Today I’m sharing a guest post from my friend Cody Berman. Cody left his corporate job to pursue full-time entrepreneurship as a digital nomad. He began selling digital products in 2018 and was hooked after earning more than $700 in a single week. Now he helps other entrepreneurs and creators monetize their businesses with digital products. He’s been featured previously on Making Sense of Cents.
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I used to be a perpetual side hustler. At one point I juggled more than 20 income streams. That sounds impressive, but the reality was exhausting.
I was involved in every side hustle imaginable — delivering food, editing podcasts, building websites, selling discs, running affiliate campaigns, writing articles, even buffing boats. Most of the time, I was simply exchanging hours for dollars.
Don’t get me wrong: some of those gigs paid well. I once earned $500 for writing a single article. But once the work was done and the invoice was paid, I had to find the next client or task to keep the income coming.
I even co-founded a disc golf manufacturing company. For those unfamiliar, disc golf is like ball golf but you throw a plastic disc into a basket instead of hitting a ball into a hole. Our company made those discs.
We scaled quickly: within two years our products were in all 50 states and more than 20 countries. On paper it looked incredible, but behind the scenes we faced product defects, shipping delays, inventory headaches, and all the complications that come with physical products.
I became worn out and burned out. I needed a change.
In early 2019, my friend Julie — also a side hustler — told me she had been selling printables on Etsy. She spent about 60 hours creating several digital products and had earned over $5,000 so far. Those three words “so far” grabbed my attention.
Unlike the physical product business, where every unit required manufacturing, quality checks, packaging, and shipping, digital products promised something different: create once, sell repeatedly, and avoid restocking or shipping hassles. It sounded far more passive than any side hustle I’d tried.
The problem was I didn’t really know what a “printable” was, and I had never used Etsy. If you’re wondering the same thing, printables are simply digital files customers download and print at home — cards, planners, calendars, games, gift tags, and more.
The best part is that once you create a printable, you can sell it an unlimited number of times without the overhead of inventory or shipping.
Even though I lacked design experience and had no idea what products would sell, I decided to try it. If Julie could make it work, maybe I could too.
My first roughly 20 listings were dreadful, but I published them on Etsy anyway. Not surprisingly, they generated zero sales.
Between my poor design skills, lack of product research, and unfamiliarity with Etsy’s platform, I wasn’t setting myself up for success.
After a lot of trial and error, I improved my designs and shifted my focus to seasonal products — a strategy I often recommend to beginners. That decision paid off.
In December and January I created dozens of Valentine’s Day printables after learning it’s one of the top-selling holidays on Etsy. I designed Valentine’s cards, love coupons, editable love notes, custom photo cards, and more.
The algorithm finally started to work in my favor as shoppers searched for Valentine’s gifts and cards. The breakthrough came on February 9th, five days before Valentine’s Day.
I remember checking my phone during a lunch break while skiing in Lake Tahoe and seeing I had made over $100 that day. The rest of the week kept growing, and I ended the week with $718 in sales from just a handful of products that took only a few hours to create. That was my first real taste of passive income. Aside from occasional customer questions that took under five minutes a day to answer, the income flowed without ongoing effort.
That week changed everything for me. It showed the potential of selling digital products on Etsy, and I’m grateful to Julie for introducing me to this approach and for helping me see that a digital product can keep earning long after it’s created.
To be clear, building a successful Etsy shop isn’t a shortcut to instant riches. You still need to create high-quality designs, optimize your listings, and promote your products. But the upfront effort can lead to long-term, low-maintenance income.
Once your Etsy shop is established, it can become a steady passive income source. The same Valentine’s Day designs that earned me $718 one year continued to generate hundreds of dollars the following Valentine’s season while I was in Aruba for a wedding. These printables have remained in my shop for years and still bring in sales each season. Compared to physical products or on-demand gigs like food delivery and freelance tasks, this approach is substantially more passive and scalable.
If you want to explore this path, consider the free training workshop about selling printables. It covers product ideas, how to get started on Etsy, and strategies to make sales. The training can help you avoid beginner mistakes and accelerate your results.
Are you interested in selling printables online? What questions do you have?
Recommended reading:
Gold City Ventures Review: E-Printables Course Review