How To Make Digital Products To Sell (Two Easy Methods)

You have an idea for a digital product but you keep stalling because you don’t know how to make it. The blank screen problem is real. Most people get stuck at exactly that point and never move forward, even though the actual creation step is one of the cheaper, faster parts of the whole process.

There are exactly two paths to your first digital product: you build it yourself, or you hire someone to build it for you. Both paths are practical. Both cost less than most people think. This post walks you through every step of each one, plus the research method you need to run before you build anything, so you are not wasting time creating something nobody wants.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear understanding of the two easiest ways to create a digital product from scratch
How to use Canva’s free plan to create printables, planners, stickers, and PDF guides without spending a dollar
The one rule Canva has about selling templates that most beginners break without knowing it
How to hire a freelancer on Fiverr the right way, including the test-phrase trick that screens out people who won’t follow your directions
How to use Etsy and Google Trends together to find products people are already buying before you create anything
The honest truth about selling on Etsy and why moving off it can mean charging more for the same product
A step-by-step workflow you can follow today to go from zero to your first listing
Want to know exactly which digital product fits your current skills? Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com

The Two Paths to Your First Digital Product

Before you touch any tool, decide which path you are on. Path one is the DIY route using Canva. You invest time, not money. Path two is the delegation route using Fiverr or Upwork. You invest a small amount of money to get back your time. Neither path is better than the other in all cases. The right choice depends on whether you have more time than budget right now, or more budget than time.

What you are likely creating in either case: printables, PDF guides, digital planners, stickers, wall art, resume templates, book covers, or social media graphics. Any of those can sell as a digital download. None of them require you to ship a physical product, hold inventory, or deal with returns. That is why digital products are such a strong starting point for someone building their first income stream online.

Path One: Create It Yourself with Canva

Canva is a browser-based design tool. The free plan gives you access to thousands of templates for posters, planners, book covers, social media posts, stickers, and more. You don’t need a design background. You open a template, adjust the colors and text, and export a finished file. That’s the whole process.

When you land on a template, the first thing you do is check whether the elements inside it are free or paid. Canva labels everything clearly. Free elements will say “Free” next to them in the search results. Paid elements will say “Pro.” If you click on an element and it shows a watermark across the preview, that means it requires a paid plan to export cleanly. Stick to the free elements and you can complete and export your product without paying anything.

Here is the one rule that trips up a lot of beginners: Canva’s terms of service say you cannot download a template and sell it as-is. You have to make meaningful changes before you can sell it. That means changing the text, switching the fonts, updating the colors, swapping out the layout, or combining elements from different templates. If you just download a template and list it on Etsy without touching it, you’re violating Canva’s terms. The fix is simple: actually customize the product and make it yours. That is also what makes it more valuable to buyers, so there’s a real business reason to do it anyway.

Canva has a built-in tool that helps a lot with color decisions: the Canva Color Palette. It’s completely free and gives you hundreds of pre-built color combinations organized by page. You can browse through the palette, click on any combination you like, copy the hex code, and paste it directly into your design. That hex code changes the color of any element in your project instantly. This matters because one of the fastest ways to make a template feel like your own is to give it a completely different color story.

When your design is ready, click the download button in the top right of the Canva editor. You have several format options: PDF Standard, PNG, JPEG, SVG, and even video formats. For planners and printables you usually want PDF. For graphics and stickers you usually want PNG. The format you pick depends on what your buyer will do with the file, so think about that before you export.

Path Two: Hire a Freelancer on Fiverr

If you’d rather pay someone to build the product while you focus on marketing and selling, Fiverr is the place to start. Go to Fiverr, search for whatever type of digital product you want, and you’ll see dozens of sellers offering that exact service. Want digital planners? Search “digital planners.” Want social media graphic packs? Search that. The marketplace is broad enough that someone almost certainly already does exactly what you need.

When evaluating sellers, the review count matters more than the star rating alone. A seller with three five-star reviews sounds good until you realize that a few friends buying and leaving five-star reviews is easy to do. What you want to see is a high review count from what look like independent buyers. Look for sellers who have dozens or hundreds of reviews. On platforms like Fiverr, sellers with 73 or 175 verified reviews are going to be far more trustworthy than someone with three, even if both have five stars.

Fiverr lets you filter sellers by seller level: Level One or Top Rated. Using that filter cuts out the newest accounts and leaves you with people who have been vetted by the platform itself. That alone narrows your risk significantly.

There is another option beyond browsing gigs: you can post a request. Instead of scrolling and picking a seller, you describe exactly what you want and let sellers come to you with bids. You set your budget, describe the product, and then sellers who are interested in the job send you proposals.

Here is the most useful tactic for filtering those proposals: include a specific word or short phrase in your request and tell applicants to include that exact phrase in the first sentence of their response. Something simple, like a specific code or a particular word. When you get proposals back, the ones that open with your required phrase are the people who actually read the brief. The ones that open with a generic “Hello! I would love to work with you!” did not read it. If they won’t follow a one-sentence direction in their application, they probably won’t follow your creative directions either. Filter them out immediately.

Upwork as a Fiverr Alternative

Upwork is worth knowing about as a second option. For a long time Upwork operated differently from Fiverr, but it has moved toward a similar gig-browsing model. You can search for exactly the type of product you want to create and find freelancers offering that service, much like you would on Fiverr.

Upwork carries a slightly stronger professional reputation than Fiverr. Fiverr became known early on as the place for cheap, fast, low-stakes work. Upwork started with a higher bar for the talent on its platform. In practice, there is overlap: you may find the same freelancers listed on both platforms. When you do find someone good on Upwork, the reputation of the platform can make it easier to trust the quality of the work you’re buying. But if you are just getting started and budget is tight, Fiverr gives you more options at lower price points.

Research What Sells Before You Create Anything

The biggest mistake first-time digital product sellers make is creating something they want to make, rather than something people are already buying. Before you spend time in Canva or money on Fiverr, do two minutes of research on Etsy.

Go to Etsy and search for the type of product you are thinking about. Look at the listings that are coming up. Pay attention to which ones have the most sales and reviews. That tells you demand is real. Look at the price points. On Etsy, digital planners and printables often sell for around $1.99 to a few dollars more. That low price point is partly because Etsy has so much competition in the digital product space.

Here is the more powerful use of Etsy for research: let the search bar tell you what people are looking for right now. When you start typing in the Etsy search bar, Etsy autocompletes your query with the most common searches. That autocomplete is a real-time signal of buyer demand. If Etsy is suggesting “printable graduation quote SVG” or “printable chore chart” as you type, those are live buyers looking for those products. Create those first.

How Google Trends Unlocks Seasonal Demand

Google Trends at trends.google.com shows you what people are searching for across the internet over the last 30 days, the last week, or the last month. This tool is free and it gives you a direct window into what is on people’s minds right now.

The strategy is simple: look at what is trending, then go create a digital product related to that topic. If you check Google Trends in early June, you will see graduation-related searches climbing. People are looking for graduation quotes, graduation SVGs, graduation printables. If you already have a Canva template for a graduation poster, you can have it listed on Etsy within the same afternoon.

The seasonal opportunities are consistent year after year and they don’t require you to guess. You just watch for them. Back to school in late summer means resume templates, planner pages, and study schedule downloads. Wedding season in spring and early summer means invitations, seating charts, and planning worksheets. Holiday season in November and December means Christmas cards, gift tags, and holiday planners. Pride Month in June means stickers, wall art, and prints in specific color palettes. Father’s Day and Mother’s Day happen every year on the same weekends. These windows are predictable and if you prepare products in advance, you can ride each wave instead of chasing it after it passes.

The workflow is: check Google Trends, identify what is climbing right now, go to Etsy and confirm people are buying in that category, then either create the product in Canva or hire someone on Fiverr to create it fast. Speed matters with trend-based products. A few days of lag can mean you miss the window.

Not sure which digital product fits your current skills and schedule?

Take the free 60-second quiz at finder.platformproof.com and get a specific recommendation matched to where you are right now.

The Step-by-Step Workflow from Zero to First Listing

Here is the complete sequence, in order:

Research first. Go to trends.google.com and look at what is trending right now. Then go to Etsy and search for digital products in that category to confirm people are buying.
Pick your product type. Choose one specific type of digital product based on your research. Not a category, a specific product: “digital weekly planner for college students” or “printable graduation quote poster in navy and gold.”
Choose your creation path. If you have time and no budget, go to Canva and build it yourself. If you have a small budget and want to move faster, post a request on Fiverr or search for gigs.
If using Canva: Pick a free template, customize it meaningfully (change colors, fonts, text, and layout), and export it as PDF or PNG depending on the product type.
If using Fiverr: Search for the service you need, filter by Level One or Top Rated sellers, look for sellers with high review counts, and include a test phrase in your project brief to screen applicants.
List the product. Set your price, write a description that uses the search terms Etsy’s autocomplete showed you, and publish.
Repeat with the next seasonal window. Use Google Trends to stay ahead of the next wave and build products for it before it peaks.

Honest Drawbacks of Selling on Etsy

Etsy is the easiest place to start because you don’t have to build an audience. People are already there searching for products. But that convenience comes with real tradeoffs you need to know about before you go all in.

The digital product section of Etsy is crowded. New sellers enter every single day. Because the barrier to listing is low, the price competition is intense. Sellers undercut each other to the point where a well-made digital planner might sell for $1.99 or even less. If you spend hours designing a high-quality product, you may find that Etsy buyers compare it to similar listings priced at $0.99 and choose the cheaper one. Etsy takes its own cut from each sale on top of that.

This is what gets called a “race to the bottom.” The platform rewards the lowest price, not necessarily the best product. Over time, that erodes your margins and your motivation.

The alternative is to sell the same digital product on your own platform or through your own audience, where you control the price and keep all the revenue minus payment processing fees. Selling a $17 digital guide directly to your email list or social media audience generates the same or more money per sale than selling a $1.99 printable on Etsy, and you don’t have to compete against a thousand other listings. Building that audience takes longer to set up, but the payoff compounds over time in a way that Etsy income typically doesn’t.

That said, Etsy is a legitimate place to start, especially if you have no existing audience. Use it to validate that people actually want your product and will pay for it. Once you have proof of concept, you have more options about where to sell it next.

Find Your X

Knowing the mechanics of how to create a digital product is step one. Knowing which specific product is the right fit for your skills, your schedule, and what people in your orbit are already asking for is the step that most people skip. The free quiz at finder.platformproof.com asks you a few questions about your background and what you’re working with right now, then gives you a specific recommendation. It takes about 60 seconds and the answer is a lot more useful than picking a product category at random.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need the paid version of Canva to create products I can sell?

No. The free plan on Canva gives you access to thousands of templates and many free elements. The paid plan unlocks additional Pro elements and features like background removal, but you can create sellable products entirely on the free plan. Just make sure you only use elements labeled “Free” and that you modify the template meaningfully before exporting it for sale.

Can I legally sell products I make with Canva templates?

Yes, as long as you follow Canva’s terms. The key requirement is that you make changes to the template before selling the result. You cannot download a Canva template and sell it without modification. Change the fonts, colors, text, layout, or elements so the product is meaningfully different from the original template. Canva’s terms of service spell this out, and it’s worth reading that section before you start selling.

How much does it cost to hire someone on Fiverr to create a digital product?

It varies by product type and seller experience. Simple digital planners and printable templates can often be commissioned for under $50. More complex products like fully interactive digital planners or multi-page PDF guides may cost more. The price you pay on Fiverr is an upfront cost you recover once your listing generates sales, so weigh it against the realistic selling price and estimated volume before you hire.

What is the test phrase trick for Fiverr requests?

When you post a request on Fiverr for a freelancer, include a specific instruction in your brief asking applicants to begin their response with a particular word or short phrase. When proposals come in, only consider the ones that opened with exactly that phrase. This filters out the sellers who copy-paste generic responses without reading your brief. If someone can’t follow a simple reading-comprehension test in their application, they are a risky hire for a project that requires following specific creative directions.

Is it better to search for Fiverr gigs or post a request?

Both approaches work. Searching gigs lets you browse portfolios and pick the seller you want. Posting a request lets sellers come to you, which can sometimes surface options you wouldn’t have found by browsing. If you have a clear idea of what you want, searching gigs is faster. If your brief is detailed and you want to compare multiple pitches, posting a request often produces a better pool of candidates.

How do I know what digital products to create?

Start with research rather than guessing. Go to Etsy and use the search bar autocomplete to see what people are actively searching for. Then check Google Trends to see which topics are getting attention right now. The combination of Etsy buyer demand and Google search volume gives you a much clearer signal than trying to predict what buyers want from scratch. Create products for which both signals point in the same direction.

What are the best types of digital products to start with?

The easiest starting points are products with established demand, simple file formats, and clear use cases. Printable planners, PDF guides, sticker sheets, wall art, resume templates, and printable checklists all fit that description. They sell as downloads, require no shipping, and can be created in Canva on a free plan. As you get more experience and understand what your buyers respond to, you can move into more complex products like mini-courses, templates bundles, or interactive spreadsheets.

Is Etsy the only place to sell digital products?

No. Etsy is a common starting point because it already has traffic, but it is not the only option and for many sellers it is not the best long-term home. You can sell digital products through your own website, via email marketing to a list, through social media platforms, or on other digital product marketplaces. The tradeoff is that off-Etsy channels require you to bring your own traffic, but they also let you keep more revenue per sale and charge prices based on value rather than competing against the lowest-priced listing in a crowded marketplace.

Sources

Canva free design tool: canva.com
Fiverr freelance marketplace: fiverr.com
Upwork freelance marketplace: upwork.com
Etsy digital product marketplace: etsy.com
Google Trends: trends.google.com
Alston Godbolt YouTube, “How To Make Digital Products To Sell 2021”: youtube.com/watch?v=0mf22HRWb0c