15 of My Favorite Types of Digital Products to Create for “Passive” Income (+ Examples of Each!)

Have you been working hard day in and day out trading your time for $$$?

You’ve most likely spent time developing skills and expertise that you could be pouring into a digital product of your own.

👋 Say hello to the infamous “passive” income!

(BTW quick reality check on “passive” income: there is no such thing as “passive” income. All of these digital products require work to create, validate and build. They have more upfront investment and can sometimes be set up to run for years with minimal upkeep but it will never be 0 work or “free money”!)

In this post, I’d love to share 15 different digital products that you could be creating and selling on your own. If you’d rather watch the video version of this blog post, you can click here.

For the past 6 years, I’ve helped clients validate, create and sell digital products as a freelance digital business manager – helping with everything from 7-figure online courses and membership programs to $20 Instagram presets or PDF downloads.

And then, of course, I decided to start creating my very first and very own digital product: an online course Digital Business Manager Bootcamp.

Now over 2 years later, that digital product has grossed $300K+ and is the reason I have been able to diversify my income and shift into working in my own business.

And I’m guessing… you’re here because you’re contemplating dipping your toes into the magical world of digital products?

Yes? Perfect – because that’s what we are going to be diving into in this blog post.

Here are 15 different digital products you can consider offering – and a few examples of each.

This post will be broken down into 3 sections – easy, medium, and hard.

🟢 Easy being products that I think are relatively lower risk and easier to get started with.

🔴 Hard being… tread carefully when it comes to crafting these products.

Of course, difficulty is a subjective topic so this is an opinion on what’s easy vs. what’s hard but depending on your skills and passions, the ranking may be different for you.

📲 5 Relatively Easy Digital Products

First up are our relatively easy to set up and get going with digital products – not to say it’s easy peasy – that depends on the actual product and scope itself.

But these would be considered a bit easier as you can create it once, it’s not really a huge endeavor to make and it doesn’t tend to need any major maintenance or updates.

1. Text Templates

The first product type is what I would call copy or text-based templates.

Templates based on words.

You can create copy templates for launch emails, client communication, and social media captions.

My favorite thing about copy templates is they’re really plug-and-play which is a great value add for people who are busy.

A few examples:

• Salary Re-Evaluation Template in our shop – comes with 2 email templates for asking for a raise.
• StoryVault365 by Elise Darma for social media caption templates.
• Ashlyn Writes has great copy templates for those of you who are business owners who need copy help.
• Amisha has a great packet of templates for freelancers that want to be better at communicating with clients and getting out of those sticky spots.

2. Graphic Templates

The second digital product is graphic templates. These are visual-based templates.

These can be made for any platform – Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Google Slides, – and can be for launching, promoting, nurturing, value-giving, and entertainment.

You can find these all over Creative Market and Etsy if you’re looking for ideas and inspiration.

3. Presets and Filters

The third type are presets and filters.

You’ve probably seen these primarily for Instagram photos; it’s essentially a pre-made filter for your images so all your images can look cohesive and on-brand for you on your feed.

4. Planners, Worksheets, Printables

This is a fun one.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Raise your hand if you can’t have enough fun planning templates and worksheets.

I don’t know what it is about having a pretty planner design that tickles the inner Type-A pink.

There is an entire booming market on Teachers Pay Teachers for these types of printable products for teachers specifically.

You can also find lots of options on Etsy and Creative Market as well. Flourish planners have some great options too.

5. Paid Workshops

Workshops can be a great digital product to get started, especially since they’re one-off most of the time and around 60-90 minutes long.

You teach live on the call so nothing needs to be pre-recorded.

These can be for ANY topic really – in the realm of fitness, digital marketing, copywriting, design, anything goes – as long as your workshop idea is specific and realistic enough to teach in that time period and you’re giving value on that specific topic for viewers to walk away with.

📲 5 Relatively Medium Difficulty Digital Products

Alright now, let’s move on to medium difficulty digital products.

1. Online Courses

Of course, I have to give a shout-out to the good ol’ online course first.

An online course is one of my favorite digital product types. It is great for teaching a subject in a comprehensive manner from A to Z.

Courses can be easily accessed by students from anywhere at any time that suits them which is a major bonus. They do require effort and planning to create – and of course a transferable skill you can teach others well.

An example of an online course – (shoutout to the sponsor of this post, me), Digital Business Manager Bootcamp is my online course, where I teach those that want to work online how to do so as a digital business manager helping entrepreneurs with project, team and operations management.

And if you’re curious how I made this course, here’s a video where I break down step-by-step behind-the-scenes of how I created my multi-6-figure online course.

2. Ebooks

Ebooks are the OG digital product before any of these other types became more popular.

The options here are endless; you can write an ebook on any topic really, self publish on Amazon and you’ll have a digital product all ready to rumble.

Amazon KDP is a platform that allows you to self-publish your own ebooks and softcover books on Amazon which makes this a wildly doable digital product.

Are you an ace gardener or have an education background that you can transfer into an interesting read? It might just be time for your first Ebook!

3. Paid Newsletters

These are essentially paid subscriptions to emails. You pay monthly or annually to receive really great newsletters from someone you admire or want to learn from.

It’s similar to a magazine subscription but in email format!

An example of a popular one is Trends – they send upcoming trends in business and startup ideas to you every single week. I have been subscribed for over a year now, and absolutely love it!

It also comes with a Facebook group community and lots of resources which makes it high value.

4. Paid Digital Tools

The next option is a paid digital tool of some kind. ‘Tool’ is a broad word – but basically, this product has some form of interactivity or simple features to it.

As an example, these can be calculators or excel spreadsheets that can be used to calculate a budget or profit system.

I love these because when done right, they can be a great and easy, hands-on fix to a problem for your customer.

A real example is our Online Course Kit which comes with an interactive project plan in a google spreadsheet where you can put in your ideal dates and size of an online course you want to create and then it creates a customized project plan for you based on that info.

5. Selling Photography or Stock Photos

There are a lot of very successful stock photo sellers out there, which makes it a great digital product. You can sell them on websites like Shutterstock, Gettyimages, iStockPhoto, and AdobeStock if you’re a fantastic photographer or want to dive into learning how to take stunning snaps!

📲 5 Relatively Hard Digital Products

Okay, let’s move now to the more complicated, relatively hard digital products that I would recommend only to non-beginners and those who feel very strongly about these formats.

1. Membership Sites

First up are membership sites and membership programs.

These have a recurring aspect to the value they provide and their pricing model. There are often times monthly or yearly memberships where you get a certain amount of value – like resources, live calls, training, and events, as long as your membership is active.

Membership sites can be hosted on Facebook, Mighty Networks, Slack, and Circle – lots of options!

An example of an amazing membership program is the Digital Nomad Girls Lab.

They have a private community and host weekly online coworking sessions, book clubs, feedback sessions, goal setting sessions, and mixer parties – all for digital nomad women.

2. Web-based Applications

Web-based apps is a big, intimidating one.

This definitely requires a higher skill set and possibly a whole team of developers.

If this is a path you want to go down, it can be an amazing digital product. It’ll likely just require more time and money investment upfront.

Some great web-based application examples include Quickbooks, Slack, and Notion.

3. Website themes

If you’re a graphic designer, website themes are a great way to share your creativity with the world. These themes can be created for platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and Showit.

For people that don’t really want to fuss with designing their own website, they can buy a template and plug and play with a pre-made design.

A good example is the Tonic Site Shop which sells website themes for Showit sites. There are some beautiful themes on there that you can easily use.

You can also find more examples on Creative Market and Envato, too!

4. Coaching & Masterminds

Coaching and masterminds are a combination of a digital product and service depending on how it is structured. These are a great way to offer more premium and elevated service and guidance to your audience.

These can include calls, Q&A sessions, mastermind chats with other community members, feedback rounds, audits, all that good stuff – super variable depending on the specific program.

I have run a mastermind of my own – and we did monthly Q&A sessions, monthly coworking, monthly mindset calls and we had a private community as well!

5. Digital Summits & Events

And finally, digital summits and events! There are way more options for virtual events now than ever before. These can get pretty complicated and include lots of logistics and planning depending on how big the event is.

An example of this is the Work from Anywhere Virtual Summit by Esther – she put together two dozen “work online experts” to talk about the different ways you can work online successfully.

Hopefully, that got the wheels turning for you when it comes to “passive” income!

You can watch the full video on 15 digital products to earn money at home below: