Digital products have been the backbone for freelancers for years, and the industry is still growing. You can make digital products to sell online, as a package or bundle; however, It is not always easy to get started. This post will help you learn how to create digital products as a freelancer and make passive income from them. And you do not need to be a professional graphic designer to get started! It’s not a new way to create but it’s the fastest way.
Disclaimer: This blog post may contain affiliate or referral links that may reward me in the event of a subscription or sale (at no extra cost to you!). I only recommend products or services that I know and trust.
How to Start Your Own Digital Product Business
The first step you’ll want to take when starting your own digital business is to understand where you want to start. The best place to start selling digital products is on your own website because you’ll have better control over your SEO, and you would get 100% of your profits.
If you want to create your website and have control of your SEO. Then you will need to have your website hosted. I’ll get into what I mean in a little bit.
But if you’re new to e-commerce, it might be better for you to subscribe to an e-commerce platform like Shopify or Etsy so you don’t have to worry about the backend operations or any administrative tasks to create your online store.
Create Digital Products As a Freelancer Research Needed for Your Target Audience
Hopefully, you have an idea of what digital products you want to create. I’ll give you a plethora of ideas of what you can create, but the next step before you start creating the best digital products is you’ll want to see if there is a need for the types of products you’ll create by doing some market research and researching the volume of interest. This is always a good idea. There are several ways to do this.
If you’re not familiar with SEO (search engine optimization), it is using the right keywords or phrases on a website or listing so that search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo can find what real people are searching for when they search on those platforms. I’m no expert, but I do have a firm understanding of how to strategically use keywords and phrases to find out the volume of interest.
For most freelancers, it’s a good idea to have your website hosted through Bluehost or A2 hosting (both average around $3 or under a month) or any of the other hosting platforms. Those are just the ones I know and trust.
For SEO Related Searches
KeySearch for keywords that are relevant to your target audience. I couldn’t live without this useful budget-friendly tool that helps search engines find my content. 20% discount if you use code KSDISC. So like $11-$12 a month. (Super affordable) There are a lot of free ways to do this as well, I just like KeySearch because it’s the easiest way for me.
Keyword Surfer is a free tool that plugs into the Chrome web browser. When you use this, your search results will automatically show up on the right side of your page. You’ll see keywords with their volume.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator will also help you see the search volume for free. You simply enter your keyword or phrase and you’ll see a list of the top 100 keyword ideas.
Semrush Keyword Magic Tool is also a free tool to search for search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive density. You’ll just have to create an account and then skip the trial.
The free tools are just limited in what you can see or how many results you are allowed to search for per day.
For E-commerce Related Searches
These are also free
Google Trends will show you graphs and data on your search terms.
For Etsy, you can use Marmalead. Its software helps you find keywords real people are using to find products.
How to Create Digital Products as a Freelancer
Now we are getting to the juicy stuff like creating. You can create a plethora of different things just by using Canva Pro. With Canva Pro, you’ll be able to create digital products as a freelancer and create just about anything you want and sell them for profit. There is other software for creating great designs, like adobe photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Spark. Although good tools, nothing beats an easy-to-use graphic design platform like Canva!
The yearly plan is $119.99, which averages out to ($9.99) a month, or you can simply choose a monthly for only $12.99, which makes this powerhouse software extremely affordable.
The design software makes designing products simple and favorable among freelancers because it’s bursting with productive tools that can make anyone look like a professional designer.
There is a free version of Canva, but you’ll have to be super clever in your designing abilities, as most of the quality photos, templates, and videos are for a fee. I’m not saying it can’t be done. However, you’ll have to watch carefully how you choose. The free version does not have as many options, but if you’re just dabbling, skip the 30-day free trial.
Create Digital Products With Canva Pro
100+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics.
Over 610,000 templates plus new designs daily.
You can easily save your brand colors, logos, and fonts so that you don’t have to enter your color codes each time you design something new.
You’ll be able to remove image backgrounds with an instant background remover.
Save all your designs plus 100 GB of cloud storage.
You’ll be able to resize any photos and fonts.
You’ll also be able to schedule social media content for 8 platforms. This is very useful for social media managers. But for freelancers, you’d want to use the platforms to attract your audience and direct them to your products.
You will also be able to add a team member to create with you. You’ll just add their email address and then choose what access permissions you would like them to have.
And so much more.
I know I couldn’t create half of the custom images for my blog posts or create Pinterest Pins without it.
Create Digital Products as a Freelancer Product Creation
These are some of the best top types of digital products as well as the most popular digital products that large and small business owners are looking for when it comes to their socials and digital marketing channels.
Instagram Posts
You can create Instagram posts for others to edit for their Instagram. I mainly see all the designs, packages, and bundles on Etsy. You can take a look at what products are already there to get a feel for pricing and how much content is being bundled or packaged.
You can also sell your digital products on any social media platform.
Landing Pages
Large and small businesses need a landing page or a sales page that either captures a visitor’s email or makes a sale. Any business will tell you how important an email list is so that they can then start receiving exclusive content from them to eventually sell physical products, digital products, or maybe even information products. A mailing list is essential for online businesses to grow.
Pinterest Pins
You can create Pinterest pin templates that allow your clients to easily fill in their content, which helps them save a ton of time.
Facebook Posts and Templates
You can create editable Facebook engagement posts for Facebook groups, especially for a membership site. Some other niches that you can create posts for include real estate, beauty, bakery, wellness, personal trainer, health, parenting, empowerment, home organization, Coaches, and even seasonal graphics for blog posts.
I am often on the lookout for great templates to use on my socials or my website. These make the process so much faster for me to just fill them in with my text. Saves me my sanity and time. There are thousands if not millions of business owners that truly appreciate this time-saving hack for their businesses.
Facebook and Instagram
You can create worksheets, planners, Infographics templates, a book cover, and so much more for all platforms.
TikTok Reels and Prompts
Same as above, many different niches want these for their business and don’t always like to create them. It’s much faster for them to buy and implement, which saves them time and increases their engagement.
Video Products
Businesses need templates they can use for their video content, video courses, and video tutorials, and I’ve seen them packaged including a PDF. Video is a hot commodity with websites and social media. Brands need marketing videos to stay up top.
Infographics
If you like diving into the creative process and love creating eye-catching designs that can help the visual learner, creating infographics is also a great way to build your freelance business.
You would only need to create the templates for an infographic based on a business niche.
Create Digital Products Product Creation
The good news is that Canva has its very own design school that you can learn so much from too! From a straight beginner to more advanced how-to’s. They will teach you how to supercharge your design skills the right way using Canva.
Skillshare has some free classes and online courses. I found a free one called creating canva templates to sell on Etsy. It’s pretty informative. If you are not familiar with Skillshare, they are an online learning platform with thousands of creative courses and classes that are taught by experts in their field.
Create Digital Products as a Freelancer Setting up Your Business
The fastest and best way to create digital products as a freelancer is to create types of products in a creative market that will bring in a residual income stream. Businesses are looking for digital products, especially if they already have physical goods they are trying to sell; it’s the digital advertising that will attract the customer to their products.
As you grow your skill sets and online business with profitable digital products, your future potential clients and potential customers will continue to see your brand and will recognize what you can do, eventually, you might even have client work overload.
An important thing to remember is that you don’t need to be a web designer to create great digital products. There are a number of freelancers that make a lot of money with their product creation and digital publishing businesses. The great thing is that with some hard work, you, too, can create a lucrative business model while creating your digital products that will have new clients raving in awe!
The best part is that there are several free options for you to create a website or just a portfolio as a freelancer. These are all great places to start. It might take time to set up everything you need, but, It will be so worth it, and Rome wasn’t built in a day!
When you start to create digital products as a freelancer, you will have to figure out how much to package a deal for. A great option is to look on Etsy and see what others are doing, as I said before, but look at different product types, written product types, Write them down or save that information in google docs (it’s free), and you can even ask an online community for feedback on your designs. This will not only increase your digital assets but will also help you understand how to add elements that people want.
If you’re curious and ambitious, you can even take it a step further and interview experts that already have the experience you want. You can seek an interview on Quora. It’s a platform where you can ask questions and connect with other people. Surely you will find someone that would love to talk to you about getting started and how you can too. You could also certainly find someone that does Canva design work in a Facebook group. I have found that most of my difficult questions are answered in a group by people with more knowledge super helpful.
This would also help you understand just how they got started. What they had to learn and maybe even offer suggestions that worked for them. This is always a motivation enhancer because you know if they can do it, so can you!
While you might find some great design Facebook groups, don’t be afraid to create a post asking if anyone would be interested if you created a template for them in exchange for a testimonial or a review that you can add to your website. Great reviews are gonna be key to your success. Some Facebook groups don’t want you to advertise or promote yourself in their group, and the only way to get around that is to communicate with others in that group on maybe their designs or you might see someone else ask for help. You can then offer to help them.
Quick Recap of Everything We Covered So Far
We talked about figuring out whether or not you want to create your website or sign up for a platform that already has all the necessary tools for you to start a website. With SEO and without.
Ways to research the need for the product you want to create.
The best place to get started on your kickass journey.
All the different digital products that businesses are looking for.
Tips on becoming a freelancer with pro advice on researching to gain your skillset and knowledge.
A few online courses will kickstart your skill assets.
Tips on creating your freelance business include my best tips on how you can get started with clients, testimonials, research, and interviews.
Final Thoughts
You can dig deep trying to create digital products as a freelancer when researching for great products to create. Try not to spend a lot of time worrying about which online marketplace you’ll want to create a website on or spend much time worrying about website themes. You can always get fancy later if you choose to. You’ll just need to put your website to good use in less time than it would take you to worry about content marketing or become a freelance marketer.
Although an appealing website stands out, there are so many beautiful themes to choose from on each platform that it’s almost impossible to look ugly. Sometimes the first time you pick a theme might not always look as good as you thought it would. You can always change it.
If you are looking to create more income from home, there are plenty of digital products you can create. You just need to understand what they are and how you can use them to your advantage. To learn more about creating digital products as a freelancer using Canva Pro visit this link now.