I Tried Selling Digital Products for 90 Days

90 days ago I started a brand new Etsy shop with zero visits and zero sales trying to sell digital products and here are the results in my first month in December I got 351 visits and sold $182 40 in my second month in January I got 560 visits and sold $283 and just last month in February I got 983 visits and sold $ 67.7 so my total lifetime stats 3 months in is $ 1,93 8 visits and $1,165 110 in Revenue maybe you're seeing these results and you're thinking to yourselves wow that's pretty underwhelming I

was expecting way more or maybe you're seeing these results and you're thinking that's pretty amazing that's like a good amount of money I have no idea who you are or what your circumstances are but if you're asking me I think this is pretty amazing because of what I'm actually selling here but before we dive deeper into it just to give everything a bit of context we need to talk about my other shop if you're an old friend of the channel you know that I've been running another SC shop for the past 3 years or so

it's a sticker shop that sells labels for kids stuff this is me formatting the stickers for printing this is me getting those prints from the printer this is me loading the prints into the cutting machine and this is me popping them out after they're cut after that I have to organize them pack them and get them ready for shipping this is how I fulfill orders from my sticker shop and depending on the amount of orders I'm doing this maybe 2 to three times a week and just for comparison this is me fulfilling orders for my

digital shop nice this is one of the main reasons why I really wanted to start selling digital files even though my sticker shop isn't as labor intensive as a lot of others out there I mean if I'm being honest the machines are doing most of the work here not me the obvious advantage that digital products have over physical is that they're infinitely more scalable don't get me wrong physical products can be scaled too I've managed to increase my output by investing in bigger more capable machines and the next step if I wanted to would be

to actually hire people to help with fulfillment but if I wanted to do this with my digital products I wouldn't have to get anything or hire anybody since the things that I'm selling are digital and they can be copied and distributed for free it scales all by itself plus there's no better feeling than getting that not notification for a sale and not having to do any extra work to earn that money every time I get sales it's just pure joy which is nice I took a trip to Disneyland last year and it was pretty fun

by the way we went for the kids but we actually ended up having a really great time too I Now understand why so many adults are choosing to go to Disneyland even when they don't have kids anyways while I was there I encountered another problem with my sticker business since all of my equipment to make and ship stickers was at home there was no way that I could fulfill orders while while on my trip usually with my shorter trips I could just change my dispatch times to compensate for my days away but with this being

a longer trip I really only had two options and that was one to put all orders on hold or two to drastically extend my dispatch times in the end I chose to extend my dispatch times which was fine with the majority of my customers but I could see this becoming a bigger problem if I wanted to travel during one of my busier months when my customers need their sticker labels more quickly I realized during this time that I've been focusing too much on find ccial freedom and time Freedom that I overlooked another type of freedom

and that's location Freedom there's no denying how nice it would be to be able to make your money regardless of where you are in the world while I'm a family man now and my digital Nomad days are probably behind me that type of lifestyle has always had major appeal to me I just imagine being somewhere tropical with the low cost of living working on the beach with my laptop I've never actually done this so I don't know the reality of it but the dream of it seems nice running a business selling products with a low

profit margin can feel like you're constantly Treading Water since you're not making much money on the products that you sell you have to constantly worry about keeping your costs low and your operations efficient it's hard to try new things your margins are so thin that taking a risk that doesn't pan out could lead to financial disaster on the other side if you're lucky enough to be selling products with a large profit margin you have the flexibility to be creative with your business you can include bonuses and promos with purchases and you have enough money to

be able to experiment with new product lines and marketing techniques basically you can go above and beyond for your customers and more importantly since you're making more money on each sale the work that you do will actually be worth it one of the biggest reasons that I started a sticker business 3 years ago was because of the good margins the idea of taking a sticker pack that cost $1 to $2 to make and selling it for $15 to $20 was really appealing and while those margins are pretty good especially for a physical product nothing can

compare with digital products this is a huge advantage and you can see this with a lot of other companies that sell software or other purely digital products compared to physical companies they're able to spend more on advertising and marketing they're able to funnel their profits into things that actually grow their company while this all sounds amazing in the last 3 months of being in this digital product space I've learned about the downsides I think it's it's important to talk about this too just in case you're thinking of doing this it's good to have a realistic

picture of what you're getting into and the first one is that in general digital product niches are more saturated Than Physical ones making physical products is not easy and it's something that most people don't even want to try not only that if you live in a more remote area of the world the equipment to make the things that you need might not be available and the distribution channels to get your products delivered might not exist because of that certain physical product businesses in certain parts of the world is actually not possible this is why especially

for people outside North America Europe or Asia they're flocking towards digital products so yes one of the pros is that you can do this from anywhere in the world you have location freedom but the other side of this coin is that you'll now be competing with people from everywhere around the world this makes it harder because you're going to have to get really good at what you do generally if you're doing a physical business and you're just competing within a specific spefic region you just have to be as good as the people in that region

but now since we're working with a global scale you have to compete with the best the next downside is that copying is easy Etsy Marketplace is a copy Fest if you do any browsing on the platform you'll just see that everyone's just copying each other less successful shops are copying more successful shops it's just the way it works and you have to accept it what makes this particularly worse with digital shops is how easy it is to copy a digital product when you're making physical products your competitors that are trying to copy you may not

have the same access to the machines that you use or the specific processes that you use to make your products so even if they do try to copy you their products won't be exactly the same but in the digital world all it takes is for a competitor to buy one of your items they can make some small tweaks and put it up on their shop and now they're selling an item that is just as similar if not exactly the same as yours and also because of this digital files are easier to Pirate there's nothing stopping

people from buying your products and sharing it with everyone they know or posting it on their blog or website for other people to download there's going to be some lost profit due to this and that's something that you have to accept as well another downside is that some people are still reluctant to spend money on digital things we all know these people the ones that think that spending five bucks on a productivity app to improve your life is too much but they're more than happy to spend that same amount of money on a coffee or

something similar I was actually one of these people for a long time while I think sentiments are starting to change there there's still people out there that will never spend a single scent on something that's not physical or even if they are they're not going to value a digital thing as much as something physical this is the reason why you see so many Etsy shops charging peanuts for their digital products I've even seen people sell things for less than a dollar which makes absolutely no sense to me because Etsy already charges 20 cents for each

listing so that's a huge cut into your profits for me I think the sweet spot for digital products especially on Etsy is somewhere between the $10 to $20 fun range that's enough of a sale to make each spread worth it but also not impossible to convince somebody to spend that much on a digital product but yeah in general when it comes to digital products pricing in a way that's both profitable for you and doable for customers is going to be much more difficult than physical [Music] products so what's next for me I don't know if

this new shop is going to be a long-term thing but for now I want to keep going so I'm going to keep going since this new shop doesn't take take too much time to maintain I feel like I can add this to my current workload and commitments and it should be fine I have firsthand experience on how fast and how big an Etsy Shop can grow I don't know if this new shop will be able to match what I did with my sticker shop but I'm excited to see if it can the next step is

probably to work with some kind of a print and demand provider just so I can turn some of my digital products into physical products I feel like if I can do that I can actually make more profit on each sale since people are more willing to spend on physical things than digital things also going this route isn't going to add any extra work on my part since fulfilling and shipping is done by the print on demand service I will be sharing more about this shop in future videos and I do planning on making more of

a step-by-step guide on how I got everything up and running up to this point so if you're interested in that you can subscribe as for my sticker shop I'm not going to shut it down or anything I'm going to keep going with it as long as it makes sense but it's kind of funny because for a long time I thought my sticker shop was part of my long-term future I had all these big plans for eventually getting a physical space and hiring a small team to run it but after playing around with digital products just

for the past 3 months I'm starting to be okay with the idea of letting it go there's something about it that I feel just fits my personality a little bit better I like the freedom of it and honestly running a physical location and managing a small team doesn't actually seem like something I want to do it seems like it would be stressful for someone who's a natural introvert like me I don't think I could handle the stress of having employ EMP that rely on me and my business to pay their bills it just doesn't seem

fun so Props to those who are doing it also I know I'm going to get comments about it but I'm not going to be sharing this new shop yet uh it's something that I might share in the future like I did with my sticker shop but for now I want to continue to be able to show realistic results for people who have no audience and those who are starting from [Music] scratch it's been a while since I've been a beginner but now that I'm deep into it again I feel like it's everything is just fresh

in my mind I feel like I can relate more to The Beginner's struggle so I thought I'd share some advice for people starting out there's an infinite number of things that you can do it can be easy to be overwhelmed by all the options and thinking about it too much can usually lead to not doing anything at all if you want to really get started the best thing to do is to eliminate as many of these options as possible focus on products or services that you know best look around you and look for things that

you've bought in the last month or so or things that you're thinking of buying why did you buy it what problem are you hoping it solves is there a way that you can solve that problem for others in a better way and do you have the skills to do it or are those skills something that you'd have fun developing these are the questions that you should be thinking about if you're trying to find a winning product that's right for you because you'll be familiar with it there's no point in entering a niche that you don't

understand it all or you don't care about it all so try to avoid that Everyone is always looking for shortcuts and hacks but what actually works at least for me is sticking to the basics if you're selling in a Marketplace these Basics are one having a solid product idea that clearly solves a problem two taking photos that stand out from the competition and three getting your SEO right if you get all three of these things right the sales will eventually come with all the bad talk and bad press that Essie gets I still feel that

it's really beginner friendly new shops still have the ability to get sales even against established ones despite all its downsides it's still a platform that I really recommend especially if it's your first time trying to sell things online again I don't know who you are or what your circumstances are I don't know if your numbers are better or worse than mine but it really doesn't do any good to compare every business has its own trajectory some will start really slow and then they'll take off some will start off really fast and then burn out some

will have super steady sales every month and some will feel like being on a roller coaster I think it's important to know that each business is different and to not get discouraged if your business isn't matching what you're seeing around you also even though my Etsy Shop is starting from zero just like everyone else I'm not actually starting from zero I've had another Etsy shop for 3 years and I've learned a lot during that time so I'm actually starting from experience I've done my best to distill that experience into 10 tips in this video over

here so if you want you can check that out if not thanks so much for watching I hope you found this useful take care of yourself and I'll see you in the next one [Music] bye