It is easy and affordable to produce digital goods. Physical inventory does not need to be maintained. Making a single digital product and selling it repeatedly can help you earn passive income that isn't dependent on how many hours you put in.
Are you trying to find a way to grow your company and make more money without spending all day in the office? Digital goods might offer the answer you're looking for.
The possibilities for digital products are virtually limitless and might help you launch your own company, grow it, or simply earn extra money.
What Is a Digital Product?
Any product developed, distributed, and utilised digitally is referred to as being digital. You can only use it online, through your web browser, on your mobile device, or as a physical thing.
Selling digital products is among the greatest and simplest ways to make passive income for a variety of reasons.
It costs nothing to get started. There are no upfront inventory costs, storefront rentals, or package shipping involved. To create a product, you can utilise affordable and free tools, and most of the time, your only financial commitment will be to pay the sales platform's costs.
Start-up costs are low. Rental storefronts, packages to mail, or items to purchase in advance are all absent. The only real cost of creating a product is frequently the fees you pay to the sales platform you employ, and you can create one using free or low-cost tools.
Digital goods do not require input. Whether you're employed or not, you can create a product once and sell it regularly. Establishing a business by offering services online is an excellent idea, but it can be labour-intensive and limit your clientele. You can sell digital goods online to as many people as you want, whenever you want, and earn money.
Items made digitally can be scaled. The number of hours you can work in a day determines how much money you can make when you provide services. Selling digital products allows you to build your business rapidly without putting in more overtime.
19 Digital Products You Can Sell Online
Digital products come in a wide variety and differ in their degree of passivity. While some require maintenance, others can be left alone. The majority of them fall into one of three groups:
- Completely passive: You invest the time to make the product only once, and you can keep selling it forever. These goods are typically less costly, and revenue could come in irregularly.
- Semi-passive: Although the product is passive, you might need to periodically update or market it. Since these are expensive digital goods, there is more potential for profit.
- Occasionally active: These are usually membership- or subscription-based goods. Although income is more reliable, you still need to work at it at least once a month.
Combining these three passive income streams is ideal, and there are lots of digital product ideas available to help you develop a line of items that will benefit your company and boost revenue.
1. Ebooks
If you enjoy writing, there are several ways that eBooks can help you generate passive income. You can record an audiobook on Audible, self-publish a series of fiction novels or a nonfiction book, make guided journals or colouring books, or sell digital books on your website.
You can even monetize your eBook giveaway by offering your readers a special discount on a more expensive service or digital item. In addition to selling software for building marketing funnels, Russell Brunson teaches individuals how to use marketing funnels to increase revenue by giving away his books for free (you just have to pay for postage and handling).
2. Online courses
More than ever, people are seeing the benefits of taking online courses to improve their training and skill sets. You can make a course that is text, audio, or video-based and then upload it to a course aggregator website such as Udemy or Coursera. Selling courses from your own website through a platform like Teachable or Outschool would be a better choice.
Do you believe a course covering your area of expertise already exists? Refrain from becoming afraid. People may still be interested in listening to you. For instance, there are several courses available on freelance writing, but each offers certain advantages of its own. This is the rationale behind why someone would choose yours over an already-available course.
It is possible to create a course out of any information or ability. Alec Steele offers a number of online blacksmithing courses.
Many courses are "evergreen," which means that the material is always pertinent and not dependent on a particular day or occasion. These courses are usually entirely passive, but by "launching" your course at specific periods of the year, you may frequently increase your revenue. People feel pressured by the limited-time offer, which can boost purchases.
3. Workshops
Consider developing a workshop in place of writing an eBook or developing a whole course if you are short on time. A webinar, which is a type of live or recorded training, can be hosted once and then sold endlessly. In the future, the webinar may be used to generate leads for the sale of a more expensive good or service.
Unless you wish to modify the information or content, you usually don't need to update the webinar after you've recorded it once. You can put up automatic advertisements that bring customers to your workshop in order to boost sales.
4. Guides or tutorials
If you have experience or specialised training in anything, from zoology to archery, you may sell brief tutorials or guides that provide detailed instructions on how to learn or perform it.
Workshops and tutorials are comparable in that the former often teach one skill while the latter teaches multiple. Tutorials and guides can be provided in written or video form, or in both.
This is a fully passive product because the majority of the skills for which you would create or record a tutorial won't change frequently.
5. Membership site
A digital product that members pay for each month and receive something new is called a membership site or monthly subscription. Although creating new content on a monthly basis might not seem like a passive revenue stream, there are several ways to make one that is largely passive.
You can produce all of your content in advance for a year and release it gradually each month. Or you might make a course that requires monthly payments from students and only releases material for a predetermined period of time.
Even certain digital product templates, such as video lectures, diet plans, and exercise regimens, can be the foundation of a membership website. The designers of KetoConnect created a membership website that is filled with videos, eBooks, recipes, and courses that are not available on their website. They also release a new video to their members once a week.
6. Printables
One of the best ways to generate passive income is to sell products like colouring pages, games, checklists, and worksheets. You can sell your difficult printables separately or group simpler printables together to create packages.
Generally speaking, printables are inexpensive goods that you can create using Canva for nothing, with no restrictions on how many copies you may sell.
What's fantastic about printables is that you can sell them on Etsy and profit from existing traffic without having to create any new ones. WeCreatePrints has only been selling on Etsy since 2019, but in that time, they have sold almost 2,000 pieces of printable wall art.
7. Templates
Passive income can also be earned by creating templates for social media visuals, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and printables. Canva, Google Sheets, and Slides all offer free template creation tools along with copy-and-paste instructions for template customisation.
Using apps like SendOwl and online marketplaces like Creative Market or Etsy, you may sell them on your own website.
8. Commercial-use music
In order to use royalty-free music and sound effects in YouTube videos, ads, and maybe even movies, filmmakers and editors are always searching for them. If you're a musician, you can make money by licencing your songs for use in commercial settings.
You can record each song once and sell it for as long as you like, but in order to get repeat business, you'll need to consistently release new songs. On websites like HookSounds and Bensound, you can sell music and sound effects without any royalties.
9. Scripts
People frequently struggle with what to say when drafting a best man speech or asking for a raise. When it counts, prewritten scripts for speeches, fundraising, sales calls, negotiations, and other situations can help people say what needs to be said.
You can resell these scripts on your own website or on platforms such as Fiverr. Deeper Than Money's Chloe Elise earns $75,000 a month, largely through passive income. A collection of scripts for negotiating cheaper rates on more than 20 expenses is one of her internet offerings.
10. B-roll footage
Supplementary footage used in television and film production is known as B-roll. You can generate passive income by selling B-roll on YouTube without the need for expensive cameras because of its popularity. For YouTubers on a tight budget, you can record video with an iPhone to make B-roll that is reasonably priced.
Even better, you may upload your films to YouTube with backdrop footage or meditations set to commercial music. After you fulfil YouTube's monetization standards, you will start receiving passive money.
Similar to commercial-use music, you can repeatedly market a single piece of film, but having a large library of B-roll is your best chance for growth. This implies that until you construct a database, you will need to keep making some.
11. Mobile apps
Using applications takes up 90% of the time we spend on our phones. (Source: ) Depending on the kind of company you run, a mobile application could be the ideal digital product. The software can be paid for by charging for download or use, or you can monetize it with affiliate links and in-app advertisements.
You don't need to know how to code to create an app; services like BuildFire will do it for you, or you can use one of their templates. A mobile app is primarily passive, save for the fact that you must update and add features to keep it functional and encourage users to return.
For $2.99, readers may download a smartphone app with all of blogger Beth Moncel's recipes, as prepared by Budget Bytes.
12. Plugin or extension
You most likely already know about plugins if you own a website. If not, it's possible that you use Google Chrome and have added or used browser extensions. While many are free, more specialised plugins and extensions may come with a price.
WordPress plugins and Chrome addons that employ algorithms to speed up otherwise laborious tasks can be very profitable and passive. By combining Amazon textbooks with a Chrome addon, Spencer Haws was able to make almost $4,000 in a single week.
The plugin or extension will generate passive income; however, it will require regular updates, just like a mobile app, to remain functional.
13. Photography
Companies use stock photographs for their YouTube channels, social media accounts, advertisements, and websites. You have two options: either launch your own stock photo subscription service or sell your images on stock photo websites. To sell photographs, you shouldn't need any expensive gear; the camera on your smartphone should be sufficient.
You may either make your own or passively sell individual photographs on websites like Adobe Stock or Shutterstock. In order to make the most of this digital product business, you will need to regularly update your portfolio on your own website.
14. Animations and vectors
For websites, stock photography is most common, but in order to stand out, an increasing number of bloggers and site owners are using animations and vectors. If you are skilled at creating vector graphics and animations, you can start your own subscription service or sell them on the same websites as stock photography. Canva and Adobe Illustrator are two programmes that you can use to design your photos.
Build an image collection that you can sell for totally passive income, or refresh your products frequently. Then, utilise marketing techniques to persuade companies to switch from stock photos to animations and vectors.
15. Website theme
Many blog and website owners choose to develop their own since it is far less expensive to build a website yourself using a premium theme than to hire a website designer. This gives you the opportunity to create and distribute premium WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace themes to low-budget business owners via your website or a marketplace such as ThemeForest, thereby earning passive revenue.
Creating premium website themes is primarily passive, but in order for the themes to function effectively, you'll need to keep them updated.
16. Fonts
Calligraphers and hand lettering artists can create typefaces from their handwriting that they can sell to wedding planners, event coordinators, and business owners so they can use them on menus, flyers, and invites. Generally, fonts created in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop do not require updating when sold on websites such as Creative Market or MyFonts.
17. Blueprints
Selling home project plans is a passive income stream if you have some construction experience and are good with a tape measure. There are many different designs you may make for common DIY projects, including dog houses, bird houses, pergolas, and chicken coops.
Selling blueprint downloads in PDF format is a simple way for a business, usually one that provides services, to make passive money. To build the blueprints, you will need to purchase software, but you can quickly recover your investment by selling the designs you produce.
18. Presets
Visual content predominates on social media, but not all of its producers are photographers and videographers. For photographic editing sliders, presets are preset positions that give you the desired edited effect.
With presets for Lightroom, Photoshop, and other programmes, users may publish visually striking photos with no effort.
A preset can be made just once and then sold directly from your website with an e-commerce platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce. You won't need to update presets often because they are adaptable and work with different seasons, but you could want to promote them on social media.
19. Planners
Planners facilitate the organisation of goals, finances, food, exercise, and other activities. Print-on-demand websites like CreateSpace and Lulu, as well as your own store, allow you to offer printable PDFs and actual planners. By selling planner pages and other printables on her website and Shopify store, blogger Sarah Titus has amassed over $10 million in revenue.
Undated planners have no active features other than automated advertising. Selling outdated planners can be a passive source of income, as can offering a monthly subscription to a brand new planner.
Digital Items Never Sell Out
Digital goods provide a cost-effective means of making passive revenue without having to worry about stock, storage, or delivery expenses. You can market your goods to people wherever they are at any time of day.
If you provide a service, build a line of digital goods around it to expand and grow your company.
