This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
How selling $2 digital products in fact earned $185,000. Can you sell stuff for $1 or $2 each and end up making six figures? Well, normally I would say no. Normally I would say it's probably better to have more of a profit margin. You have to have a lot of customers if you're selling for such a low price. But I also like to be proven wrong. And in today's episode, you're going to
discover how one side hustler created a shop selling $2 digital products scaled it to $185,000 in revenue by mastering SEO volume and a few smart upsells, which is going to be a big key to the process. So let's look at it. Welcome to side hustle school. Welcome to throwback Thursday. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Oh, every Thursday. In fact, we take a look at someone whose story
has evolved or changed transformed in some fashion. Uh, since we first featured them on the podcast, we've had more than 3,100 episodes of the show. So there's lots to pull from last week. We heard how a side hustler built a passionate following by making snakeskin wallets without ever using a single animal product, just upcycled materials and a clever story. Today, we're going to hear from Maggie who made a shop selling digital products scaled it to, as I said, $185,000 in revenue and still going and did this over the course of just under two years. Uh, so very cool
side hustle. Let's hear the story directly from her. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. When I first opened my Etsy shop, it wasn't some master plan. I just figured, Hey, maybe I can sell a few printable planners. I'd seen people doing it, but honestly, a lot of the listings looked
overpriced and complicated. What caught my attention were the cheap ones, the $1 and $2 downloads. Those listings had way more reviews. And when I dug deeper, they were ranking better in Etsy search too. That's when I thought, what if I made a shop where everything was just two bucks? No bundles, no tricks, just $2 flat. So I uploaded about 15 products to start things like
meal planners, monthly calendars, chore charts. I kept the design simple, clean fonts, minimalist style, no cutesy graphics that would get dated fast. The first month I made $60, which honestly felt weirdly exciting. Every week after that, I added more products, five here, 10 there. Some weeks I made templates while watching TV at night. I kept it mindless and steady. About six months in,
I had around 150 listings and that's when things took off. I was pulling in about 2000 a month without even realizing it. The biggest trick was SEO. I didn't try to be clever with my titles. I literally named the products what someone would type into a search bar. Weekly meal planner,
printable PDF, toddler chore chart download, stuff like that. Etsy loves when shoppers find what they want fast and when they buy without hesitating. At two bucks a pop, they barely thought about it. My average order wasn't just $2 though. A lot of people bought two or three things at once. Some
even added on deluxe versions I offered later, like a $5 editable Canva version or a $7 bundle with matching pages. Without upselling aggressively, I nudged the average order value up to around $4 and 20 cents. One of my best moves, I made a mega bundle where you could get 15 planners for $14. It almost felt like I was breaking my $2 rule, but people loved it and it became one of my top sellers every holiday season. Over two years, I earned about $185,000. After Etsy's fees,
platform costs and the occasional $30 I'd spend on new design assets, my profit margin stayed around 85%. No customer service headaches, no shipping logistics, no returns. What worked wasn't magic. It was showing up week after week, adding new products, optimizing every listing and keeping it brain dead simple. If you can make someone feel like they're getting a crazy good deal and make it easy for them to say yes, you don't need a complicated sales pitch. You
just need enough $2 yeses stacked on top of each other. Hey, thanks Maggie. I love this story. I think it is a great example for somebody out there to think about what they can offer to the world that they can make pretty quickly and sell for a small amount of money and then see what they can do with it. You might be able to grow and scale, do these smart little upsells. Maybe you'll make $185,000, maybe you won't, but you're probably
going to make something and you're probably going to learn something along the way. The way that you learn in this world is by doing, that's why I always say, or sometimes I say inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I hope you take action today. I hope you get closer to something you're working on. And of course, I hope you'll continue to listen. It's
always completely free. Download the complete archive at www.sidehustleschool.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
