I Found Real Digital Products Making $10,000+ a Month

You’ve probably seen a hundred videos promising you can make money online. Most of them are light on proof and heavy on hype. So I went and found real people, real stores, real revenue numbers — digital product sellers at the $10,000-per-month mark and above — and I’m going to walk you through exactly what they’re selling, how they’re marketing it, and what you can steal from each one. Some are on Etsy. Some are on YouTube. One is completely faceless on Instagram. The only thing they have in common is that they started from scratch, just like you.

I want to kill the “trust me, bro” energy that dominates this space. Instead of telling you digital products work, I’m going to show you people who are proving it right now, in niches you would never guess were profitable. If you’ve been sitting on an idea — or if you don’t even have an idea yet — this post is your permission slip to start.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Six real examples of digital product sellers doing $10K or more per month
The exact product types each one uses (spreadsheets, templates, courses, ebooks, Notion files)
Which marketing channel each seller is using to drive traffic
A simple funnel structure for moving buyers from a low-ticket front end to a higher-ticket upsell
The mindset shift that separates people who start from people who keep waiting
How to figure out which digital product is the right fit for your skills — use finder.platformproof.com to get a recommendation built around what you already know

Example 1: Jen Digital and the Budgeting Spreadsheet Empire on Etsy

The first seller I want to show you goes by Jen Digital on Etsy. She has been on the platform for about two and a half years, and in that time she has racked up $70,000 in sales. Now think about that for a second — $70,000 from a storefront that sells Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel templates. Not software. Not a course. Spreadsheets.

If you look at her catalog, the product line is almost all budgeting. Budget calculators. Debt snowball trackers. Debt avalanche calculators. The core product — her Ultimate Budget Tracker 3.0 — shows up multiple times in the store. Why? Because she changed the color scheme and repackaged it for a different buyer. The pink version appeals to one customer. The dark mode version appeals to another. The business-focused version pulls in a third type. It is the same spreadsheet dressed in a different outfit, and it works.

This is one of the cleanest lessons in digital products: one solid idea multiplied across color variations and slight format differences is a full product line. You do not need to build 20 completely different tools. You need to build one really useful tool and make it available in the formats and aesthetics your different buyers prefer. She is doing Excel and Google Sheets versions of each product. Same logic, two different buyers.

One thing I will say: Etsy is not my first recommendation for building a long-term business because you are sharing your customers with the platform. But as a proof-of-concept stage? As a place to validate that people want what you are making before you build your own store? It is hard to argue with $70,000 in sales from a person who started two and a half years ago with spreadsheets.

Example 2: Greg Smith, the LSAT Tutor Who Accidentally Built Thinkific

This example is less about a current store and more about a blueprint. Greg Smith started as an online tutor helping people prepare for the LSAT — the test you take to get into law school. He was trading time for money, tutoring one person at a time. At some point he had a realization: why am I repeating the same lessons over and over when I could record them once and sell them to many people?

So he created an online course about LSAT prep. That course grew. He kept building. Eventually he became the founder of Thinkific, one of the biggest course-hosting platforms in the world. Now, I am not saying you are going to build the next Thinkific. That is not the point. The point is that this all started with one boring, specific piece of knowledge: how to help people pass a very specific test.

Go look at Udemy right now and search “LSAT.” You will find courses with hundreds of ratings. People are buying them today. And the LSAT is just one example. AWS certification prep. Real estate exam prep. CompTIA. Project Management Professional. There is an entire economy of people who need to pass a specific test, and if you have passed that test, you already have the knowledge to help them. You do not have to go learn something new. You teach what you know.

Every single day there is a new person growing up who does not know what you already know. Even if the information feels obvious to you — even if you learned it years ago — to someone who is just discovering it, your knowledge is worth money. That gap between where you are and where they are is exactly where a digital product lives.

Example 3: The 36-Year-Old Mom Doing $10K Per Month With Business Templates and Party Games

This one is one of my favorites because it directly attacks the “I don’t have anything worth selling” excuse. This seller is a 36-year-old mom. She has a higher education administration job — not a glamorous, viral, content-creator background. She also has a master’s degree in positive organizational psychology. You might look at that and think: what the heck does that have to do with selling things online?

She looked at her background and asked: what problems do the people in my world struggle with? The answer was workplace organization, goal-setting frameworks, and HR-adjacent business planning. So she turned her knowledge into business templates — plug-and-play documents that help people get an immediate, tangible result without having to figure out the structure from scratch. She also sells party games. Yes, party games. Different buyer, same creator.

Her Etsy side hustle now brings in $10,000 per month in passive income. That is on top of her regular job. The reason templates work so well is that they deliver an immediate result. The buyer does not have to build the system. They just fill in their information. That feeling — “my problem is solved right now” — is what makes people come back and buy from the same creator again.

Think about the knowledge behind your job, your degree, your hobby, your volunteer work, your parenting experience, your time in a particular industry. What do people in that world consistently struggle with? What do you wish someone had handed you on day one? That is your template. That is your digital product.

Example 4: The 32-Year-Old Mom Making $143,000 Per Month From YouTube and a $37 Subscription

This one will either inspire you or make you question everything you thought you knew about YouTube. This creator is a 32-year-old mom with a YouTube channel of about 632,000 subscribers. Her channel is entirely focused on helping people find jobs — resume tips, remote work listings, “Netflix is hiring” type content. According to public estimates, YouTube is paying her roughly $1,000 per month from ad revenue. She does not care about that number at all.

Why? Because as of 2024, she is making $143,000 per month from her digital product. That product is paybump.com, a guided career acceleration system priced at $37 per month. She also sells resume templates and job-hunting resources. Her YouTube channel is not a content play. It is a sales funnel. Every video is a trust-builder that sends warm, motivated buyers to her product.

This is the model I talk about constantly: use free content to attract people who have a specific problem, then solve that problem with a product you control. She is not dependent on YouTube ad rates. She is not worried when the algorithm shifts. The ad revenue is a bonus. The real money is in the product she built around what she already knew — how to get hired, get promoted, and get paid more.

And her YouTube earnings tell you something important about how to think about content creation. If you know how to monetize through your own product, the platform’s direct payment is irrelevant. That $1,000 from YouTube would feel embarrassing next to $143,000 if you were chasing the algorithm. When you have a product, you just use the platform for distribution and move on.

Example 5: Thomas Frank Is Getting Rich Selling Notion Templates (Yes, Notion — the Free App)

Thomas Frank has about three million YouTube subscribers and built a significant portion of that audience by teaching people how to use Notion. Notion is free. You can sign up for it right now. There are dozens of YouTube channels about it. The space is “saturated” by every conventional metric. He sells templates for it anyway — and people buy them.

His task manager template is available for free (to capture email addresses) and his premium templates run up to $79. He has had 3,500 people purchase one of his paid templates. He later expanded into courses and other digital products, but it all started with done-for-you Notion templates that save people from having to build their own systems.

The free-to-paid pathway he uses is textbook digital product strategy. Give away enough that someone sees the value, get them on your email list, then offer a paid version that saves them more time or solves a more specific problem. His Notion catalog now crosses into multiple product types, but the entry point was simple templates for a free tool that millions of people use every day.

The deeper lesson from Thomas Frank: free software is not a barrier, it is an opportunity. People struggle to use free software. They need templates, tutorials, and shortcuts. AutoCAD is free. Google Sheets is free. Canva is free. If you know how to use any of these tools well, there is a paying audience that wants you to make their work easier. Keyboard shortcuts. Pre-built templates. Step-by-step guides. All of it is sellable.

Example 6: The Faceless Instagram Creator Who Hit $10,000 Before October 15th

Not everyone wants to show their face. I get it. This example is for you. One of Alston’s clients wrote a Medium article about this creator, who built a brand-new Instagram account, did not show their face once, and made over $10,000 in sales before October 15th of the year they launched. Selling directly through Instagram to their own website.

What were they selling? An ebook priced between $19 and $37, planners priced between $24 and $47, and templates priced between $37 and $49. Higher price points than the budget spreadsheet seller. Fewer total buyers, but each one is more qualified and more committed.

This is a legitimate alternative to the low-ticket, high-volume approach. When you price higher on the front end, your customer acquisition cost has to be covered by fewer sales, which means the people who buy are more serious. You will convert fewer visitors, but the ones who convert spend more. Both models work. You need to decide which one fits the product you are building and the audience you are building it for.

Not sure which type of digital product matches what you already know?

Answer a few questions and get a specific recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

The Funnel That Connects Your Content to Your Product

Here is the framework I use and teach for connecting free content to paid products. It is simple and it scales.

Step one: Create content on a platform — YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, a blog. The content is targeted at a specific problem your buyer has. Every piece of content is a demonstration that you understand their situation.

Step two: From that content, you send people to a low-ticket front-end product. I recommend pricing this between $5 and $17. The goal here is not to make your money. The goal is to get someone to pull out their credit card, which means they are now a buyer — a completely different category of person than a follower.

Step three: Immediately after purchase, present an upsell. This is where the money lives. Price it around $49. It solves a related problem or goes deeper on the same problem. Some buyers will take it. That is fine.

Step four: For buyers who decline the upsell, offer a downsell at around $29. A smaller version of the same offer, or a different angle at a lower price. This captures buyers who wanted more but not at the full upsell price.

The reason this structure works is it separates buyer acquisition from revenue generation. You get more people in the door with the low front-end price, and you increase average cart value on the back end. The faceless Instagram creator I mentioned earlier skipped the low-ticket entry and sold higher on the front end. Both are valid. The funnel approach I just described is better for building volume. The higher front-end approach is better for building margin. Know which game you are playing before you price.

Honest Drawbacks of the Digital Product Model

I want to be straight with you because I think a lot of people get into this and hit a wall they did not see coming. Here are the real friction points:

Marketing is where most people quit. Creating the product is the fun part. Figuring out how to make people aware it exists is the hard part. Every example in this post has a traffic source: Etsy’s built-in marketplace, a YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, an Instagram account built from scratch. You need a distribution plan before you finish building your product, not after.

Etsy gives you discoverability but takes your customer relationship. Jen Digital has $70,000 in sales through Etsy, which is real. But Etsy owns that customer relationship. If they change the algorithm, her visibility drops. If they raise their fees, her margins shrink. Etsy is a great place to validate an idea. It is not the business you want to build forever.

Audience building takes time. Thomas Frank has three million YouTube subscribers. That did not happen in a month. The 32-year-old mom has 632,000 subscribers. The faceless Instagram creator built their account before making $10,000 — the account came first. In every case, the audience existed before the big revenue numbers. Do not expect to launch a product today and hit $10,000 next month without an existing audience to sell to.

Your first product will probably not be your best one. That is not a reason to wait. The sellers in this post started with their first idea and refined from there. Greg Smith started tutoring one person at a time before he built a course. Jen Digital probably iterated her spreadsheet design multiple times before landing on the version that sells. You do not know what needs fixing until you put something in front of real buyers.

The Mindset That Actually Gets You Started

I want to close the examples section with something real. You are going to fail at some point. Not maybe. Definitely. I have failed. The people I showed you in this post have failed. The question is what you do when that happens.

There is a quote I think about constantly from Joe Button — rapper, one of the biggest podcasters working today. He said: “I’m not here because I fell down. I’m here because I got up.” What he means is that the mistakes and the setbacks are not the obstacle. They are the curriculum. The reason he is where he is today is not in spite of the hard moments. It is because of them.

Here is the thing about where you are right now if you have not started: you are already living your worst-case scenario. You are already in the situation you are afraid of ending up in. The downside you are trying to protect yourself from by not starting? You are already there. So take the step. If it does not work, you learn something. If it does work, your life changes. Those are the only two outcomes. Neither of them is worse than staying still.

Will Smith has a line in the movie Hitch that I keep coming back to, even though it is about relationships. He says falling in love is like jumping off a building and learning how to fly on the way down. Starting an online business is the exact same thing. You do not have your wings fully developed when you jump. You grow them on the way down. Most people never jump at all. They wait until they feel ready. They are still waiting.

Do not come up with ten ideas. Come up with one. Go all in on that one. Stop worrying about step B, C, and D before you have taken step A. Take one step. Learn from it. Take the next one.

Find Your X

Every example in this post started with someone asking: what do I already know that other people are struggling with? Jen Digital knew budgeting. Greg Smith knew LSAT prep. The 36-year-old mom knew organizational psychology. The YouTube creator knew career development. Thomas Frank knew Notion. The Instagram creator knew whatever their niche is. None of them had to go learn something new first. They started with what they had.

If you are not sure what your version of that is, go to finder.platformproof.com. Answer a few questions about your background and the type of product you want to build, and you will get a specific recommendation — not a generic “sell information” answer, but a direction tied to what you actually know and who is already looking for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

No, but you need a plan to get one. Jen Digital used Etsy’s existing marketplace and did not need her own audience at first. The faceless Instagram creator built an account from scratch before making sales. You can start without an audience if you are on a platform that provides built-in traffic, like Etsy or Udemy. If you are selling from your own site, you need to build your own traffic through content, ads, or partnerships. The product comes first, then you figure out where the buyers are coming from.

What is the best type of digital product to start with?

Templates and spreadsheets have the lowest barrier to entry. You do not need design skills or video equipment. You need to know a process that other people want to follow and be able to document it in a usable format. If you have a skill that lends itself to teaching, an ebook or short course is the next step up. The best product type for you depends on what you know and how your buyer prefers to consume information.

Is Etsy still a good platform for selling digital products in 2026?

Yes, with conditions. Etsy gives you access to buyers who are already in shopping mode and already trust the platform. That is valuable early on. The drawback is that you are building on rented land — Etsy owns the customer relationship, the search algorithm, and the fee structure. Use Etsy to validate that your product sells. Then move the customer relationship to your own email list and your own storefront over time.

Can I sell digital products without showing my face?

Yes. The faceless Instagram creator in this post made over $10,000 without showing their face once. You can build a brand around a niche, a character, or a clean visual identity without personal video content. Etsy sellers often operate this way too. Faceless is harder on YouTube because the platform tends to reward personality-driven channels, but it is absolutely workable on Instagram, TikTok, Etsy, and through paid ads.

How do I price my first digital product?

For a low-ticket front-end product designed to convert buyers, $5 to $17 is a reasonable range. This is low enough that the buyer does not need to think hard about the decision, which means more people say yes. If you want to sell higher-ticket templates or ebooks directly, $37 to $49 is where several of the sellers in this post operate. Do not underprice out of fear. Pricing too low signals low value and attracts buyers who are harder to serve.

What if my niche seems too boring or too saturated?

The LSAT is boring. Notion is free and has thousands of tutorials. Budgeting spreadsheets are not exciting. Every single niche covered in this post would look saturated or uninteresting on the surface. Saturation means there is demand. The question is not whether you can enter a niche, but whether you can serve a specific buyer within it better than the existing options. You do not need to be the biggest name in a space. You need to be the right fit for one specific type of buyer.

What is the difference between a front-end product and an upsell?

The front-end product is what you advertise and sell at the entry price. Its job is to convert strangers into buyers. The upsell is a higher-priced offer you make immediately after the front-end purchase, when the buyer is already in a buying state of mind. The front end might be a $9 template. The upsell might be a $49 course that shows the buyer how to use it and build on it. Most of your revenue in a well-structured funnel will come from the upsell and any subsequent offers, not the initial sale.

How long does it take to start making real money with digital products?

That depends almost entirely on your traffic source. If you have an existing audience, you can make sales within days of launching. If you are building from scratch on Etsy, expect weeks to months before your listings get traction. If you are building a YouTube channel or Instagram account first, you may be 6 to 12 months away from consistent revenue — but that audience, once built, produces income for years. There is no shortcut to the audience-building phase. There is only the decision to start it sooner or later.

Sources

Jen Digital Etsy store — verified via public Etsy listing data referenced in original video
Greg Smith / Thinkific founding story — public record, Thinkific company history
36-year-old mom Etsy case study — referenced in Alston Godbolt YouTube video, July 2025
paybump.com — publicly accessible, pricing verified at $37/month at time of recording
Thomas Frank / Notion templates — publicly documented on his website and YouTube channel
Faceless Instagram creator case study — Medium article referenced in original video
Joe Button quote — referenced in Alston Godbolt YouTube video, original attribution to podcaster Joe Button
Original video: https://youtu.be/G4bfHVAIEkg

Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.