Make $14,417/mo creating digital products (DON'T sell on Etsy!)

In this video, I'm going to break down how I generate over $14,000 a month by creating and selling my very own digital products and how you can do this too. I'm also going to talk about why I do not recommend selling your digital products on Etsy. If you want to avoid the headaches, hidden fees, and platform risks of selling on Etsy, then keep watching. All right, let's start with the basics. How I create digital products and why digital products are perfect for generating consistent passive income. Digital products can be anything from eBooks to courses, memberships, templates, guides, and more. It's a product that you sell online, digitally. You don't have to buy anything physical. You don't have to ship anything. It is a business that is quite easy to scale and it's very affordable to get started as well. The beauty is you only have to create your digital product once and you can sell it over and over and over again. And again, no shipping, no product costs, nothing. It is one of the best and easiest businesses to start and scale. And it also is really conducive to having a freeing lifestyle with lots of free time. I personally got started selling digital products because I was a professional photographer for 16 years with my own photography studio. And although I loved that and it was super fun and I made great money with that, I really wanted to be able to grow a business that didn't directly trade my time for money. Now, sure, I had to build the business foundation and I have to create videos to generate leads, but I am able to scale a business way beyond just the amount of hours that I'm able to give. And that is ultimately what drew me to selling digital products. And if you want an in-depth on-demand training of every single step from learning what your digital product should be about, how to create it, how to launch it and how to sell it passively, then check out my totally free on-demand training. It is the first link in the description below this video. All right. Now that you know what digital products are and why I think you should sell them, let's talk about why I do not think that you should sell on Etsy. I get it. Etsy is super appealing because you probably think, well, it's as easy as just creating a digital product, putting it on Etsy and it'll sell, right? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that is very far from the truth. In fact, that almost never happens. Usually the story goes a little bit something like this. I've created a bunch of digital products. I put them on Etsy and I haven't made any sales. I literally get this message like five times a day. And the thing is, is that Etsy is very, very saturated platform. So it used to be you could just post digital product, put some keywords, rank organically, and you would get traffic in sales. But there are so many people on there now. There is so much competition. It is so oversaturated. And now they want you to pay to play. So they've made it even harder for you to make money ranking organically because they want you to pay for ads. Not to mention they want you to pay listing fees. Every time you list your digital product, you have to pay fees before you've even made a sale. So not only can it be expensive to be on Etsy, there is so much competition. It's very hard to stand out on Etsy. And I just really don't recommend selling on that platform. So let's talk about what I do recommend. This is a strategy I have used since I started selling digital products way back in 2014. And that is to not rely on other platforms. Do not rely on Etsy. Do not rely on Amazon. Build your own following. I'm going to say this again, lean in real close, my friend. Build your own following. Seriously, you might think, well, that's so hard. I don't have a following. None of us have a following. We're not born with followings. You just have to decide you want a following and start posting content. I'm not going to sit here and say growing a following is easy, but is selling on Etsy easy? Is selling on Amazon easy? No, everything really can be seen as hard and you just have to choose your hard, right? I mean, if selling on Etsy was as easy as just putting up a listing, everyone would be making millions on Etsy and that's just not happening, right? And if growing a following was easy, everyone would have a massive YouTube following and be making millions of dollars, but that doesn't happen. Choose your hard. But here's what I will say. If you're going to put the time in and put the effort in and put the work in, it is much better to put that work into YouTube. Here's why. Not only is YouTube my only traffic source, I have leaned into it 100% because it works that freaking well and I use it to sell my digital products. But I also get paid from YouTube AdSense, like the YouTube Partner Program, and I also get paid from brand deals as well. So putting your time into YouTube not only will help you sell your digital products way more easily, but you will also be able to unlock multiple different streams of revenue. Not to mention being able to grow and monetize your very own email list as well, which we'll get to in a minute. So yes, growing your own following is going to take time and effort, but anything is going to take time and effort. So why not choose owning your platform? Now you don't own YouTube, but we're going to talk about having your own email list and that is something that you do own and you do have control over. And so putting your time into YouTube to grow your own following and then be able to unlock multiple revenue streams. So you've got your digital products revenue stream, your YouTube AdSense revenue stream, then you could do brand deals. There's so many different things you could do. The possibilities are endless. So if you want to sell digital products and you want to make it as easy as possible, yes, it will be work upfront to build that foundation and grow your following, but it will make things so much easier. I am telling you it is well worth it. Okay, so here's where the real secret sauce comes in. Moving your followers to email subscribers. Now it is no secret. Growing an email list is 40 times, four zero times more effective at making sales than social media alone. I feel like I say this on every single video that I make. So if you are someone who watches all my videos, I apologize, but I literally just cannot drive this point home enough how important email lists are. I have had an email list even back when I had a photo studio. Email lists are so important because look, if I want to reach my customers, I can simply send an email and it will get delivered to their inboxes, right? Now it's up to them if they want to open it or not, but let's say I want to send a message to all my YouTube subscribers, literally maybe like 100 out of my 30 whatever thousand people will even see that message on the community tab. This is why having an email list is so important, not to mention what if your YouTube gets shut down or your Instagram gets shut down or your TikTok gets shut down or whatever it is, you will still have that email list of customers. You can email them and be like, Hey guys, I got a new YouTube channel. I got a new TikTok or whatever that is, and you will not lose access to your customers. Not only that, but you can automate your email marketing. So what I do is I put out two videos every single week on YouTube in every single video. I mentioned freebies in order to get those freebies delivered to your email. You enter your name and your email. This also gets you on my email list. Now, of course you can unsubscribe whenever you want, but what I do is I send helpful free content. So for about 30 days, it's just purely helpful, nurturing content that I usually do a five day promo. Then I'll do 30 days of nurture, five day promo, 30 days of nurture, five day promo. This rocks back and forth for about nine months. It took me a while to make an automated email sequence that long, and I don't expect you to make something like that on day one, but start out with a couple emails or a few emails. I used to sit there and come up with new email topics every week, every month, and that is just too much. Just start scheduling from day one, create an email sequence. This is a series of emails that are automated that every single person who joins your list gets. You don't need to come up with something new for every single person because that person hasn't seen your emails anyways. So if you want to sell digital products, steer clear of platforms that have tons of competition and are pay to play and focus on growing your own following in your own email list. Now you might be thinking, well, isn't there just a lot of competition online in general? How do I stand out in a sea of competitors regardless if I'm on Etsy or have my own following? Well, I'm so glad you asked. Like literally, I love this question. This might blow your mind. I don't know. We'll see. How you stand out is by being you, my friend, being you. Now I'm a little weird, so I've been trying to own this more in my videos, and it is a little bit weird having like a camera in front of your face and you're like, I'm going to be myself. But the more you record, like this is my last video of the day and I did like six videos today. So this one's going to be more myself because I'm just like getting tired and goofy and weird. But that is what will make you stand out. Like people will watch my videos and be like, oh, I really like what that girl says. Or I think she's a good teacher or she's goofy or I like that she likes ska music and wears ska checkers. Why thank you. But seriously, that is how you stand out on Etsy. You don't have a chance to showcase your personality. You're just like, I'm uploading a fitness PDF and there's like a million other fitness PDFs. Right. But having your own channel, you stand out because you're you. Now I subscribe to plant channels, pottery channels, lots of different channels, and there's a million different channels in these categories. But I tend to come back to like the same two or three creators, not because they're sharing new information, but because I just like them. And the cool thing is you don't have to do anything different than just being yourself. Like truly, because every single person is uniquely different and that's all you need to do to stand out. So I hope that's refreshing to you because it honestly is to me. And I hope that takes some of the mystery out of it, because that's really all you have to do is like have passion for what you're teaching and share your honest thoughts and be your honest self and you will attract your ideal customers. So now that you have all the information, it is time for you to take action. So what I want you to do is comment your top takeaway from this video in the comments below. And I will respond to every single one. Now that you know how to sell digital products without Etsy, you might be wanting more digital product ideas so that you can find the right digital product for you. But how do you do that? Well, it all starts with watching this video next here, because when you pair what you've just learned with what's in this video, it's going to be way more powerful. See you in the next video.