Are you interested in starting a side hustle by selling Notion templates?
My name is Philipp, in the last year alone, I’ve sold 20+ Notion templates a total of 2,267 times.
In this article, I will break down, how to
- come up with template ideas,
- create Notion templates
- where to sell them
- market them
But before we discuss how to make and sell Notion templates from scratch, let me first answer the most important question:
Do people actually buy Notion templates?
When I told a friend about my side hustle he was surprised that there exists even a market for this kind of product.
But if you are using Notion, it should be clear, why selling Notion templates is a huge business.
In 2022 Notion announced, that they reached more than 30 million users. And they are still growing daily.
Every new user is a potential customer for your Notion template. This is because Notion works kind of like LEGO.
It enables you to build workflows tailored exactly to your individual needs.
But when building with LEGO, you wouldn’t just buy a bunch of random plastic bricks. Instead, most people prefer buying specific LEGO sets. Just later when they are more experienced with the LEGO system would they add their personal modifications.
The same is true with Notion:
New Notioneers start with using prebuild templates and only later add their own flavor to their dashboards.
Do you need more proof that there is money in the Notion template niche?
Look at Thomas Frank who is making more than $100.000 per month just by selling Notion templates.
I just made $100,000 in a single month selling @NotionHQ templates through @Gumroad. Here's how:
– Built an audience w/ tutorials and free templates
– Spent a LOT of time on the sales page
– Product bundles
– Upgraded the customer experience everywhereHere are the details: pic.twitter.com/uTMAmXq70E
— Thomas Frank (@TomFrankly) May 9, 2022
To be frank, Thomas is a huge Youtube influencer with millions of loyal followers. He could sell everything from Alpacas to vitamin pills and make a fortune.
So, is it realistic for a “nobody”, to become successful with selling Notion templates?
Yes!
Take the example of young Italian notionpreneur Easlo:
He started creating Notion templates in 2021. At that time he had no social-media audience, nor any authority in the niche. Still, within one year, he earned more than $100.000 with his templates.
I’m an introvert.
I’m a newbie at coding.
I’m not good at writing.None of these stopped me from building a 100K online presence and making $100K online income.
What’s stopping you?
— Easlo (@heyeaslo) July 15, 2022
If Easlo can do it, you can do it too!
What are the advantages of selling Notion templates?
Notion Templates are great products because you can create them within a reasonable time frame. In most cases, you simply convert the Notion system you are using yourself into a public Notion dashboard.
Compare that to the creation process of online courses or E-Books. It takes a lot of time and much dedication to complete them. Moreover, if you’re a new creator with a new audience, spending months developing products that might flop at the end of the day is a dangerous strategy.
And I am saying that as a former bestseller instructor on Udemy.
How to come up with Notion Template ideas?
Simple, just use the workflows you are building for yourself.
If you are a problem solver, ideas for templates should come automatically. Don’t try to build templates for niches you are not familiar with. For example, you shouldn’t build a Notion garden dashboard, when you are having a brown thumb.
Instead, try to find solutions inside of Notion for your professional and private life. This was the reason why I built the SEO Compass: Before creating this template there was no tool that allowed me to search-engine-optimize my content inside of Notion.
Some Notion Template Ideas
6. Health Tracking 👉 @iampascio
7. Travel Bucket List 👉 @depakes
8. Business Plan Creation 👉 @notionologia
9. Dream Journal 👉 @notiondad
10. Spaced Repetition Tool 👉 @dannyhatcherDo you know more use-cases for Notion? Share them below 👇
— philipp (@dePAKES) April 20, 2022
How to share Notion templates to the web?
Easy:
First, make sure that you are not sharing a Notion dashboard you are actively using. You don’t want your private data to become public on the web.
Some creators even suggest creating a dedicated Notion workspace just for public templates. This way, you will never make the mistake of confusing your private dashboards with public dashboards.
When you are ready, go to the dashboard and click on the “Share†button in the right header bar and toggle “Share to Web†to on.
Now, the option “Duplicate as a template†should already be toggled on automatically.
To finish, just copy the link and make it available for buyers of your templates.
The buyers now only need to “Duplicate†the template to their personal Notion workspace.
How to market your Notion template?
It is not a good strategy to create templates without doing proper marketing Some creators even suggest spending 80% of the time on marketing and just 20% of the time on creating new products.
How others build products:
80% building
20% marketingHow I build products 😋:
80% marketing
20% building— Atul ⚡ Notion4Creators (@AtulACleaver) May 13, 2022
To be honest, I would love it if those numbers would be in reverse. In the beginning, I just created template after template and heavily relied on my launch days for sales. However, when I switched into promo-mode and strategically tried turning more attention to my templates. my sales doubled within a month.
If you want to get the best out of your templates, try to:
- Publish them on all relevant marketplaces
- Find affiliates that generate sales for you on autopilot
- Launch it on Product Hunt
- Create Evergreen Content to promote them long-term
- Build an e-mail list
What are the best Notion marketplaces?
Most Notion templates are sold on Gumroad, but you shouldn’t ignore the other options.
Finally, you can even create your own online store, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t have experience setting one up.
Read my post about Notion marketplaces for more details.
Can I sell Notion templates with affiliates?
When you want to attract affiliates, you should have your templates listed on Gumroad because most of them use this platform for generating affiliate sales. The typical affiliate fee is ranging from 10 to 30%
Recently Notion Utopia created its own affiliate program to better compete with Gumroad. The fee on this platform is by default 30%.
In my experience the best affiliate partners are the following:
They are typically attracting customers via content marketing targeting the Google rankings of relevant keywords. So, if they accept your template, It will very likely rank high on Google.
Should you launch your Notion templates on Product Hunt?
Some of my fellow creators are real experts in creating successful launches. Take my friend Pascio for example: His Stoic Life Bundle got more than 300 upvotes on producthunt.com.
All my product launches pale in comparison.
The question remains: How important is a lunch for the success of your template?
A launch on Product Hunt is a good opportunity to create buzz and momentum. A well-planned launch can easily generate some hundred $ even when you are a new creator without Social Media Followers or an E-Mail List.
This is because Product Hunt is “a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.†A lot of its members are already using Notion, therefore it is easy to find an audience for your templates there.
This should be reason enough to launch your templates on this platform. However, don’t just rely on Product Hunt. Besides launching, you need to make sure to increase the visibility of your template across the web.
Plus, don’t forget to build your own e-mail list. One good way of building a list quickly is to offer some of your templates for free in exchange for a newsletter subscription.
Promote Notion Templates with Evergreen Content
Let’s say you are publishing a Habit Tracker Template.
Some would say that the Habit Tracking niche is already dead for new Notion creators because of the sheer number of competing templates. However, if you manage to make your template visible in the top results of Youtube, Pinterest or Google, you will still find a lot of paying customers.
At least this is my experience with my Habit Compass Template.
You do this by creating evergreen content. Besides working together with affiliates that push your template on their platforms, you should record videos for YouTube where you are showing your templates, write articles on your blog or Medium about your template and create pins on Pinterest.
In a way, creating evergreen content serves as a serendipity machine, because it hugely increases the chances that a potential buyer will stumble across your creation on the web.
Learn more about creating and selling Notion Templates
Do you want to learn more about the Notion Template business?
Check out the Notion Creator Playbook by Easlo:
It is a step-by-step playbook to help you go from idea to launch and start making money online with Notion templates.
An alternative to Easlo’s playbook it the Notion Creator Course by Mitkus.
It is a video course covering the entire process of creating and selling Notion templates from idea to the first customer: