I’m a firm believer that adding a digital product to your business is essential to grow and scale your business. With digital products, you can share your knowledge with your audience and fellow designers and business owners, and establishing yourself as an expert while earning income. 

Offering a digital product helps you bring your business to the next level. You can reach more clients with a digital product and also book high ticket clients who will be impressed by your knowledge and expertise. Another benefit of adding a digital product is that it helps you avoid burnout and who doesn’t need that? By putting your knowledge and information in a one-time sellable product, you don’t have to repeat the same service over and over again for different clients to make the same amount of money. You do it once and you’re done! 

For designers, Using Etsy store to sell digital products are a great way to earn passive income. You can also start a digital planner business to earn passive income. Having an online business or shop means you can do your work on the go while earning passive income.

If you ever wanted to live the laptop lifestyle, selling digital products and earning passive income is for you. 

Here are some ideas on how designers and creatives can earn passive income with digital products:

#1 Editable Templates

Editable templates are a great way to create and sell, especially if you’re using them in your own daily routine. Just as these templates are valuable time-savers to you, so will they be for your customers. Customers will appreciate not having to reinvent the wheel and having a professionally designed editable template will add value to their business and make their lives easier. So, why not offer something simple and easy to start earning passive income such as an editable template?

Some great ideas for editable templates are:

• Service guide – For customers who offer services, create a template that they can customize to fit their niche. They can just fill in the text with service descriptions and prices. You already did the hard part which was creating a professional design. 

• Proposal template – When you make a business proposal, you want to focus on the ideas you’re proposing and not on navigating design features. Customers will love a ready-to-use proposal template.

• Brand presentation slides – Customers who make presentations will appreciate having templates for their slides. Again, this allows them to just focus on the content while you do the design work for them. 

• Questionnaire form – Lots of businesses send out questionnaires to find out what their customers like and dislike and how to improve their products. This is a very popular template to create. 

#2 Pre-made templates

A lot of digital products are designed in order to solve a specific problem. For example, if you’re designing digital planners, you want to offer a variety of options that cater to specific needs such as a weight loss planner, a pregnancy planner, a financial goals planner, etc. This type of product caters to clients with a specific need rather than just being a general planner that doesn’t address a customer’s goals.

Some examples of pre-made templates that cater to specific needs are:

• Planners – People use planners for a wide variety of reasons. Some might want a planner for their business appointments and work schedule while others might want one that will help them keep on schedule with their workouts. 

• Journals – Journals can have a variety of purposes. Someone might be trying to lose weight and need to keep a journal of their daily caloric intake. Someone else might want to write about their pregnancy journey while still others might want to write down their travel experiences. Having a specific journal for their needs will provide them with extra support to achieve their goal and they will love your product!

• Stickers – Stickers that are related to certain themes such as yoga, running, baking, parenting, teaching or anything else help people to reinforce the activities they’re into in their social media interactions. Designing and selling custom stickers that cater to specific niches is a great way to earn passive income.  

#3 Courses

All designers have their unique knowledge and skills when it comes to creating awesome design products. Why not share it with other people who want to learn the tricks of the trade? People would rather learn from a practicing professional who talks in terms they can understand rather than in hard-to-understand academic language. Signing up for a university course means waiting until the course starts and often paying large sums of money. Why not cater to this audience by offering a simpler and more easily available alternative? You can share your skills in an online course that people will appreciate. 

For example, you can teach your audience your process in a short workshop that shows them how you create your designs from brainstorming ideas to finished product. Or you can teach your audience specific design skills, explaining the different tools you use and how you use them to create your designs. 

👉 Watch my free webinar to create and sell digital planners on Etsy

#4 Membership

Recurring income is a great way to earn passive income. When someone signs up for a membership with you, they’ll be paying on a monthly or yearly basis. If you’re constantly offering new products, consider creating a membership for your followers so that they can benefit from having access to new and exclusive digital products from you. Or if you’re designing a series of courses, someone with a membership can participate in all of them. This gives your clients the benefit of having products and/or knowledge that few other people have access to. 

Some examples of great membership products:

• Monthly stickers – People will love seeing the new stickers you come up with and enjoy hearing other people ask them, “Where did you get that awesome sticker?”

• Monthly art + challenge – Each month you can offer your followers a new art or design challenge, engaging your audience and improving their skills. 

• Monthly workshop – People who are working on building their design skills but don’t have time to attend a university course will appreciate having new material available to them every month.

• Monthly “office hours” to ask you questions – Lots of designers would love to have a mentor they can come to with questions or doubts. By offering this service, you set yourself up as an industry expert and help others deepen their knowledge.

#5 Toolkit and resources

Why not create your very own unique tools that clients can use? Your customers will appreciate the time it saves them and will enjoy using your professionally designed products to promote their business.

• Client email scripts – Save your clients from having to type out the same client emails over and over again by selling your customized scripts. 

• Questionnaire forms – Create awesome questionnaire forms and share with your followers.

• Template kits – Put together your own template kit that gives customers a variety of templates for all uses and occasions. 

• Mockups – Create the mockup for a specific product and let the client customize it to their taste.

• Brushes – Do you use specific brushes that give your designs a special effect? For sure others will like to use that effect as well so why not share it?

Final Thoughts

Adding digital products is absolutely a great idea to grow and scale your online business. It helps establish you as an expert and also creates passive income that you can enjoy rather than burning out by reinventing the wheel for each client. It also establishes your brand as having a certain style rather than creating new styles based on each individual customer’s tastes.

If you’d like to design a digital planner but aren’t sure where to start or would like to improve your digital planner design skills, you’ll want to sign up for my Digital Planner Academy®. Get started designing digital products to create passive income today!