#32 - Is Selling Digital Stuff Worth it?
The lazy version.
I’m sure you’ve seen them too – I keep getting videos of some person claiming they’ve made a ridiculous amount of money in passive income selling some shite canvas template. I’ve talked about it in the Transparency Recap (#25): I’m on a mission to find a way to make passive income cover the bulk of my expenses. But I don’t have a massive following and I cba to try get that.
So I’ve thought of a few ways to distribute the assets that I create to promote mine and Alt’s typefaces as I do think there’s a little gap still for nice art directed mockups, especially in scenes/ coherent packs at a decent price.
The Product
Art Directed Mockup Scenes. Stuff like this in sets of 4-10 layered tiffs with matching style to be used for conceptual work or client presentations.
Time
Using a mix of Midjourney and Photoshop, these took me 3-5hrs per set.
Realistic
I don’t have a huge following, around 8k on ig, quite a lot from my previous eras if you wish, so my engagement is not the best. I don’t post reels nor particularly engaging content. For the purpose of this experiment, I did not post about these product on there.
Lazy
Because I really wanted to see if there’s a margin of earnings that is worth it, even with low effort put in. I remember the Redbubble days where you’d have hundreds of artworks up to make €1.35 per month. And that is just depressing. The platform I chose is Gumroad, I think they’ve got the most decent rates and the best look.
Low-effort
I wrote on this before, passive income needs to be active before it’s passive. But to test this, I have not done any marketing or promotional stuff for the products I wanted to use for this experiment.
The only 2 promotional things I have done with these:
Post on Pinterest [0 views - 0 sales]
Post on Behance [12 views - 0 sales]
Low-ish effort, in my case, as I did have quite a few to put out.
I announced Design Drop and after the first people subscribed I went into a P A N I C that I would not be able to keep up with it so I now have 18 months ready to go. Yes I have been diagnosed.
I have posted 10 as I thought it would make the experiment either more efficient or more ridiculous.
Low cost
The only programs I used are Photoshop (please avoid paying for it any means possible) and Midjourney ($29).
Low-key
I didn’t want to make a fuss about these. A couple of the sets came out in Digital Drops, and a lot of these will be the upcoming drops. But I don’t really want to connect the two channels, so I never really mentioned Gumroad on here.
First month
Why so soon? It will be a disaster!!! Well yes, that’s the point. Because what we’re all really trying to figure out is Will-it work, and Will-it-not-take-a-fucking-lifetime. I’ll do a yearly recap If I’ll remember, but the question I had whenever looking into ways to make passive income was mostly “How quick will it work?”.
*** DRUM ROLLS PLEASE ***
*** background laughs ***
So yeah this was on the ridiculous side… It’s $60.48 if we take Midjourney into account, even tho I do use it for other work so I would have a subscription sort of anyway. One way would be to create as any base images in a month and close the account. Follow for more bad financial advice.
But, baaaack to my failures.
Say we stick to the $60, that’s a hot $6 per product. SMH. It’s better than I imagined but worse than I hoped.
Want to hear the best bit? In August, those same products made a whopping $6.35. IN TOTAL.
So if you ask me, is it worth it?
Yeah why not, in my mind this is all free money in a way. But without much traffic created, there’s no chance in terms of quick passive income.
I look at the performance of all 20 paid for products I have on Gumroad, in the past 3 months, they’ve made $170.73. So I guess in time it’s a nice little extra.
I am now trying 4 of these on Behance direct product sale or whatever you call it. Published them as products Sept 1st. I will report back,
XO
Your Favorite Passive Income Nerd ;)