It seems like people are talking about how much money they’re making selling digital products everywhere you look. Online courses and ebooks are some of the most popular types of digital products you can create and sell, but what about some of the lesser-known options?
We’ve got five digital products you may not have thought about creating—but that can bring in some serious passive income.
Notion templates
If you haven’t heard of Notion yet, it’s a customizable project management software that lets its users create their own boards, dashboards, and templates. And boy, have users gotten creative. You can check out Notion’s template gallery (where users are able to submit their own templates) to see what types of options there are.
Some popular Notion templates include:
- Expense tracker
- Habit tracker
- Planner
- Task manager
- Goal tracker
- CRM
- Editorial calendar
And so many more.
Plus, Notion template creators are bringing in a lot of revenue from their sales. One creator, known as Easlo on Twitter, shared his story with Business Insider, detailing how he made over $200,000 in one year just from creating and selling Notion templates.
Take our quiz.
And find out which digital product you should create first.
Stock photos/videos
Another great option is stock photos and videos. If you have a high-quality camera and know how to use it, you can easily start shooting your own stock footage and selling it online.
There are two avenues you can take with this. First, you can sell your photos and videos to an existing stock site. Many of these sites, like Stocksy, accept contributors to bulk up their stock library offerings.
In Stocksy’s words, “We believe artists should be paid fairly for their work, so we put 50% from regular purchases ($15-400) and 75% from extended licenses ($100-10,800) directly into your pockets.”
However, not all stock photo or video sites are quite so generous. According to one study, Stocksy is the highest-paying stock site in 2023.
With Stocksy, creators can make a minimum of $7.50 per photo sale while other sites like Shutterstock have a minimum of $0.10.
However, creators can also choose to create their own website for their work, bringing in 100% of the revenue of their stock photos or stock photo licensing.
Membership sites
Membership sites are another unique way to generate passive income. These are great because you’re guaranteed a monthly subscription fee for as long as each member stays with you.
Common features of a membership site are:
- Courses (these often remain the central part of a membership site)
- Premium webinars
- AMAs (ask me anything sessions with experts)
- Member calls or meetups
- Community forum
- Resource library of digital downloads
Essentially, to make your membership site worth it for people to sign up and stay subscribed, you need to have an arsenal of continuously rotating content—plus a community aspect.
But you can bring in $100k/year with your membership site if you generate a compelling offering.
Presets/filters
If you have graphic design or photo-editing experience, you might consider creating your own Lightroom presets or filters and selling them to creators who still need pretty photos but might lack that experience.
One woman has made over $110,000 in a year by doing this.
Simply create a group of presets that go together and market them as a package. Creators and brands often use these to help create a cohesive look and feel on their social media sites.
Spreadsheets
Finally, you can create and sell spreadsheets on either Excel or Google Sheets. Some of the spreadsheets you can create and sell might end up being similar to what you could create on Notion—but if you’re already familiar with Excel, this is likely a much better bet.
One creator, Emily McDermott, has made over $280k selling her various spreadsheets on Etsy. Some of these include:
- Bookkeeping templates
- Wedding planners
- Habit trackers
- Budgeting templates
- Investment trackers
- Cleaning trackers
But there are many things you can do with an Excel spreadsheet, some formatting, and some formulas.
Find your next digital product to create
Get started building your next big digital product. You can easily offer digital downloads right through on Teachable and start bringing in your own passive income. Learn more about how you can sell digital products with Teachable.
{{firstdigital-component="/blog-shortcodes/blog-popup"}}
Tags:
