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33 Comments

What digital templates/ downloadable do you sell?

How do you monetize your knowledge and turn it into templates or downloadable content?

Such as:

  • Website templates
  • Newsletter templates
  • Illustrations
  • Marketing framework
  • E-book/ guideline
  • Checklist
  • List of X
    ... and many more

Let's exchange ideas

  1. How do you grow your product?

  2. What's your biggest obstacle?

  3. How can we help you sell more?

Keen to learn + read + support your product. Show your creation here :)

For me, I don't have any rocket science products. But today I'm celebrating the 1st anniversary of my little presentation templates store. And I have just crossed 800 downloads from all channels combined.

Excited to see yours now!

  1. 3

    I’m selling a JavaScript image editor component, kinda like a micro template I guess.

    Preview:

    Higher resolution video

    The challenge is how to make it sustainable. I’ve sold similar components on Envato but their license entitles customers for lifetime updates (support expires after six months), in my experience customers rarely extend support. So with Doka I’ve gone the subscription route and you need an active subscription to get updates and support. This is working a lot better but does raise the bar for entry (subscription is a bit weird for these kinds of products and I notice it does confuse customers)

    I’m probably going to change the subscription model to single purchase + license expires after a year as I notice lots of customers remove their credit card info after purchase. Which tells me they’re not confident they’ll be using it after a year.

    Anyway lots to try out and lots of progress to make :)

    https://pqina.nl/doka/

  2. 3

    I'm selling Webflow templates
    https://webflow.com/templates/designers/martin-hudobivnik

    Since I'm selling those on their marketplace, I'm not really that invested in marketing / growing, it mostly depends on the traffic Webflow generates to the site.
    So basically, it just comes down to me doing quality work, and upload new templates frequently.

    My next step is to create a business and leverage being the template creator to grow my team, and partly focusing on template development and partly on serving existing and new customers with design and Webflow work.

    As of now, except for these templates, I have nothing to show or leverage. So I'm desperatly trying to catch up and create a killer website (hopefully 1 month away), so I can start building a brand. Right now, my personal website is so outdated I don't really want anyone to see it :)

    1. 2

      Hey @martinhudobivnik - thanks for sharing! Your templates are sleek! I seriously think having your own brand would be helpful and you should dictates the traffic. Would be awesome to see your latest work. Are you on Twitter? Mine: @felix12777

  3. 2

    Hey Felix,

    Great question! Well, I was selling this Coda Template for 20$ for a couple of months before making it free to everyone: https://digitalmarketingcanvas.co/#product

    The Digital Marketing Canvas in the free PDF version was a great sales generator, cfr.: https://digitalmarketingcanvas.co

    Now, everything is free until...my next paid product. ;-)

    1. 1

      Hey @JeremC that's amazing!

      What support do you need. Like Coda :)

      1. 1

        Nothing comes to mind right now. Thanks. :)

        1. 1

          No worries at all! Do you post your content on twitter as well? Would be nice to follow, mine @felix12777 :)

          1. 1

            Well I'm already following you for a while now... 😅 (@JeremC)

  4. 1

    I sell two ebooks, each which come with a set of downloadable templates:

    • The Developer's Guide to Content Creation shows developers how to systematize their content creation processes, step-by-step. It's especially valuable for devs who want to blog more. There are chapters devoted to defining target audiences, generating content ideas, what to expect during writing and editing, and promoting your content. (There's also a special chapter for devs who podcast or screencast.) The book comes with 17 guided exercises and 14 downloadable templates, which can also be saved to Google Drive.

    • The Developer's Guide to Book Publishing is a choose-your-adventure style guide for developers who are trying to understand how traditional publishing or self-publishing work, and it breaks down each process. There's also a chapter on promoting your book release. This book also comes with templates to help devs define their audience, conduct market research, and identify book publishers.

    1. 1

      That’s really awesome @radiomorillo - how often would you update your e-books?

      1. 1

        I published them both earlier this year so they're current. They're also both very hyperfocused, so I don't envision needing to issue an update for another year, maybe more!

  5. 1

    We're selling both premium and free website themes, templates and UI Kits at https://themesberg.com

    1. 2

      That’s fantastic @themesberg - I noticed you’ve some great illustrations too. Do you also sell illustrations alone?

      1. 1

        Thanks, Felix! The illustrations are open-sourced by other designers. We plan on hiring a professional designer who will make custom illustrations and icons for us!

  6. 1

    I'm currently selling ChromeExtensionKit which is a development kit around Chrome extensions that lets you get up and running quickly with a series of starter templates.

    Most of my growth right now has been surrounding launches (here, PH, HN, Reddit, etc) which has brought a fair bit of customers, however my biggest hurdle right now is getting a consistent stream of traffic (post launches). I'm currently working on content marketing as a method of doing this hopefully.

    1. 2

      Just bought this. so excited this exists. Years ago I paid someone $300 to build a chrome extension for me at a company and I'd love to create a template so more people can use it. It was a way to know if a website I'm now, is listed in a google sheet and if not, click and submit it to a google form.

      I've made bookmarklets that do some of this but a chrome extension would be killer. It was awesome and used by 30 people at this company I was working at, at the time.

      And so excited to try to build more chrome extensions that interact with google sheets for my Better Sheets members!

      1. 1

        That's amazing and exactly what I'm trying to achieve with the kit! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or even suggestions for future starters / examples to be added to the kit, I'm always trying to add more value.

        1. 2

          Dude, I just made my first chrome extension from your kit.

          For Better Sheets members. Anytime they open a new tab, it goes to one of 104 videos. so they can discover a new video every time they open a tab. This is incredible. It's 3 lines of JS in your kit.

          1. 1

            That's awesome! I'm glad it helped and I'd love to see it when it's published. I'm also putting together a page on the site that showcases all the creations from the kit, so if that's something that interests you, let me know and I'd love to add your extension.

  7. 1

    I'm selling customizable canva templates,gonna extend this to adobe/figma soon.
    https://products.digitalmaryada.com/ultimate-custom-templates-bundle
    Currently I'm offering Lifetime deal.

    Its been few days since the launch and so far I have 20 customers.
    Just yesterday i was checking the list of target places I need to publish on to get enough audience.

    Major obstacle would be to keep pushing more templates and also getting new customers.

    At this point of time it would be great if i can get enough initial audience.

    1. 1

      This is amazing @saiindra - do you need a Canva Pro account to do this?

      1. 1

        For me to do it - yes.
        For customer, Canva free account is enough.

  8. 1

    I'm making vue and bootstrap admin dashboard template and ui kit https://templatium.com/

    I started this as I wanted to build myself reusable components library which I could use in future projects.

    The biggest obstacle for me buidling this project right now is finding time to work on it and also marketing.

  9. 1

    I'm selling docker tutorial which can get you on track in short time if you have no previous experience with it.

    It's pretty much low income, but made about $150-200. Recently I've raised price and still generated some sales.

    Had luck with a reddit post, there come a lot of sales, but at that point I just wanted to test the whole gumroad workflow and offered it for pretty low price (with some discounts it went even to $2).

    my biggest obstacle, or the reason why I'm not making more out of it is because my channels are not docker focused. I'm using twitter to promote some other things, so my audience doesn't know me as a docker guy. That would help but probably I'll do that with another digital product. Different approach.

    I'm organising giveaway of 3 free copies each last friday of the month, and that's when I tweet about it, someone downloads it, someone buys it.

    I'll come back later to read other answers to this topic. meanwhile feel free to ask for more details

    1. 1

      @brunor - thanks for sharing your stories! Have you also tried to tap into developer focused communities or maybe here as well?

      How can the IH community help you :)?

      1. 1

        not really, as it was intended more to check the whole gumroad process.
        I might start doing it since there is definitely potential, but at the moment it's not really aligned with what I'm doing.

        I had few related posts here on IH.

        IH community can help me to recommend some places where you can shamelessly plug these things

  10. 1

    My first digital good is SVGBackgrounds.com, which I built it up to 200 customizable backgrounds.

    My latest endeavor is a marketplace for visual assets. Right now I produced 3 products for sale (100 Patterns, 150 Duo-tone Icons, 10 Illustrations).
    https://www.visiwig.com/shop/

    1. For growth I release substantial freebies.
    2. My biggest obstacles are time and income: I'm earning about 1/6th of my last full-time job from my efforts, the more I can build that up, the more I dedicate to these projects. Ideally, I want to do this full-time, but currently taking on clients as the core part of my income.
    3. In the near future I'm going to open up my shop to other vendors, so I definitely could use help getting in touch with other designers who are open to listing their products in the early stages of a marketplace. Open to ideas in general for this process.
  11. 1

    I'm selling HTML templates
    BuildFaster.co

    BuildFaster thumbnail

    I grow by creating more themes and expanding my variety. I'm focusing on startups, newsletters, apps, and portfolios right now.

    Finding leads consistently. Some weeks there is not a single customer. And another there are like five downloads. 🤷‍♂️

    You can help me sell more probably just by word of mouth. Spread the word to others you know who need a website quick. I also have an affiliate program that you can sign up on here: https://brayden45dev.typeform.com/to/yHn1vh2X

  12. 1

    Hey Felix.

    We are selling templates made with:

    • Tailwind CSS
    • Bulma.
    • Bootstrap 5 ( upcoming )

    Here: - Wickedtemplates.com

    We also have free options from 4 to 6 free options.

    Hope you like it!

    1. 1

      hi Michael. I take a look on your templates. I suppose you should replace image placeholdares with actual images. It will look more attrective for sure. Now it looks empty (for me).

      1. 1

        That's the point.
        To start from zero.... without hassle.

        You are not supposed to use them as they are.

  13. 1

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