my easiest passive income over the last year so yeah there's a lot to go through on this video but I want to preface this video by saying I think passive income is misunderstood by a lot of people they think of it as something that you don't really need to work for that their money can really be made passively but truly passive income is actually very rare in reality passive income requires some sort of upfront work or some sort of Maintenance to keep it going there's no such thing as like truly passive income there are some things that can come close and I think I have a source here with which I think is the closest I think it's one of the easiest ways to make somewhat passive income because I like to Define passive income as something that doesn't require a lot of work that doesn't require a lot of Maintenance once it's up for sale however at the beginning it probably might require some work probably might require some time to get it going might even require some money but once that's done once you actually start selling it it's usually quite easy and just doesn't take much maintenance I think my true passive income is actually my stocks and shares portfolio but that's going to be for another video video in this video I wanted to cover digital products which I think is my second most passive income so let's just get straight into it and show you some screenshots that I have taken from my dashboards from 2023 the first one is from payhip where I made $165,000 and then the second one is from gumroad from which I made $30,000 you can see actually the beginning of pay hiip there is no money and in the beginning of gumroad there's a lot of money that's because I think around February March Time I switched from gumroad to pay hiip main reason being that gumroad ended up upping their pricing where they charge a flat 10% for anything you sell and pay hiip was just a lot more cost-efficient because they don't charge anything if you pay their $99 a month even though I moved from gumro to pay hiip I still kept my gunr profile live and I still left my products on there to sell because I had linked to those products elsewhere other people had links to those products elsewhere and if I had taken my gumro profile down taken those products down it could just be a bit of a mess when people are looking for that product and they don't find it so I left my gun Ro profile up and even then even leaving it up I still made $330,000 over the last year so of course when me add it all up I've made $195,000 nearly $200,000 from digital products which I think is just outrageous like that is a crazy amount of money to make from digital products from products that I don't really put too much effort into too much time into they do very much to sit in the background and make money I haven't done accurate calculations yet but I think when I take into account transaction costs uh fees for hiring designers and developers the marketing costs all those sorts of costs I think they amount to around 20 to $30,000 so let's just say $30,000 to be safe we take away $30,000 I've made around $165,000 profit so not bad at all not bad at all $165,000 profit from digital products I think that's incredible now of course that's before taxes business taxes personal income tax all that sort of stuff that differs from country to country of course so if I had paid myself all of that money as personal income I had moved that money from my business account to my personal account my personal bank account I would have to pay around 40 45% tax which is a lot longtime followers will know that I have been making money from selling digital products for a long time it was actually the first little bit of money I made online one of my first ever digital products was selling Android icons for Android phones I don't know if anyone who follows this channel remembers those but that was a long time ago and that has of course evolved into doing other sort of digital products did have a good run when I was making Tumblr themes When Tumblr was big I've mentioned before I've made like s nearly $700,000 just selling Tumblr templates and that was pure profit which is just wild if we look at my store store. aio.com I have an array of products on there arranging from Light Room presets to wallpapers these are products that I'm genuinely actually interested in things I actually want to use I actually think makes sense for my audience as well and surprisingly my best money makers are actually Lightroom presets the Lightroom presets for me just do do really well I think it's just because they're quite unique in the sense of not everyone can make Lightroom presets and I have a very specific photography style and that's what makes light presets quite powerful right it's like a specific style of editing so when people want my style they're not buying my Lightroom presets so Lightroom presets for me are an amazing way to make money so that was just a quick dive into my store store. allo.com how much I've made over last year and the costs and sort of the products and stuff I sell but I did want to get into some other things related to this because I know a lot of you are interested in doing the same so product ideas is of course a big one there are so many different digital product ideas out there I have three main ones listed here notion templates a friend of mine islo he makes notion templates and I know he shared previously that he's made over $200,000 a year selling notion templates which is what notion templates the market for notion templates and stuff is really blown up Excel courses so if you haven't heard of Miss Exel so this is a content creator who use Tik Tok to sell Excel courses which is just incredible and it makes a lot of sense when I think about it when when you really think about it because everyone uses Excel like everyone uses excel in some way or another and a lot of people use it in their work on a day-to-day basis and here she is making content on how to use Excel how to get the most of excel sharing tips and tricks on platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram and then she's driving people from her social networks to her website where they can buy full courses about Excel learning basically everything there is about Excel and these courses aren't cheap as we can see there's one here for 200 $79 you can buy the complete Microsoft Office Suite for $1,200 $200 for AI with Excel there's templates and things yeah there's nothing here that's less than $100 which is just crazy and it just shows that there is a market for it if people are getting value from it it can help them in their day-to-day lives it can help them in their professional setting in their job or whatever it it just makes a lot of sense that people would spend this sort of money and I know she's made incredible money I know she's made Millions from selling these XL courses and then another one is framer templates so framer has become quite a popular sort of web design platform over the last couple of years Cedric makes framer templates and I know he's making around $30,000 a year from selling frame of templates which again is just incredible because for him that's just a bit of side income he does web design design work as a living for clients and he has templates and stuff that he makes all the time and he thought why not sell these templates as well and he's making a good side income from it but those are just three ideas there are a ton more digital product ideas I've actually done a few videos on my channel sharing those digital product ideas however what if you don't have the skills what if you are very much at the beginning you don't really know where to start well that's where a platform like skillshare comes in who are also sponsoring this video I've been a big advocate of skillshare over the years I've recommended it a ton in the past they have thousands of classes to choose from from industry Pros across film illustration design web development and much much more I keep saying that the best way to invest is to invest in yourself leveling up your skills leveling up your knowledge skillshare is perfect for that skillshare has put together a ton of different learning paths for all all sorts of skills so for example if you wanted to learn Photography they have an intro to DSLR photography or if you wanted to learn graphic design to make your own digital art they have a Graphic Designs basic learning path skillshare is all about exploring discovering and learning new things so make sure to check out skillshare the first 500 people to use my link will get a one-month free trial when it comes to selling digital products I think the biggest piece of advice I have for most people starting out especially is try and sell higher ticket items for example my wallpaper packs are $14 which isn't much to be honest but I simply make them because I enjoy making them I don't actually necessarily make them to make a ton of money I just make them because I'm the type of person that's always changing wallpapers on my phones so I just think to myself I might as well sell these wallpapers as well because I know a lot of people ask for them but my Lightroom presets are much higher priced they're priced at $39 a pack which means I have to sell three wallpaper packs to make the same amount as selling one Lightroom preset pack I found that the best creators who are making very good money online are selling digital products that are $99 or more and it just makes sense because the way I see it is that it's much easier to manage a product and manage a customer that has spent $100 on a product than 10 customers that have spent $10 on a product unfortunately many creators make the mistake of trying to make their product as cheap as possible and they think they should be competing in price but I really do think that's a massive mistake it just doesn't make Financial sense to do that I've actually found from talking to other creators that it's actually easier to set out a higher ticket item as long long as you have the knowledge and the skills to back it up when it comes to platforms for selling digital products I'm currently using payhip for my store store.com and the main reason why is because it's the most cost-efficient for me and it also handles EU vat which can be a bit messy because I don't really want to be hiring an accountant to handles the vat for me pay hiip does that all for me but the other platform I would highly recommend is selfi if you're not really too concerned about EU vat and I think it actually makes a lot of sense for creators because it's easier to use them pay hip and it has a bunch more features now the big question I get asked is how do you Market these products how do you get people to buy these products so there are a few ways in which you can Market these products I have written down here organic search so SEO uh social media marketing like making content and then paid marketing I think those three are the sort of Main and easy way so of that most people know unfortunately sales just don't come out of thin air you do have to Market your products you do have to get them out there get them in front of people so that they actually buy them it amazes me how many people create a product and then just wait thinking that they're going to randomly just get to out it just doesn't make any sense nothing is ever going to sell nothing is ever going to get in front of anyone unless you Market it and marketing isn't a bad thing I think a lot of people see marketing as this sort of dirty sleazy thing not at all I don't think people realize that most of the things that they buy today are due to marketing you've seen it somewhere maybe you've seen a review about it maybe you've seen someone else use it that's technically all marketing that's what marketing is marketing isn't a bad thing thing and if you have a product that's valuable or useful to someone then you should be marketing it I feel like you should be getting that in front of people because it can be useful to someone the easiest way to of course get started with marketing is to do paid marketing if you have money paid marketing is just the easiest and quickest way to get in front of a lot of people but of course it requires Capital upfront unfortunately there's no such thing as free marketing you're either going to pay for it with money with paid marketing or you're going to be paying for it with Time by making content about your products so when it comes to marketing for my own products I like to do Marketing in a sort of indirect way so I've listed here for example my iPhone photography tutorial that I have on my main channel that video has got like over a million views I think it's 1.5 million views or something like that most of those views have actually come from people who don't follow me and what I've done is in that video I've basically given information away for free so I'm teaching people how to set up an iPhone for taking better pictures how to take better pictures how to edit those pictures and like I said I'm giving away that noise for free and then I just plug my product in there I say that I have some Lightroom presets people don't have to buy them to get amazing pictures with their iPhone the only side benefit of buying those presets is that you get the same look that I get when it comes to editing those pictures and that's all it is and by doing that I've sort of marketed my product in an indirect way but also given away knowledge for free and I do the same with my wallpapers so maybe I'm doing an iPhone review a Macbook review or just showing a setup or something I'll have my wallpaper there because I'm already using that wallpaper it might as well be a wallpaper that I've made myself and it's just another way for me to indirectly Market products I'm not necessarily just making content directly promoting these products because those aren't really going to get engagement those aren't really going to get many views or anything like that instead I'm showing these products as I use them in my own content now some of you will be asking but Olia I don't have an audience where do I even start well make one like if you don't have the money for paid marketing the only option you have is to do organic SEO marketing or social media marketing because that's how I started I didn't have any money for paid marketing at the beginning I was just like most of the other people completely bright didn't have any money didn't really know where to start but I started making content for social media and then it sort of just evolved into making digital products and and sort of marketing my digital products that way so if you don't have an audience and you don't have money then I really do think that making an audience is where you've got to start at the beginning of course it's slow and it was slow for me it took me a couple of years to get the hang of making good content making digital products and making money from that sort of thing but that's what it's going to take it's not something that can happen overnight this income stream for me ranks second in the most passive income streams that I have first of course is my portfolio but then obviously with the portfolio it's a bit different right you got to have money to put in there and then that money sort of generates money but something like this you can really make money out of nothing if you can Market those products and I think that's what makes this even more valuable even if it's not as passive as something like a portfolio or property or something like that because the way I see it is that I'll be making videos anyway I'll be tweeting anyway I'll be posting images online anyway on Instagram places like that why not also make my own products and Market my products to my audience it just makes a lot of sense and the great thing is I'm not forcing my audience to buy these products they're not forced to to spend any money whatsoever they can still enjoy my content for free it's only those who want to get specific things that are willing to pay for them what's also really powerful about this income stream is that I have products that I've made years ago that I haven't touched that are still making money maybe I made a video about them maybe I tweeted about them Instagram blog post or whatever or maybe someone else is link to them somewhere years ago but even though I've made those products years ago they're just still making money now I have wallpaper packs I have Lightroom pie sets I have icons like I said that Ive made four five six years ago and they are still making money now it really is one of the most powerful passive income streams that I've ever come across and it just requires pretty much little to no effort At All by the way for those who have got to the end I have put together a bunch of resources regarding digital products all you have to do is just enter your M sign up below and you'll get them for free so hopefully you guys enjoyed this video follow me on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe for more
