A few years back I had a friend that loved to buy furniture from yard sale sites and then flip it to make a profit. She was one of those creative handy people that made it look easy, you know…
Meanwhile, I was on the couch with my laptop trying to figure out the latest design trend and wondering how she made a $20 bookcase look like it was worth $150.
Recently I was thinking about this again and wondering how I could do the digital equivalent of this and it hit me… Beautiful and easy to use design templates for my design clients would be rad and I have lots of clients that would love this from me!
You Can Watch this Webinar OR Read it Instead! 😉
Templates are a Great Passive Income Maker!
Whether you are creating social media graphics, printable art, or digital downloads design templates are a great way to create a stream of recurring revenue. You make your design one time, set up the marketing, and let it go! Once your marketing is established, these design templates can bring you sales month after month with only a little marketing effort needed.
If you have never considered creating and selling your own design templates, allow me to walk you though it!
As an added bonus, I will be linking our members-only tutorial on how you can do this same thing to sell website design templates for even more cash flow!
Let’s talk Design
It’s super important to research the market before you jump into designing templates. There is a saying “the riches are in the niches”. This saying is so true! Before doing all this work, it will pay off to do your research and find out what designs people are currently buying, which templates they’re asking for (that they may not have access to), and what designs would be most helpful for them. If you can create something people already need and want, you will be right on target to making a killer profit from your shop!
When you are starting out, make sure to use free or personally made elements in your designs. You have to make sure you have the rights to resell designs if you are using elements from other sites! It is a great idea to include a static design file (like a .jpg or .png) as well as an editable file. This comes in handy when you are creating mockups to help sell your designs.
PRO TIP: You don’t have to use fancy software and complicated tools! Canva Pro is easy to use and free for your customers. It gives you the ability to share editable template files and sell high-quality graphics by making a copy of your design to their account once they purchase access.
Create a Place to Sell Designs
Once you’ve done the research and created your products, it is time to show off your designs and set up shop.
An important sales key is having a product mockup. Product mockups give people a visual representation of what they are purchasing. It shows them the results they will achieve from buying your template.
The next thing you want to do is think about pricing. You’ve done all the research and invested time in your designs, so make sure you feel good about the price of your product. Remember to view it as if you are dividing the price amongst all of the people that are going to purchase it. This allows you to price it a little lower upfront in order to get more customers, and then you have the flexibility to increase your prices in the future.
Growing your business initially is going to be more focused on gaining loyal customers so that they trust your products once the prices go up.
Obviously, we always recommend you shop is something you personally own. If you have a shop on a social network, Etsy, or another reseller marketplace, they have the power to take your site down and you are stuck starting over. If you own your site and customer email lisst, they will go with you no matter where you go!
We recommend our Weeknight Website + Shopify Lite subscription for your own shop. You have the design power of Weeknight Website and the selling power of Shopify Lite (which is only $9/month).
Bonus tip! Creating an additional shop on Etsy is a great way to increase sales when you are starting out. It has established buyers and traffic so you can grow a following there as you build traffic to your own website and shop.
Market your templates!
Create some appealing mockups and exciting visuals that will draw people in and upload them to Pinterest and Instagram. Doing your research and hashtagging things properly can help you show up at the top of the search results. The next thing you want to do is offer one of your templates to build as a free download in order to build your email list. If they love your free template, they are likely to love other templates that you sell as well.
You will be able to send them out to your email list and generate sales. Another super effective way to generate sales is to branch out to paid ads on social media. Paid ads on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook paired with good pricing can create a lot of success. I would encourage you to save up a little bit of money to purchase ads and get your products in front of more people. Weeknight Website has seen lots of success with Instagram by creating animated stories, and they have been very popular. For marketing and paid strategy, I prefer instagram and Facebook over promoted Pinterest pins. There are many different ways you can market your templates through other social media platforms, like Tik Tok, depending on your audience.
Pro Tip:Â When you sell your template, create a video to show your customers how to edit the designs! Loom is an amazing tool to create video tutorials, and you are able to easily share the link to the video with each purchase because they are saved on your Loom account. This is a nice little touch that you can include in an email for your customers!
Create a Template Package to Maximize Revenue
A while back Kristen did a webinar just for our Weeknight Website members on how you can make and sell templates using Weeknight Website. Combined with this tutorial, you have the power to can offer a whole experience for your customers which will increase the value of your sale.
Packaging website templates and other commonly needed design elements can make your templates more valuable and create a need for customers to come back.
Make sure you are signed up to be a Weeknight Website affiliate to increase your bottom line. As you sell your beautiful custom designs, people will need to sign up on Weeknight Website to actually use the templates you’ve designed, and we will slide you some cash for the promo. 🎉