Ideas for digital products you can start selling today

Coming up with product digital ideas isn’t always easy. In fact, this seems to get a lot of people stuck! In this post I have compiled a great list of ideas for digital products that you can create and sell to generate passive income for your business.

In this list I will give you examples of the types of digital products and the advantages (plus disadvantages) of creating them, compared to other types.

Some types are more suitable for beginners, others require you to have (or learn) other technical skills. Not all of them are truly passive in the sense that you just have to create it once. Regardless, I decided to add all of these digital product types here because this might help you find ideas for your own business.

So let’s get started!

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The great list of ideas for digital products

1. Ebooks (& Workbooks)

Ebooks are great examples of digital products to create if you are just starting out.

The biggest objection people may have with an eBook is that they think it needs to be an encyclopedia of some sorts. But your eBook doesn’t have to be something with hundreds of pages, it just needs to solve one problem and give a quick win to your audience.

You are probably more familiar with the kind of eBooks that you find on Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks. And no, I’m not asking you to become a writer and come up with some fictional novel!

When I say eBook I mean packaging up information that you can sell in a downloadable format.

I know you already possess some valuable information that you can monetize in the form of an eBook. Everyone has, trust me!

And you might have even seen the signs that you are ready for this. [links to how to know when you are ready to create your first digital product]]]]]]]]

But if the idea of writing an eBook sounds daunting to you, I totally recommend my friend Marybeth’s 10-day eBook challenge.

This challenge walks you through all the steps from finding an eBook idea to write about, to actually putting it out for sale. Give it a try!

Here are some examples of eBooks you could write:

• Step-by-step guide to building your green house
• How to cultivate a healthy mindset to always achieve your goals
• Simple strategies to design a home you love
• The ultimate guide to a gluten free life

These are all examples I just came up with, just to illustrate how you can write an eBook about anything. However, the ones which sell always have one thing in common – they solve one specific problem for the audience they are intended to.

Here are the pros and cons of writing an eBook as a digital product.

Workbooks can be sold separately or together as a bundle with the accompanying eBook. Achieving an outcome always requires action, and sometimes an eBook lacks in terms of action steps.

So if your customers could feel overwhelmed in taking actions based on the information you are providing, then a workbook is a great asset to sell.

A workbook is also a downloadable format, often a PDF with fillable boxes.

2. Online courses or Online mini courses

An online course is a great option for providing in-depth knowledge of a particular subject. And this information can be presented in many ways other than just an e-reading format, like eBooks.

People learn in different ways and with a course you can add text, video, audio, community chat and much more. Because of that, courses are perceived as more comprehensive resources.

This is the reason why you can often charge a lot more for a course than you can for an eBook. But they also require you to put much more time and effort beforehand.

A workaround to this would be creating a mini course (one part of a larger course) so you can build it up slowly but still start selling something.

For an online course you will also need an online course platform to host your lessons privately. There are many options for that, but they will come at a price.

So, to summarize some of these advantages and disadvantages:

3. Online workshops

Online workshops differ from online courses because they focus on teaching a practical skill, often in a short period of time, and likely delivered as a live presentation (at least the first time it is recorded).

They are perfect for hands-on subjects where the instructor can deliver the best tips based on his experience and what the audience is asking.

I always remember being put off from the idea of creating a workshop because of the LIVE component. After all, LIVE presentation is by no means passive! And I’m all about that passive income, babe.

But here is the good news. You can create a live workshop and then use the recordings as a sellable asset later, without any extra work and that is passive income.

Workshop must be recorded anyways because many participants might not be able to make the time.

Another advantage of an online workshop is that it might not require too much work beforehand compared to online courses. The information will be delivered during the workshop and that is how you create the product content.

You will also get live feedback from participants, and their questions will help you refine and improve your workshop for the future clients. It’s a win-win scenario!

4. Printables

Printables are digital products that customers buy online and print at home (or send to a printing service) to use.

Printables are some of the best digital products to sell on Etsy and they make a great starting point for many people because you don’t need a niche, a website or even an audience to get started.

And many printables are not elaborated things, meaning that you don’t need design skills to start creating these digital products.

However, printables are generally low cost downloadables and you need to start selling quite a lot to make enough income from your digital product store.

On the other hand, opening a printable shop can be a digital product business idea for artists because you can express your creativity through these designs, creating unique downloads to sell.

Here are some printable digital products examples:

• Art and quote prints
• Birthday, shower, graduation, wedding and greeting cards
• Party invitations, decorations and signs
• Printable planners, checklists & trackers
• Coloring pages and kids workbooks
• Gift tags and customizable wine labels
• Printable games and educational sheets

Here the pros and cons of creating printable digital products to sell:

When you are opening an Etsy shop with the intention of selling printables you need a game plan because you want to make sure that your audience finds your shop and products in a sea of competitors.

It’s not impossible, but if you want to avoid a lot of trial and error, I can recommend this great course that I took myself in the beginning of my journey.

It walks you through the how to open your Etsy shop, how to find ideas of products in demand with less competition and also how to design these printables.

I totally recommend this course to anyone who wants to get started, they have helped hundreds of people make good income online!

This is one great freebie they have about selling seasonal products, it’s totally FREE! Get it now!

Digital design content

Digital design content is a creative asset that customers can use for personal or commercial projects.

Examples of digital design assets are:

• Graphics
• Clip art
• Font
• Patterns
• Icons
• Logos
• Digital papers
• SVG cut files

There are several marketplaces that are specific for selling these kinds of digital products such as Creative market, Hungry jpeg, Design bundle, Creative fabrica, etc.

This means that you don’t need your own platform to start your profitable digital product biz.

However, to create these digital products you need to know how to use some design tools and that could be a steep learning curve.

Of course, you can always learn how to use professional graphic design software and open an online store to sell these digital downloads. However, I don’t recommend you start with these products unless you already have that knowledge because you could be really frustrate and end up wasting your time.

Templates

Templates are always in demand because they do the heavy lifting and save your customers’ time.

No one wants to start anything from scratch, specially if they are not creatively or design minded. So templates give that shortcut to allow your customers to quickly customize something that has already been created.

Templates are one of the many digital products that I sell, and you might have found me through my products!

There are plenty of types of digital templates that you can create, a few examples are:

• Canva templates for business assets such as business card, logos, Etsy shop banner
• Graphic design templates for social media posts such as Pinterest templates, Facebook templates, YouTube video thumbnail templates, Instagram story highlights and carousel Instagram templates etc.
• Office Programs templates (excel, Word, Powerpoint etc) such as financial spreadsheets, calculators, resume templates and slide deck presentations.
• Copywrite templates such as email marketing copy template, facebook ad copy template, contract templates
• Templates for everyday use such as phone wallpaper and desktop background templates.
• Organization and time management templates such as Notion templates, Trello templates, Clickup templates, Asana templates etc.
• Website and e-commerce shop themes, such as Shopify themes and WordPress themes.

As you can see the range of templates that one can create is wide. And the advantage is that you can use your own strengths to create templates, you don’t have to make social media templates if that is not what you enjoy, or you don’t have skills for it.

You can create templates for programs that you use yourself too, avoiding the need to have to learn anything new.

Here are the pros and cons of creating templates as digital products:

Presets

Presets are pre-defined photo-editing settings designed to give an image a certain look or style in a single click.

These presets are created for the specific program they are intended to be used and once you import them, you can access these setting and transform images in seconds.

They come in many forms, and here are some examples:

• Lightroom preset
• Photoshop actions
• Presets for Premier Pro
• Instagram filters
• Snapchat filters

You cannot charge a huge amount for these presets but they are normally a great little investment to save time for many professionals so the demand can be high.

And they become truly passive income once you have created them because there is not always a need to keep updating these settings.