Easy 5-Steps $100/Day Selling Digital Products (How To Make Money Online Selling Digital Products)

You could start selling a digital product this weekend and have your first sale by Monday. That is not hype. Alston Godbolt has done it with a 43-page TikTok blueprint he built over two days, a simple digital planner bundle, and a 10 Day Business Blueprint that walks buyers through the exact process he uses. Three different niches, three different price points, one repeatable system.

The system is a five-step process. It works whether you want to sell chore charts to parents, Pinterest pin templates to bloggers, or productivity planners to people who keep buying planners and never using them. What matters is following the steps in order, because skipping step one (picking a complementary product suite, not just a single item) is the reason most digital product sellers stay stuck at $0.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A method for identifying one core product and three complementary products that raise your average order value automatically
Two ways to create digital products this weekend: free with Canva or outsourced on Fiverr for as little as $5
The exact funnel structure Alston uses: sales page, two upsells, two downsells, and a membership login page
Why an order bump turned a $17 planner sale into a $27 average cart value
Free and paid traffic channels that work for digital products (YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook groups, and pre-roll ads you only pay for if someone watches 30+ seconds)
How to build backend income from the same buyers using affiliate marketing, additional products, and an email list that asks customers what they want next
Why selling on Etsy forces a race to the bottom, and why keeping buyers on your own site protects your margin
Not sure what digital product fits your existing skills? finder.platformproof.com matches you to your first income stream in under two minutes

Step 1: Identify Four Products That Are Congruent

Most people try to sell one thing and wonder why the math never adds up. Alston’s approach is different: before you create anything, you need four products in your lineup. One core product and three complementary items that make sense to the same buyer.

Here is the logic. If someone is searching for a Pinterest pin template, they are probably also interested in a course on growing a Pinterest account, a social media content calendar, and a guide to creating video pins. Those four things serve the same person at the same moment in their journey. When you sell them as a suite instead of a single product, your revenue per customer multiplies without requiring more traffic.

To find product ideas, Alston recommends going to Etsy and typing in search terms like “printable,” “chore chart printable,” or “Canva template.” You can see what is already selling. Printable wall art, Father’s Day cards, calendars, planners, and social media templates all show up. You can also search Pinterest for terms like “budget” and watch how many sub-niches appear just from that one word. The goal at this stage is not to create anything yet. It is to map out your core product and understand what else that buyer is likely to want.

For his digital planner site, Alston’s core product is a bundle containing a daily planner, a weekly planner, a monthly planner, and a goals planner. The complementary product he leads with as an order bump is a pack of 2,000 digital planner stickers for $27. That one bump moved his average order value from $17 to $27, a 59% increase per transaction without acquiring a single additional customer.

Step 2: Create the Products

Once you know what you are selling, you have two options: do it yourself or hire someone. Both work. The right choice depends on your time versus your budget.

Option A: Fiverr. Go to Fiverr, search for your product type (for example, “chore chart”), and you will see sellers willing to create custom designs for $5 to $20. Alston’s preferred approach is to click the custom request option, post exactly what he needs, set his price, and let 50 sellers come to him. You get competitive bids without doing the outreach yourself.

Option B: Canva (free). Search for your product type inside Canva and start with an existing template. The key rule: you cannot download a Canva template and sell it as-is. You need to make it original. Change the colors, rearrange the layout, update the copy, make it yours. Once you have made meaningful changes, you own a sellable asset. Alston uses Canva in conjunction with SmartMockups, a free tool that lets you drop your design into realistic product mockups so buyers can visualize what they are getting before they buy. Tangibility is one of the hardest hurdles in digital product sales, and SmartMockups clears that hurdle for free.

The TikTok blueprint Alston created is a 43-page PDF. He built it over a weekend. It sells for as low as $5 on the front end, but the backend earns him anywhere from $27 to $300 per sale depending on which upsells the buyer takes. The front-end price is almost irrelevant when you have a properly structured funnel behind it.

Step 3: Build a Simple Five-Page Website

You do not need a complicated website. Alston’s digital planner site is, by his own description, a simple ugly little website. It converts. That is what matters.

The platform he recommends is ClickFunnels, though he also mentions Kartra, Kajabi, and Builderall as alternatives that do essentially the same thing. All of them are sales funnel builders that let you string together pages with upsell logic built in. You do not need to code anything.

Here is his exact five-page structure:

Page 1: Sales page. This is where your core product lives. Lead with the pain point your buyer is feeling. For his planner site, the headline targets “disorganized and frustrated parents.” Every word on this page is written for one specific person.
Page 2: Upsell 1. Only buyers see this page. Nobody who did not purchase gets shown an upsell. For the planner site, this upsell is a budget planner template in Excel format. Price: $97.
Page 3: Downsell 1. If a buyer says no to the $97 upsell, they immediately see the same budget planner for $47. Some of them take it at the lower price. You only lose revenue on the ones who say no twice, and even then you have not lost the original sale.
Page 4: Upsell 2 / Downsell 2. A second upsell with the same logic. Alston runs two upsells and two downsells. Each one adds to his average cart value without requiring the buyer to do anything except click yes or no.
Page 5: Membership login page. Instead of delivering the product instantly via a download link, Alston sends buyers to a membership portal to access their files. This is a deliberate choice. The portal lets him display additional offers, links, and suggestions that the buyer sees every time they log in. It turns a one-time download into a recurring relationship.

The order bump (the $27 planner sticker offer) shows up directly on the sales page checkout, not as a separate page. Buyers see it right before they complete their purchase and can add it with a single click. That is how the average order value climbs from $17 to $27 without a dedicated upsell page.

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Step 4: Market Your Products (Free and Paid)

Marketing is where most people either overthink it and do nothing or underthink it and waste money. Alston covers both the free approach and the paid approach, and he makes a point that is easy to miss: Etsy is not a marketing strategy.

When you sell on Etsy, you wait for the customer to come to you, you pay Etsy fees on every sale, and you compete on price. That competition pushes prices down over time in what Alston calls a race to the bottom. You charge cheaper and cheaper just to make a sale. The solution is to own your own sales channel so that when a customer buys from you, the margin stays yours.

Free Traffic Channels

YouTube. If your product solves a problem, create videos about that problem. For a TikTok growth blueprint, Alston would create YouTube videos on how to go viral on TikTok or how to make money on TikTok. Searches like “how to go viral on TikTok” and “how to make money on TikTok” have hundreds of thousands of people asking exactly those questions. At the end of each video, he points viewers to the first link in the description. The video gives away value; the link captures the buyers who want the shortcut.

For the chore chart product, a YouTube video titled “How to Create a Chore Chart” teaches the process for free and then offers to sell a pre-made version to parents who do not have the time or energy to build one themselves. The video from two years ago on that exact topic had 9,400 views. That is a reliable buyer pool for a $17 product.

Facebook. Create a Facebook group around your buyer’s identity. A group called “Mothers of Twins” or “Organized Moms” attracts exactly the people who would buy a chore chart or a planner. You build a community first; the product sales follow naturally because you understand what the members need.

Pinterest. Pinterest traffic is heavily underused by digital product sellers. When Alston typed “budget” into Pinterest, he pulled up hundreds of pins from people actively looking for budgeting tips. That audience buys budget planners. Pinterest works because users are in a discovery and saving mindset; they want to come back to useful things. A well-made pin pointing to your product page can drive traffic for months after you post it.

Paid Traffic Channels

Pinterest ads. Pinterest promoted pins blend into organic content. Unless a viewer spots the “Promoted by” label, the ad looks like a regular pin. Click-through rates can be strong because the audience is already in a buying or planning mindset.

YouTube pre-roll ads. You can run ads that appear at the beginning, middle, or end of other people’s YouTube videos. The pricing model is favorable: you only pay if the viewer watches at least 30 seconds. If they skip immediately, you pay nothing. For a niche product targeting a specific audience, this can be highly cost-effective because you are paying only for engaged attention.

Facebook ads. Facebook’s targeting lets you reach people based on their interests with precision. For the chore chart product, you can target parents who have engaged with organization magazines, chore planner content, or home management topics. You go directly to the customer instead of waiting for them to find you.

Step 5: Make More Money on the Backend

Every customer who buys a digital product from you becomes a person you can sell to again. Step five is about building that backend revenue, which is where the real margin lives in this model.

Alston identifies three main backend income streams from his digital product buyers:

Backend Stream 1: Your Own Additional Products

Once someone buys your digital planner, you know something important about them: they want to get organized. You can create an additional product that serves that same desire and offer it to your existing list. Alston does this by sending emails to his buyers with new ideas, and he takes it one step further. He asks buyers via email what they want next. When they respond with suggestions, he creates the product they asked for and sells it back to them. The buyer gets exactly what they wanted; he gets a guaranteed sale from a warm customer who requested the product themselves.

Backend Stream 2: Affiliate Marketing

You do not have to create every product yourself. Affiliate marketing lets you earn a commission by recommending other people’s courses and tools to your buyers. If someone bought your digital planner because they want to get more organized, they might also want a full course on productivity systems. You find that course, join its affiliate program, and recommend it in your emails. If they buy through your link, you earn a commission without creating any additional product.

For the TikTok blueprint buyers, Alston could recommend other courses on social media marketing or online income generation. The buyers have already demonstrated they trust him enough to purchase, so the conversion rate on relevant affiliate recommendations is meaningfully higher than cold traffic.

Backend Stream 3: Directing Buyers to Your Content Channels

Alston mentions using the backend to point buyers to his YouTube channel and his blog. This compounds over time. A buyer who watches your YouTube channel becomes a warmer lead for your next product launch. A buyer who reads your blog sees your affiliate links and product recommendations in context. The digital product sale is not the end of the relationship; it is the beginning of a buyer relationship that can generate income for years.

The membership site structure from step three serves this purpose directly. Every time a buyer logs in to download their product or access bonus material, they see the additional recommendations you have placed inside the portal. You can update that portal at any time with new offers, new content, and new affiliate links. The buyers are already there; you just have to give them something worth seeing.

The Real Numbers: What This Model Actually Looks Like

These are the figures from Alston’s actual products as he describes them in the video:

TikTok blueprint: 43-page PDF, front-end price starts at $5, backend revenue per sale ranges from $27 to $300 depending on upsells taken
Digital planner bundle: $17 initial price, $27 average order value after order bump (2,000 planner stickers for $27 added at checkout)
Budget planner upsell: $97 initial offer, $47 downsell if buyer declines the $97 offer
Fiverr outsourcing cost: $5 to $20 for a custom chore chart design
Canva and SmartMockups: both available for free at the start

The $100 per day figure in the title is achievable with a mid-range average order value and modest daily sales volume. If your average cart value is $27 after the order bump, you need roughly 4 sales per day to hit $108. With paid traffic on Pinterest or YouTube pre-roll, 4 daily sales from a proven funnel is a realistic near-term target, not a fantasy number.

Honest Drawbacks of This Model

The five-step process works, but there are a few things worth naming honestly before you start.

Funnel software costs money. ClickFunnels, Kartra, Kajabi, and Builderall are not free. ClickFunnels starts at $97 per month. That is a real cost to cover before you are profitable. If your front-end price is $5 and you have not set up any upsells yet, you need volume to break even on the software cost alone. The answer is to build your upsell sequence before you launch traffic, not after.

Canva customization has limits. You can use Canva templates, but you must modify them enough to make them original before selling. There is a gray area between “modified enough” and “not enough.” If you are not confident the result is meaningfully different from the original template, hire someone on Fiverr to create something from scratch. The $20 investment is worth the certainty.

Free traffic takes time. YouTube videos and Pinterest pins do not generate sales the day you post them. Free traffic is compounding traffic: it builds over weeks and months. If you need faster results, you need a paid traffic budget. Alston mentions this explicitly: paid ads get you to the customer faster, but you need a funnel that converts before you scale paid traffic or you are accelerating losses.

The membership portal requires setup. Delivering products through a membership login page, rather than a simple download link, is a deliberate choice that creates backend selling opportunities. It also requires more setup time than a basic download. Factor that into your weekend timeline if you want the full model from day one.

Find Your X

The five-step framework Alston outlines works across niches: planners for parents, social media templates for creators, budget spreadsheets for people trying to manage money, chore charts for households with kids. What changes is the subject. What stays the same is the structure: core product plus three complementary items, a clean funnel, and a backend that keeps earning from buyers who already said yes.

The question most people sit on longest is what product to build first. If you have not answered that yet, finder.platformproof.com gives you a personalized match based on what you already know and how much time you have. It takes under two minutes and gets you off the starting line instead of planning indefinitely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to already have an audience to sell digital products?

No. The paid traffic channels Alston describes, specifically YouTube pre-roll ads, Pinterest ads, and Facebook ads, let you put your product in front of a targeted audience without any existing following. You pay for the exposure rather than building it over time. Free traffic via YouTube videos and Pinterest pins works without an audience too, but it takes longer because you are waiting for the algorithm to surface your content. Starting with a small paid traffic budget while building organic content simultaneously gives you both short-term feedback and long-term compounding.

What is the minimum budget to start this model?

You can create the product for free using Canva and SmartMockups. The main cost is funnel software. ClickFunnels starts around $97 per month; Builderall and Kartra have lower-tier plans. If budget is tight, you could start with a Gumroad or Payhip storefront (both free) to test the product before investing in a full funnel builder. You will lose the upsell/downsell functionality at that stage, but you can validate demand before committing to a monthly software cost.

Why sell on my own site instead of Etsy?

Etsy takes fees on every sale and controls your relationship with the buyer. You cannot email your Etsy customers directly, run upsells, or build a membership portal. When you sell on your own site, you collect the buyer’s email address, control the post-purchase experience, and keep more of the margin. You also avoid the pricing pressure that comes from competing with dozens of similar listings in a marketplace search result, which is what Alston means by the race to the bottom.

How long does it take to build a digital product?

Alston built his 43-page TikTok blueprint over a weekend. A simpler product, like a one-page chore chart or a Canva template, can be completed in an afternoon. The key is to start with a focused, specific product rather than trying to build a comprehensive course. A 10-page PDF that solves one specific problem is easier to sell than a 100-page guide that tries to cover everything, and it is faster to produce.

What is an order bump and how does it work?

An order bump is an add-on offer that appears on the checkout page itself, before the buyer completes their purchase. Unlike an upsell, which appears after the purchase is complete, an order bump is a checkbox or button the buyer sees while filling in their payment details. Alston’s $27 planner sticker offer appears as a “yes, give me 2,000 planner stickers” checkbox on the checkout page. Buyers who click it get charged $27 instead of $17. Because it requires only one click and appears at the moment of maximum buyer intent, conversion rates on order bumps are often higher than on post-purchase upsells.

What is the difference between an upsell and a downsell?

An upsell is an additional offer shown to a buyer after they complete a purchase. It is priced higher than the initial product. A downsell is the same offer (or a reduced version of it) shown only to buyers who declined the upsell. If someone says no to a $97 budget planner, they see the same budget planner for $47. The downsell captures buyers who were interested but price-sensitive. Because you only show the downsell to people who said no to the full price, you are not undercutting your own upsell; you are recovering revenue from buyers who would otherwise leave without buying the additional item.

Can I use Canva templates for commercial products?

Yes, with modification. Canva’s terms allow you to use templates as the starting point for commercial products as long as you make meaningful changes: different colors, rearranged layout, original copy, updated graphics. You cannot download a template unchanged and sell it. If you are uncertain whether your changes are sufficient, either consult Canva’s content license directly or hire a designer on Fiverr to create something original from a brief. The $5 to $20 cost of a custom Fiverr design eliminates the ambiguity.

How do I make money from buyers after the initial sale?

Three main ways. First, email your list with additional products you create based on what buyers tell you they need. Alston literally asks buyers what they want next and then sells it to them. Second, recommend relevant affiliate products in your emails and inside your membership portal. If someone bought a productivity planner, they might buy a course on time management from a third party; you earn a commission when they do. Third, use your membership portal and email list to drive buyers to your YouTube channel and blog, where they see more content, more recommendations, and more products over time. The initial sale is the start of the relationship, not the end of it.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Easy 5-Steps $100/Day Selling Digital Products,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/mGMgLWTAf4o
Canva free design tool: canva.com
SmartMockups free product mockup tool: smartmockups.com
Fiverr freelance marketplace for outsourcing product creation: fiverr.com
ClickFunnels sales funnel builder: clickfunnels.com
Platform Proof income stream finder: finder.platformproof.com