when that really isn't the case.

The most successful creators

I personally know actually

made the audience

alongside making the products.

So, for example,

if you are an artist,

how do you think you would build

an audience to sell your art?

You'd, course, share your artwork online.

If your artwork is cool and unique,

then people will naturally
follow your content,

will naturally like your content,

and those who like it a lot

will then maybe buy it.

Maybe sell posters,

maybe sell digital products

like wallpapers,

artwork, whatever it might be.

I think a lot of people

unfortunately fall into the trap,

like I said, of thinking that you need

the audience first.

I really do think

building the audience alongside,

building a product

is the best way,

because if you can't build

the audience alongside the product,

then unfortunately,

your product probably

just isn't good enough.

You haven't done a good enough job

of showing what the product can do

or the product isn't good enough.

That's the harsh reality of it.

If no one is buying your product

through organic socials and stuff

and you're not able
to build an audience off of it,

then yeah, the harsh reality is

your product probably just isn't good enough.

Like I said, out of all the things

that I've tried throughout my life,

this is probably one of the most passive ways

that I've made money.

This is probably
one of the most passive ways

that I generated an income for myself.

But I want to make it clear

there is no such thing

as truly passive income.

You always have to put in the legwork

to get something actually going.

I'd say my most passive

source of income right now

is my stock portfolio.

However, that's not something

that you can just suddenly have.

It just doesn't make sense

because you have to have the money

in the first place to invest
in stocks and shares.

You still have to put in the legwork.

That is definitely the most passive thing

that I have right now.

So I make the money

from my digital products,

it goes straight into my stock portfolio.

I'm making the money work for me.

For people who have been long time followers,

not just on the channel,

people have just followed my socials,

what I've been doing for the last
sort of ten years now,

will know that digital products

is how I got into making money online.

That was my first way of making money.

If you've watched my previous videos,

you may have seen me mention

Tumblr themes.

Tumblr themes were just incredible for me.

They absolutely changed my life.

Before that though,

I was selling Android icons
and things like that

for like three bucks a pack.

So I already had the taste of digital products.

I knew that digital products

were such a fantastic way to make money.

There was just something there
where it clicked for me.

When I knew that I was selling something

that I had just designed in Photoshop,

because we were using Photoshop back then,

design it in Photoshop, put it out for sale,

and people were buying it.

And I remember I was making like

I was making enough

where it was as good as a part-time job.

It was paying all my bills and stuff

and this was blowing my mind

at how this was working.

Then, it's of course

just evolved into other products.

I remember messing around
with Tumblr templates,

WordPress templates.

And my Tumblr templates
were really popular.

I guess at the time,

I just had a specific style,

I was making sort of specific templates
that people wanted,

and I sold so many Tumblr templates.

Before Tumblr kicked me off
their Tumblr Theme Garden,

I think I got up to $700,000,

nearly $700,000,

and that's just on the Tumblr Theme Garden.

I was selling templates outside of it as well.

I was getting clients

because they would see my themes

and they were like,

"Hey, we want something custom
for our brand."

So I would do that too.

Yeah.

The reason I actually got kicked off

the Tumblr Theme Garden,

was because I stopped updating the themes.

The income had dwindled quite a bit.

I think it had come down to like

$500 a month.

And for me to update like 20 themes,

it wasn't actually worth it

for the cost of the time
that I had to put into updating them.

Just wasn't worth it
for that extra $500 a month.

Now, of course,

$500 a month for a lot of people

that's a very, very nice
bit of side income.

But of course,
with all my other businesses and stuff,

it just didn't make time sense
and financial sense.

Is time sense even a word?

But yeah, it just didn't make sense for me.

Ever since though, I have been selling

digital products online

in some way or another.

Right now,

I just have wallpapers, presets,
website templates,

Notion templates,

and I have some courses as well,

but the courses actually--

This is the thing, right.

I've seen a lot of people fall

into the trap of the courses

actually become
their main source of income,

and I completely get it,

because people want the knowledge,

but my primary source of income

still is my digital products

and sponsorships on YouTube.

Now when you see like
a sponsored segment on video and stuff,

I'm getting paid through there.

But that's not technically really passive

because I've still gotta put in the work

of making the sort of sponsored segment,

reading out of the sponsored segment,

finding the sponsor

or the sponsor coming to me,

and negotiating and things like that.

Digital products, it's not like that whatsoever.

I make the digital product,

put it out for sale,

and then hopefully people find it

and they buy it.

There's no other easier way
to make money online, I think.

As I mentioned earlier, though,

I've put together

a list of resources in the description,

I highly recommend checking it out.

Hopefully, you guys enjoyed this video.

Make sure to check out

one of my other videos.

I' have done so many videos recently

on the sort of high income skills

and other digital product videos.

Make sure to check them out.

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