$1,000/Month Digital Products | How To Create And Sell Your First Digital Product

You do not need a big audience, a complicated product, or a tech background to start selling digital products. I know that because I built a working digital product store from scratch using nothing but a simple idea I found on Etsy, a Fiverr designer I paid less than $50, and a sales funnel I put together with ClickFunnels. The store sold digital planners to mothers who wanted to get organized, and the thing that surprised me most was how fast the whole setup came together once I stopped overthinking it.

In this post I am going to walk you through every step of that process. We will cover finding a product idea, creating the product, setting up the delivery, building a simple sales funnel with upsells and downsells, handling email follow-up, and adding a membership area that lets you stack affiliate income on top of your product sales. By the time you finish reading, you will have a clear picture of exactly what to do next.

What You Will Walk Out With

A repeatable method for finding proven digital product ideas using Etsy and social platforms
Three ways to create your product: do it yourself, hire on Fiverr, or buy PLR
The fastest way to deliver digital files to customers so you never hear “I never got my product”
A complete sales funnel layout: landing page, sales page, upsell, downsell, and thank you page
How to set up two separate email sequences so buyers and non-buyers get the right follow-up
How a membership area lets you embed affiliate links and sell more without building anything new
A way to figure out which digital product fits the skills and audience you already have at finder.platformproof.com

Step 1: Find an Idea That Is Already Selling

The fastest way to come up with a winning digital product idea is not to brainstorm in a vacuum. It is to go look at what is already selling to real buyers right now. My first stop was Etsy. I typed in “planner” and started scrolling through the results. I saw chore charts, chore planners, and daily planner bundles selling consistently. That research told me there was a real market of buyers who were handing over money for these things every day.

You are not limited to Etsy. If you already have an audience of any size, whether that is an email list, a social media following, or even a Facebook group you participate in, that is an excellent place to start. You can ask directly: “What do you struggle with most? What would help you solve it?” The answers tell you what to build. You can also scan Reddit threads, Instagram comments, LinkedIn posts, or Pinterest boards in your niche. Wherever your target audience hangs out and complains, there is a product idea waiting to be pulled out.

Seasonal opportunities are worth keeping in mind too. Halloween, back-to-school season, the new year, and the holiday shopping rush all create surges of buyer intent. A digital product tied to a moment on the calendar can sell faster in a short window than an evergreen product sells in months. Once you have your idea locked in, write it down and move to step two. Do not spend weeks here. The market has already shown you what it wants.

Step 2: Decide How You Will Deliver the Product

A digital product has to get from you to the buyer instantly after purchase. The method you choose for delivery matters more than most people realize, because a slow or confusing delivery process causes customer support headaches and refund requests. I have tried a few different options and the one I keep coming back to is Google Drive.

Google Drive gives you a shareable link that you can drop into an email or a thank you page. The buyer clicks the link, the file downloads, done. It is free, it is fast, and it works on any device. Dropbox is another solid choice and works in essentially the same way. If you have your own private server, you can host files there. Amazon also has digital delivery infrastructure. But for someone just starting out, Google Drive removes every obstacle. You do not need to pay for anything extra or learn a new platform. Create a folder, upload your file, set sharing to “anyone with the link can view,” copy the link, and you are set.

Step 3: Create the Product Three Different Ways

This is where a lot of people get stuck because they assume they need to be a designer or a developer. You do not. There are three paths you can take, and each one is a real option depending on your budget and your time.

Option A: Hire Someone on Fiverr

This is what I did for my planner store. I am not a designer, but I know how to find people who are. I went to Fiverr, typed in “digital planner,” and found freelancers charging anywhere from $5 to $50 to create custom planners. I hired one of them, gave them the specifications I wanted, and had a finished product within a few days without drawing a single line myself.

One thing you must be careful about: some Fiverr sellers, when they want to turn jobs around fast, will download a free template from Canva and hand it straight to you. That is not original work, and you can get into trouble reselling it. Make sure whoever you hire is creating a unique, original design. Ask them directly and have it in writing in the project scope. Paying $50 for a genuinely original product is worth far more than paying $5 for something that could create a legal or platform problem later.

Option B: Create It Yourself in Canva

If you have more time than money, Canva is the right starting point. You can search for planner templates inside Canva and find dozens of designs you can customize. The critical rule here is the same as with Fiverr: you cannot take a Canva template and resell it as-is. You have to make it original. Change the layouts, the colors, the structure, the content sections. The final product needs to be something you genuinely built from those starting pieces, not just a renamed download.

For those with more design experience, Affinity Photo or Photoshop give you more control, but Canva is the place to start when you are not starting from scratch.

Option C: Buy Private Label Rights Products

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. These are products created by someone else and sold with a license that lets you rebrand and resell them. To find them, type something like “digital planner PLR” into Google and you will find a range of websites selling PLR planners, ebooks, templates, and more. You buy the product, you get the rights, and you can turn around and sell it under your own brand.

PLR is a fast way to get a product in your hands without creating anything, but the trade-off is that the same base product might be sitting in other sellers’ stores too. Customizing PLR content to make it feel like your own brand is worth the extra step.

Bonus: Make Your Product Editable

One thing that lets you charge more for planners and similar products is making them editable. An editable planner is one the buyer can fill in directly on their phone, their computer, or their iPad without printing anything. A planner that can only be filled in by hand after printing is worth less to a buyer than one they can use digitally. If the planner is built from Google Docs and Excel spreadsheets like mine was, it is editable by default. If it is a static PDF, it is not. Editable means more value, and more value means you can charge more.

Step 4: Build a Sales Funnel That Does the Work for You

This is where the money actually gets made, and it is also where most first-time digital product sellers leave a lot of income on the table. A sales funnel is just a sequence of pages that a buyer moves through after they show interest in your product. Each page gives them a chance to buy something. Here is the flow I use.

Traffic comes in first. That can be paid, like the Facebook ads I used to drive buyers to my planner store, or it can be free if you already have an audience on social media or an email list. If you have an existing email list, you can skip the landing page and send them straight to the sales page. If you do not have a list yet, a landing page is the right first step.

The landing page collects the visitor’s name and email address in exchange for a free gift. For the planner store, that lead magnet could have been something like “Nine Ways to Get Your Kids to Do Chores Without You Having to Yell.” Once someone fills in that form and hits submit, two things happen: they get added to your email list and they are taken to the sales page.

The sales page is where you present your product and ask for the sale. I sell the front-end planner for $17. That price is low enough that the barrier to buying is small, which gets more people into the funnel where I can then offer them more.

If they buy, they go to the first upsell page. This is a higher-priced product that is closely related to what they just bought. For my planner store, I tested a budget calendar bundle on the backend and offered it at $97. It has to be something the same buyer would genuinely want, not just a random product. If they say no to the $97 offer, they go to a downsell page where the same product is offered at $47 or split into two payments of about $50.

You can add a second upsell page after that. I run one at around $57 and then a downsell for it at $37. After all of that, regardless of what they bought or did not buy, everyone lands on the thank you page where they find out how to access their purchase.

You can build this funnel with ClickFunnels, which is what I use, but it is not the only option. WordPress with the right plugins works. So does Cartra, Builderall, System.io, GetResponse, or any of the other page builders out there. Do not spend weeks comparing them. Pick one that fits your budget and get moving. They all work basically the same way.

Not sure which digital product fits your specific situation?

Answer a few questions and find out at finder.platformproof.com.

Step 5: Set Up Two Email Sequences

Email is what keeps your funnel working after someone leaves the page without buying. I use GetResponse for this, but Aweber and ActiveCampaign are both solid choices. Here is the part most beginners miss: you need two separate email sequences, not one.

The first sequence goes to everyone who signs up on your landing page but has not yet bought. These emails have one job: send people back to your sales page and give them another reason to buy. You might share a piece of the lead magnet content, answer a common objection, or tell a short story about why the product matters. Every email points back to the sales page.

The second sequence goes to buyers only. This is called your buyer’s list, and it serves a completely different purpose. The most important thing this sequence does is deliver the product. This step sounds obvious but a lot of sellers skip it, and then buyers get frustrated because they close the thank you page without saving the download link and then say they never received anything. A dedicated delivery email sent right after purchase eliminates that problem entirely.

After the delivery email, your buyer’s sequence can ask for feedback, share tips for getting the most out of the product, offer affiliate products that complement what they bought, or present your other products. A buyer’s list is the most valuable list you can build because these people have already proven they trust you enough to spend money.

Step 6: Use a Membership Area to Stack Affiliate Income

This is the part I added to my planner store that turned a simple product sale into an ongoing income source. Instead of just linking buyers to a download page, I put the product behind a membership login. ClickFunnels has this built in, and so does Builderall and Cartra.

Inside the membership area, I have the planner download, an order bump for planner stickers, a budget template, and an un-advertised bonus section with online business training. I also included a link to Bluehost through my affiliate link, presented as a “start a website today” resource. Every time someone in my membership area clicks that link and signs up for hosting, I earn a commission without doing any additional work.

The rule for affiliate links inside a membership area is simple: they have to be congruent with what your audience actually wants. If I am selling to mothers who want to get organized, sending them to Amazon links for planners, office supplies, or Staples products makes sense. Sending them to unrelated things breaks the trust you built to get them in the door in the first place.

The Full Digital Product Funnel From Start to Finish

Here is the entire process mapped out in order so you have a clear action plan to follow.

Research: Go to Etsy, type in a product category your audience cares about, and scroll until you find something that is already selling well. Cross-check on Facebook groups and Reddit to confirm there is real demand.
Choose a creation method: If you have money and no design skills, hire on Fiverr for $5 to $50. If you have time and want to keep costs at zero, build it in Canva. If you want the fastest possible path, buy a PLR product and rebrand it.
Make it editable: If your product is a planner or any kind of fill-in document, build it so buyers can use it digitally. This lets you charge more.
Set up delivery: Upload the finished file to a Google Drive folder, set sharing to anyone with the link, and copy that URL for use in your thank you page and delivery email.
Build the funnel: Landing page to collect name and email, sales page at a low front-end price like $17, upsell at a higher price like $97, downsell at half that, optional second upsell, thank you page with access to the product.
Set up email: One sequence for non-buyers that drives them back to the sales page. One sequence for buyers that delivers the product and then continues the relationship.
Add a membership area: Put the product behind a login, add affiliate links for congruent products, and let the membership area earn extra income passively.
Drive traffic: Start with what you have. If you have a social audience, use it. If you have an email list, send them to the sales page directly. When you are ready to scale, test Facebook ads.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

This process is real and it works, but there are a few things I want you to go in with open eyes about.

The funnel takes longer to set up than the product itself. Writing copy, building pages, setting up email sequences, and testing the whole flow end-to-end is several hours of work minimum. If you are using a tool like ClickFunnels for the first time, expect a learning curve even though the interface is fairly intuitive. Budget a weekend for the initial setup.

PLR products are a shortcut, but they are a competitive shortcut. If you search “digital planner PLR” and find a popular bundle, there is a good chance other sellers have found the same one. Standing out requires customization, even if that just means a rebrand and a new product name.

Facebook ads cost money before they make money. Testing ads to find what works is an investment. If you are starting with zero budget, build on free traffic first and move to paid only when you have a funnel that has already converted organically.

The membership area adds complexity. It is worth it once you have buyers flowing through, but it is not something you need to build on day one. Get the product created and the basic funnel live first. Add the membership layer once you are actually making sales.

Find Your X

The hardest part of starting with digital products is not the tech or the funnel. It is figuring out which product fits the skills, knowledge, and audience you actually have right now. If you answer a few questions about what you already know and who you already talk to, the right product idea becomes obvious. Go to finder.platformproof.com to find yours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a website to sell a digital product?

No. You can sell a digital product using a funnel builder like ClickFunnels, System.io, or Cartra without ever setting up a traditional website. These tools give you landing pages, sales pages, and checkout in one place. A standalone website can come later when you have revenue to invest in it.

How much does it cost to create a digital product?

It depends on your path. Using Canva to create something yourself costs nothing beyond your time. Hiring a Fiverr designer runs between $5 and $50 for most digital planners and templates. PLR products vary widely but many sell for under $20. The funnel builder itself is your biggest recurring cost, with most platforms starting between $27 and $97 per month.

What is a good price for a first digital product?

A low front-end price like $17 works well to get buyers into your funnel. The real revenue often comes from the upsells. A $17 front end with a $97 upsell means a buyer who takes the full offer is worth over $100, even though they entered at a very low price point. Start low to remove the barrier and build from there.

Can I sell digital products without an audience?

Yes. If you do not have an existing audience, paid traffic is the way in. Facebook ads were how I initially drove buyers to the planner store. You can also build free traffic over time through YouTube, Pinterest, or short-form content. The landing page setup means you are building your list as you drive traffic, so over time you become less dependent on external platforms.

What is a PLR product and is it legal to resell?

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. The creator of the product sells it with a license that allows the buyer to rebrand and resell it. As long as you are purchasing from a legitimate PLR seller and the license you receive specifically grants resale rights, it is completely legal. Always read the license terms before purchasing to confirm what you are and are not allowed to do with the product.

Why do I need two separate email sequences?

Because buyers and non-buyers need completely different messages. A non-buyer still needs to be convinced to purchase, so your emails send them back to the sales page. A buyer already purchased and now needs the product delivered and a reason to trust you with another purchase. Sending a “buy now” email to someone who already bought is annoying and erodes trust. Separate sequences solve this automatically.

What is an upsell and why should I include one?

An upsell is an offer for a higher-priced product that is presented right after the initial purchase while the buyer is already in a buying mindset. Including an upsell significantly increases the average amount you make per buyer without requiring any additional traffic. In the funnel described above, a buyer who says yes to both upsells spends well over $150 after entering through a $17 front-end product. That math makes acquiring customers through paid ads much more viable.

How do I make my planner editable?

Build it using tools that allow digital input. Google Docs and Google Sheets are the simplest option because anyone with the link can open them and type directly into the document on their phone, tablet, or computer. If you create the design in Canva, you can set it up so the buyer has their own editable copy through Canva’s sharing features. Products built in Affinity Photo or exported as static PDFs will not be editable unless you specifically create fillable form fields using Adobe Acrobat or a similar tool.

Sources

Etsy.com – used to research trending digital product categories
Fiverr.com – freelance marketplace for digital product creation
Canva.com – design tool for creating original digital products
Google Drive – free file hosting and sharing for digital product delivery
ClickFunnels – sales funnel builder used to sell digital products
GetResponse / Aweber / ActiveCampaign – email marketing platforms for follow-up sequences
Private Label Rights (PLR) resources – pre-made products with resale licenses