An electronic product is one that is created, sold, and used electronically. You do not need to purchase anything physical; it is only available online, on your mobile device, or in a web browser.
Digital products are one of the easiest and best ways to generate passive income for a variety of reasons.
You can start for very little money. No inventory must be purchased upfront, no storefront must be rented, and no packages must be shipped. When you make a product, you can use free and inexpensive tools, and you usually only have to pay fees to the sales platform you use.
There is no active component to digital products. It is possible to make a product once and sell it repeatedly, regardless of whether you are working or not. Starting a business online can be a great way to make money, but it can also take a lot of time, and only a few clients may be able to use your services. Making money online is possible anytime, anywhere with digital products.
Scalability is one of the benefits of digital products. The number of hours you have in a day dictates how much income you can earn when you sell a service. Selling a digital product allows you to grow your business exponentially without adding more hours to your schedule.
Digital Products That Can Help You Make Money Online
There are different levels of passiveness in different types of digital products. It is possible to set up some systems and then forget about them, and there are other systems that need to be maintained. Generally, they can be divided into three categories:
- Passive: You create the product once and sell it indefinitely. As a result, these products are typically less expensive and revenue may be sporadic.
- Semi-passive: The product is passive, but you may need to market or update it from time to time. There is a greater opportunity for income with these high-ticket digital products.
- Occasionally active: These products are usually subscription- or membership-based. Maintaining income at least once a month is more difficult, but it is more consistent.
The best way to generate passive income is to combine these three streams, and there are plenty of digital product ideas you can use to create a suite of products that fit your business and increase revenue.
eBooks
Through eBooks, you can make passive income in a variety of ways if you enjoy writing. A series of fiction novels or a nonfiction book can be self-published on Amazon, an audiobook can be recorded on Audible, guided journals or coloring books can be created, or you can sell digital books online.
You can even make money by giving away your eBook by offering readers a special deal on a higher-priced service or digital product. Russell Brunson gives away his books for free (you just pay shipping and handling) to teach people how marketing funnels can grow revenue, and also sells software to help create marketing funnels.
Online courses
In today’s world, more and more people are discovering the value of online courses for learning skills and gaining knowledge. Post your course on an aggregator like Coursera or Udemy if you have a text, audio, or video-based course. Selling a course from your website using a platform like Teachable or Outschool may be a better option.
Do you think your expertise has already been covered in a course? Don’t let intimidation get the best of you. There is still a chance that people will be interested in what you have to say. As an example, there are many courses on freelance writing, but each offers a unique advantage. Your course is better than a course already available, which is why someone would buy yours.
Courses can be created for any knowledge or skill. Through several online courses, Alec Steele teaches blacksmithing to people.
It is common for courses to be “evergreen,” meaning their content remains relevant no matter when an event or date occurs. In most cases, these courses are completely passive, but you can often increase your income by “launching” your course during specific times of the year. It creates a sense of urgency and can increase sales if the offer is limited-time.
Workshops
You can create a workshop instead of writing an eBook or creating a full course if you don’t have the time to write one. Hosting a live or recorded workshop, also known as a webinar, is something you can do once and resell indefinitely. In addition to being a lead magnet, the webinar can be used to sell a higher-priced product or service in the future.
If you record the webinar once, there is usually no need to update it unless the content or information needs to be changed. By setting up automated ads, you can drive traffic to your workshop and increase sales.
Guides or tutorials
Whether it’s archery or zoology, if you have experience or specialized training in something, you can make money selling short guides or tutorials that explain how to perform or learn it.
The difference between tutorials and workshops is that tutorials usually teach one skill, whereas courses usually teach several. It is possible to create a tutorial or guide in writing, through video, or through a combination of both.
Unlike a tutorial, this is a completely passive product because most skills won’t change often.
Membership site
Membership sites or monthly subscriptions are digital products that members pay for each month and receive something new each month. The idea of generating passive income by adding new content each month may seem odd, but there are ways to make it mostly passive.
Creating all your content upfront and releasing it monthly is an effective way to create content for the year. The course can be created as a monthly subscription that students pay for, and you’ll release content for a specified period of time.
Some digital product templates, such as video lessons, meal plans, and workout routines, can even be incorporated into a membership site. A membership site for KetoConnect members contains a wide range of courses, eBooks, recipes, and videos not available on the website. It also releases one new video every week.
Printables
You can make passive income by selling worksheets, checklists, schedules, games, coloring pages, and more. In addition to selling individual printables, you can bundle simpler printables into sets and sell them together.
Canva is a free service that allows you to create printables for free with no limit on how many copies you can sell. Printables are typically low-cost products that you can make for free.
Etsy is a great place to sell printables because you can profit from the traffic that’s already there without having to generate your own. Their printable wall art is sold exclusively on Etsy and they’ve already made close to 2,000 sales since the company started selling only in 2019.
Templates
Developing templates for printables, spreadsheets, presentations, and social media graphics can also generate passive income. It is possible to design templates in Canva, Google Sheets, or Slides for free and include instructions on how to modify them.
It is possible to sell them on your own website using software like SendOwl and on websites like Creative Market or Etsy.
Commercial-use music
The video industry is always on the lookout for royalty-free music and sound effects to use in YouTube videos, commercials, and even films. The licensing of your music for commercial use can generate passive income for musicians.
To generate repeat customers, you’ll need to keep creating new music, even if you create each track once and sell it indefinitely. There are several websites where you can sell royalty-free music and sound effects, including HookSounds and Bensound.
Scripts
There are times when people don’t know what to say, whether they are negotiating a raise or writing a best man speech. It is easier to say everything you need to say when it matters when you use prewritten scripts for negotiations, speeches, sales calls, fundraising, and more.
Scripts like these can be sold on sites like Fiverr or through your own website. Mostly passively, Chloe Elise makes $75,000 a month from Deeper Than Money. A bundle of scripts she sells for negotiating lower prices on over 20 expenses is one of her digital products.
B-roll footage
During film and television production, B-roll is used as supplemental footage. B-rolls can be sold online for passive income without having to buy an expensive camera. YouTube’s popularity makes this possible. YouTubers on a budget can record B-roll on an iPhone to create an affordable B-roll.
Your videos can even include commercial-use music as meditations or background footage on YouTube. As soon as you reach YouTube’s monetization requirements, you will start earning passive income.
As with commercial music, you can sell one scene of footage over and over again, but the best opportunity for scaling comes when you have a wide selection of B-roll. Therefore, you’ll need to keep creating them until a database is created.
Mobile apps
Approximately 90% of the time we spend on our phones is spent using apps. Depending on what type of business you own, a mobile app may be an ideal digital product. In-app advertisements, affiliate links, or simply charging for downloading or using the app are all ways you can earn money.
It is possible to create an app using a service such as BuildFire or one of their templates without having any coding experience. Apps still need to be updated and added features to remain functional and motivate users to come back, but other than that, they are mostly passive.
It is $2.99 for users to have all of Beth Moncel’s recipes at their fingertips with her mobile app, Budget Bytes.
Plugin or extension
You probably know about plugins if you have a website. In this case, it’s likely you use Google Chrome and have installed or downloaded browser extensions. It is possible to charge for some plugins and extensions, but most are free.
It is possible to earn quite a bit of passive income as a result of a WordPress plugin or Chrome extension that uses an algorithm to perform otherwise arduous tasks quickly. The Chrome extension that Spencer Haws developed that did exactly that made him over $4,000 in just one week.
To keep the plugin or extension functioning properly, you’ll need to update it regularly, but other than that, it will earn passive income.
Photography
In addition to websites, social media, advertising, and YouTube channels, businesses use stock photos for a variety of purposes. Your photos can be sold on a stock photo site or you can create your own stock photo subscription service. A smartphone camera should be sufficient for selling photos, too; you don’t need expensive equipment.
If you want to generate passive income from selling your photos, you can upload them to sites like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock or create your own. Your own site is a great way to build a portfolio for digital products, but you’ll have to continually update it in order to make the most of it.
Animations and vectors
Although stock photography remains the most popular choice for websites, more and more blog owners and site owners are turning to animations and vectors to stand out. You can sell animations and vector images on websites that sell stock photography or you can create your own subscription services if you can design them. Adobe Illustrator or Canva are programs that you can use to design your images.
Invest in a library of images that you can sell for passive income or update your offerings regularly and employ some marketing strategies to convince businesses to use animations and vectors instead of stock photography.
Website themes
A premium theme makes it much cheaper to build your own website than to hire a website designer, which is why many bloggers and website owners prefer to do it themselves. You can earn passive income by creating and selling premium WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace themes through your website or a marketplace such as ThemeForest to businesses on a budget.
You may not need to do much work in order to build premium website themes, but you will have to keep the themes updated so that they continue to work correctly.
Fonts
Wedding planners, event planners, and business owners can purchase fonts designed by calligraphers and hand letterers to use on invitations, flyers, and even menus. Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop can be used to make fonts that you can sell on sites like Creative Market or MyFonts without having to update them.
Blueprints
Selling blueprints for home projects is a passive way for you to make money if you have some construction experience and can measure accurately. Creating multiple designs for treehouses, pergolas, dog houses, and chicken coops is one of the most popular DIY projects.
Businesses that are typically service-based can easily generate passive income by selling PDF downloads of blueprints. In order to create blueprints, you will need software, but you can quickly recoup that investment by selling the plans you create.
Presets
In spite of social media’s dominance of visual content, it is not entirely created by photographers and videographers. For photography editing sliders, presets provide a predetermined position that will give you the edited look you want.
People can post captivating images without much effort by using presets for Lightroom, Photoshop, and other apps.
Using an e-commerce platform like WooCommerce or Shopify, you can create a preset once and sell it from your website. There’s no need to update presets since they’re versatile and do not depend on seasons, but you may want to promote them on social media.
Planners
Planning meals, exercising, setting goals, and managing finances are some of the things that planners help people with. If you own a store or a print-on-demand site, such as CreateSpace or Lulu, you can sell printable PDFs or physical planners. The Shopify store and website of blogger Sarah Titus have earned her over $10 million in sales.
The undated planner is completely passive, with the exception of automated advertising. Creating semi-passive businesses selling dated planners or subscribing to new planners every month is another option.
There Is Never a Shortage of Digital Items
Creating digital products can provide a passive income without the hassle of inventory, storage, or shipping. The market for your products is global, and you can sell them at any time.
Developing digital products around a service you provide can help your business scale and grow.
