12 files you already have that you can sell as digital products

Finding success as a creator requires not just having great ideas and being willing to invest the hard work to make them real. It also demands that you deeply understand your audience and know how to connect with them.

But once you’ve done that — once you’ve built up a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of follows — it’s time to start making products for them.

That’s how you turn your hard-won audience into income.

And no matter what industry your expertise is in, you don’t have to look farther than your computer desktop or iPhone home screen to start making money with digital products.

Call it a side hustle. Passive income. Part of your portfolio of investments. A monetized passion. Whatever you call it, it can look like several hundred extra dollars a month — and it can feel like freedom. Here’s why:

The average monthly student loan payment is $250, per the Federal Reserve.

Dinner for two at an upscale restaurant in a midsize American city like Charlotte costs around $224, per the New York Times.

• The average electric bill is $117, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
• And while the average pop concert ticket goes for $101, you might need more to see your favorite artist: a ticket to Bad Bunny’s tour costs an average of $213, and if you want to catch Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, you’ll need to shell out $506.
• With a few tweaks to files you already have, you can start bringing in extra money each month — and have the flexibility to spend that bonus income on whatever your lifestyle and budget need.

Product ideas 1-3: files that health & fitness experts already have

Idea 1: Meal plan with shopping list

Your clients already come to you for recipes and meal plans that will help them achieve their health and wellness goals. By packaging them up as digital products, you can reach clients who aren’t actively coming to you for coaching but want help knowing what they should be buying, cooking, and eating.

If you already have pictures of recipes or ingredients, great. If not, you can source pictures from royalty-free places like Pixabay. From there, all you’ll need to do is make sure your document is phone- and printer-friendly so that people can bring it with them from Whole Foods to their kitchen counter.

Tip: Consider offering several plans or lists, each as their own digital product, like “21 Day High-Fat Meal Plan,” “One-Week Vegetarian Meal Plan for a Family of Four,” or “Your Grocery Shopping List for a Week of High-Intensity Training,” as well as a bundle that combines several popular plans.

Idea 2: Training program

Whether you’re a personal trainer, fitness coach, physical therapist, or other exercise specialist, you know how to get people moving. Combining exercise how-tos with a pre-planned daily, weekly, or monthly schedule turns your training into a digital product that customers can buy, download, and use.

Add written instructions along with photos or videos and you’ll be ready to start selling.

Idea 3: Platform membership

Why limit yourself to one kind of product? If you have varied expertise, you can give your audience access to all of it by creating a monthly membership. For a set fee, they’ll get access to new resources each month, which can include:

• Meal plans, including variations for diets and allergies
• Strength programs, including variations for levels, equipment, and goals
• On-demand webinars, presentations, meditations, and more
• Live group coaching
• Community forums

A bonus benefit of a platform product: it can provide reliable, repeatable income from products you don’t have to have created all at once.

Product ideas 4-6: files that travel creators already have

Idea 4: Trip itinerary

You’ve gone on the trip. You’ve made great content from it — funny TikToks, behind-the-scenes Stories, inspiring Instagram captions. And while some of your followers will be pinning things to their Google Maps as you’re posting them, many won’t. So capitalize on your existing research by writing down all of your top recommendations in a downloadable itinerary so that your audience can easily follow in your footsteps.

Tip: Break trip sections down into “Where to stay,” “What to do,” “Where to eat,” and “What to know” subcategories. If you want to include an hour-by-hour itinerary, you can do that, too, and package it as something like “48 Hours in Lisbon.”

Idea 5: Packing list

What kind of clothing is appropriate for a trip to Oman? Do you really need hiking shoes on an Alaskan cruise? What should every good traveler’s medicine bag be stocked with, no matter where they’re going?

If you’ve built an audience making travel content, you know the answers to those questions — and you’ll be able to sell packing lists as digital products.

Tip: You can organize lists by type of trip (active vacation versus arts and culture getaway, for instance), length of trip (long weekend, one week, two weeks), or even type of bag (what your toiletry kit needs, what should be in your carry-on, how to make the most of a checked bag).

Idea 6: Travel or moving abroad resource kit

There’s the romantic idea of what it looks like to move to a foreign country and start a new life, and then there’s the reality. If you have expertise in moving to a specific country or region of the world, consider sharing that guidance in the form of a downloadable resource kit.

Your moving abroad resource kit could include common translations, a checklist of needed visa documents, links to key forms, and the answers to frequently asked questions about the process.

Product ideas 7-9: files that business & professional coaches already have

Idea 7: Editable résumé

If you’re a professional coach, you know how important first impressions are in the world of business. And you probably spend a lot of time with clients helping them ensure their résumés, whether as standalone documents or as language to be copy-and-pasted into a platform like LinkedIn, reflect who they are and what they want to do next.

Leverage that knowledge by creating a fill-in-the-blank document with hiring-manager-friendly language that job-seekers can use to give themselves confidence that they’re representing themselves well.

Tip: Expand your digital products offering by creating specialized résumés for different industries, like Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and more.

Idea 8: Deck template

Everyone wants their ideas to look good. Not everyone has the expertise to make that happen.

Creating a slide deck template can be as simple as sharing a good framework — think agenda, overview, context, and questions, for instance — codified with some easy-on-the-eyes graphics. If you have a deck template that works for you, making it a downloadable resource can add extra income without requiring extra work.

Idea 9: Reflection workbook

Have you helped professionals figure out how to make a career transition? Decide if they want to go to grad school? Determine if going freelance is the right decision for them? It’s time to package up all that wisdom in a downloadable workbook that your clients can use to guide themselves through major decisions.

Tip: Consider bundling your reflection workbook with a personal coaching session to go over insights, come up with a personalized action plan, or answer any follow-up questions.

Product ideas 9-12: files that creatives already have

Idea 10: Info pack for hiring creatives

If you’re a creative yourself, you know how hard it is to find, hire, and onboard someone for a creative project, whether it’s for a design gig, a writing job, an art direction project, or more.

Make it easy for your audience, whether they themselves are creatives or they’re hiring them, by creating a package of digital products like:

• A draft contract
• A project brief
• A customizable project plan and timeline

Idea 11: On-demand lessons

There’s no reason that you have to teach anything live, from music theory to oil painting to creative writing. Record yourself giving lessons and package them up as on-demand courses that students can take whenever it’s convenient. Depending on what you’re teaching, it may make sense to record you talking, or record your screen, hands, or work station — or both.

Idea 12: Presets and templates

Ready-to-go Lightroom presets. A blank timeline for plotting a short story. Pre-made beats to be remixed, sung over, and turned into songs. If you’ve figured out key building blocks for whatever your art of choice is, you can share that learning — and monetize it — through selling presets and templates as digital products.

It’s time to start selling online — right now

You know you have the expertise, creativity, and passion to build an audience online.

Now you see you have the digital files to start making money from it, too.

Let’s write a new mantra. A creator-friendly one that acknowledges all the work you’ve put in to find your audience — and all the financial freedom that is possible now that you have.

“You’ve already built it. They’re already there. Let the money flow in.”

SendOwl is here to help. Get started selling digital products for free today.

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