The best way to make money in the online world is by selling digital products. This I got to know very late in life, but I am glad that I did.
When I started my journey I only knew one way to make money, which was providing my design services. To help my clients with their problems by giving a visual solution. But boy that is not a wise way, if you want to attain financial freedom. To trade your time for money will make your income limited to the amount of time you have and also you will only make money when you are working.
You should also look for ways in which you can make money while you are sleeping, the best way to make money.
Passive income is the best one. You’d be working hard at the initial time, but you can make money again and again for the work you did in the beginning.
Selling digital products is a way to make passive income for us designers. We can create a product which we can sell afterwards to make money. Whether it will be successful or not will only depend on the fact that how is it helping people.
The better the products you make, the more sales you will generate, and hence you will earn more money.
Selling digital products is bliss. It is passive you just need to provide some assistance to your customers sometimes, and just rare maintenance. You need to better your product to make the experience of the customer better.
I will give you a basic understanding of every product so that you can get started with your passive income journey. You can see what product suits you as per your skill.
1. Templates-
Templates are great to make money, you can make some template that can be used again and again. It will be designed in a way that anyone can edit it easily only then the product will be purchased more. If people are not sure how to edit it or use it, why would they buy it even?
So make sure to make them understand how to use it. Templates can be designed for anything, social media posters, banners, logos, packaging, Motion Graphics, etc. No matter what is your expertise you can make your own templates.
You just need to think about what can be used by people and how it can be helpful. If a product solves some problem only then it can be successful in the market. For instance, if you know how to make motion graphics, videos, what you can do is make a video template in which people can easily change the text as per their requirement which they can use for themselves.
That is how a lot of designers who are making passive income every day. You would find a lot of motion graphics, videos being created by designers why do you think people are making them.
2. Fonts
Fonts can be a great way to make some money.
If you know how to do typography and how to create fonts. Maybe you should think about selling fonts. You need to find a font foundry or some platform through which you can sell your fonts. People are buying fonts every day, every day some of the other brand borns. People are willing to try something new which has not been tried to be different than other brands.
There are a lot of websites which can prove to be helpful if you want to upload your fonts to make some extra side income. Even a substantial income to make a living.
The ball is always in your court if you have the talent. You just needed to be guided in the right direction.
3. Brushes and Textures
Selling photoshop brushes and textures is a great way to diversify. You can have multiple products in your shop or the platforms from where you are making money. When you are aiming to make a substantial amount of income. Just make sure that you get the best out of every platform there is on the internet.
You would ask why would someone buy it but think of it in a way that not everyone wants to spend their time doing the small stuff -not even illustrators. 20$-30$ is not a huge amount that people would think twice before spending it over something like brushes, textures or something else. It saves a lot of time. And it is not much for them to spend.
But it can be of great use for you to earn a good amount of passive income. The goal is not to sell high end expensive digital products but to sell products with an amount which almost anyone can afford. And yes to reach as many people as one can.
4. Mockups
You would find free mockups everywhere but what I notice is that those free stuff rarely is of great quality. Our industry needs great quality mockups every day. People who are working with clients every day do not want to present something of low quality.
The mockup is a great way to make some extra side bucks. You just need to focus on your niche and think what can be valuable for that particular niche.
5. Graphics & Illustrations
If you are a good artist or the illustrator, you can create illustrations and graphics that people can use for different purposes. It can be packaged, banners, social media posts, etc. It just has to be of good quality. You can also think of a particular niche before sitting to design and think about places where it can be used. Then you would be much more focused. Your design would be productive-centric for which it can be used.
The success with this one can be even more if you have a different style of graphics and illustrations that belongs to you and no one else. Your own style can be a great USP in selling.
Generally, artists who have a distinct style get approached more to have something in their style. So embrace your style. Just be confident in your skills. Always remember that there are thousands of people out there in the world who are ready to take your content. They just cannot see it right now.
And with time my friend, you can reach them!
6. Lessons & Tutorials
One of the best ways to make money in any domain is this one. Every day the knowledge industry is growing. People are getting interested in learning something from a professional who is already doing. What they want to do rather than taking up an actual course from an educational institute.
If you believe yourself to be an expert in a certain space like designing fonts, doing illustrations, designing ads or anything. You can create some lessons and tutorials to help beginners or the people who are going through hardships. One can also guide people through their tough times and help them reach their goals. It can more easily without facing the struggles that they faced. You can save them from a lot of the pitfalls that you faced yourself.
Tutorial or lesson can be as short as a few hours or it can be a long that people can follow. Maybe for days or weeks and go through the material one by one. All you need to do is order and create it in a way that people can follow it very easily.
Go through without much confusion. The easier it is to follow the better would be the experience of the person who has bought your lesson. It is more likely for him to love your content and come back for more.
7. Ebooks
Making ebooks can help you to put your information on paper and provide it to many people at the same time. Sometimes people are more comfortable with reading stuff rather than watching a video or following a tutorial. Ebooks are very easy to create and with just a little bit of efforts in writing a detailed, helpful ebook you can help people and make some money.
To make an ebook you need to do your research about what can be the topic on which people need help. Search the book keywords that have been searched more, that way you can hit the right spot and talk to the niche which you knows have chances to convert more.
Ebooks can be a good way to reach more people, you can upload it to a few platforms and let the internet work its magic if the product is good and you have presented it well. You have good chances of getting good results.
There is also one more benefit with ebooks if you upload it on your website. Google will take your website more seriously, and will send more traffic to your website.
8. Courses
Making courses can be really profitable as well as giving back to people, people are much more open to digital courses right now than a decade before. They are more open to learning it from someone who is already crushing it and knows about it well.
A digital course can be in the written form, Audio or in a video format. The purpose is just the same no matter what is the format. To be of great help to the people who want to learn. If you know how to take your information and process it in a way that it would be easy for a beginner or the person to grasp and learn that you have to get into this. You can reach a lot of people that you have never thought. What you need to do is, sit down, choose a topic, and just take every little tip, advice and the right way of doing it. You have already achieved great results at so many things. It’s time to decipher that knowledge and put it into a course for people to learn from.
9. Stock Logos
Although stock logos have always been looked upon as something bad by the branding designers, how can something stock can represent the right values of the business? A logo needs to be designed keeping in mind the business and every little aspect of it.
I agree, but a lot of times either people cannot afford a good branding expert, or they do not have time to hire one.
You will find a lot of people who just want to go over the internet and buy a stock logo and change the name to their business. It won’t be a perfect logo, but this is also an opportunity for you. If you can design logos you can design some logos keeping a specific niche in mind.
The benefit with stock logos is just like every other product it can be downloaded. Any number of times and it will make you money as much as it sells, so you won’t have to sit down, work again and again to make money.
10. UI/UX or themes
I am sure you were expecting this, weren’t you? So today we live a world which is connected through the internet. We have internet running through our veins, and no matter whether we would notice it or not, very major time from our day we spend on the internet.
Maybe it is Instagram, or Facebook, reading some lame blog about making money. Whatever is your poison. Internet got you covered!
Almost everyone is on the internet. So this calls for a cry to all you digital developers, and designers if you know how to design website themes. You have a real shot at making some serious money. This can be your glorious moment and it hasn’t been explored that much by people, and the competition is a bit low as compared to other digital products.
So get up, stretch a little and get down to the work! Decide what digital product you want to make, and make it happen. I know we make a lot of decisions, but we hardly follow up on them. What I want you to do is just comment below what is going to be that product that you want to create and make your decision even stronger, we are more likely to follow up on something when we tell someone, so don’t be shy just share with me, All the best!
Conclusion
If you are a freelancer and want to take that big leap of turning your freelancing into a legit business here is an article that I wrote for you ” How to Turn to freelancing into a legit business“. Also, recently I started making much more money than my regular day job, almost double my day job salary that too within a few months. If you want to know how I did it Read this article.
Also, read about a post which will help you close your clients more effectively there are also some shady selling techniques that have been used by some of the best salesmen in the world. TAKE ME TO THE POST
If you think I have missed something just comment below. Stay Connected to learn and earn more.
2 Comments
Like!! Great article post.Really thank you! Really Cool.
You are right, Thanks for making this article clear my mind.