If you are not familiar with Etsy, it is Amazon’s more creative little sister. People have been making a killing on Etsy with one of the latest trends in eCommerce – selling digital products.
If you don’t believe me that this is a legitimate business and money-making venture then check out how many sales this Etsy store has made from selling digital downloads exclusively.
The CreativeJamCo store has managed to sell over 130,000 digital downloads and has approximately 2,100 different products available for sale. This is one of 100s of different Etsy stores that sell similar types of products. Product prices can range anywhere from €2 all the way up to €30.
If we took an average product price of €4 then this store would have grossed €521,076 in revenue… truly astounding.
Examples of digital downloads that you could sell on Etsy
Here are some examples of what I am talking about:
- CV Templates
- Budget Trackers
- Mortgage Calculators
- Printable designs
- Content Calendars
- Instagram/Facebook Theme Bundles
- Business templates such as invoices
- Digital planners
- Wedding Invitations
- Birthday/Greeting Cards
- Business card templates
- Menus
- Seating charts
- eBooks
- Guides
How does it all work?
It is super easy to set up an Etsy Store, you can be up and running in the space of a couple of minutes.
The best thing about this business model is how seamless it is for the business owner. Once you have created your template and listed it on your Etsy store it becomes completely passive after that.
You simply upload your file and whenever a customer comes along and wants to buy it from you Etsy will automatically send it to them via email and you have to do nothing.
Another beauty of this business model is that Etsy will try and promote your store and listings for you.
If you are worried about stuff like sales taxes etc when you are selling to customers all over the world then you also don’t need to worry. Etsy has that all covered too, they will automatically add the relevant taxes to the price the customers pay and send the taxes to the relevant authority on your behalf.
In terms of the fees you will be charged,
– There is a $0.20 cent listing fee for each digital product
– Transaction fees of 6.5% per sale
– Ad fees – your products may be advertised to Etsy users or even outside of Etsy. You will only have to pay these fees if you make a sale.
I ran an experiment
I was first a little sceptical about how successful this kind of business could be so I decided to run an experiment myself to see could I sell some of my own digital products.
I kept the experiment small and simple, just 4 templates.
I am an accountant by trade so where I began was to create the following templates; business forecasting model, mortgage calculator, household budget tracker and stocks/crypto portfolio tracker.
The results
The results were quite surprising to me and validated that this is in fact a genuinely fruitful business model.
Within the space of roughly 3-4 months, these 4 digital products managed to generate 23 sales totalling €220. Not too bad right? This was at a very small scale.
It goes to show that if you could build a larger Etsy store with many different types of digital templates that people need you could easily be making a couple of thousand euro from it.
If you don’t know where to start when trying to build a template then you could always use something like Canva to help. It will make you just as good as any graphic designer.
If side hustles are your thing then I have also another post you may be interested in that covers 9 Ideas for Generating a Side Income in Ireland (€100+ p/m).
Disclaimer: This blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice.
