My first $$$ with a digital product | The Monthly Log #3
I did it! I made my first dollars online selling digital products this month!
After several years of trying all sorts of ways to make money online - from selling my services on Fiverr to creating Notion templates and even getting briefly into Print On Demand - I finally found what works for me: creating and selling Framer website templates.
Rewind to the end of last year, I spent a big chunk of the Christmas holiday learning how to use Framer to build websites after seeing the hype growing on Twitter. I then spent January and February playing around with the tool until I felt confident to build my first template.
I might get into the whole process of coming up with template ideas and building the templates in a future post but for now, I’ll focus on what happened this month.
On March 1st I released minilio, a minimal template that can be used as a personal website or a portfolio, and submitted it to the Framer team to get it featured on their website.
Two weeks later my template got approved (yeah all the buzz around Framer means it can take a little while for submissions to be reviewed) and added to the official gallery of templates on their website. AND, on the same day, I sold my first copy!
Since the template got featured I sold a grand total of 6 copies (open the champagne 🍾) and got just under 500 visitors - I feel like it’s a good start and it definitely motivates me to invest more time in making new templates over the coming months.
I’ve been on this journey to produce and sell content online for a few years but I only started to take it seriously at the beginning of this year when I decided to create more than I consume. I'm only 3 months in and I’ve already made some money - bring on next month!
THIS MONTH I CREATED..
minilio
This is the template I’m talking about just above - it can be used as a personal website or a portfolio to showcase your projects and your thoughts in a blog. This template is perfect for designers, product managers, start-up founders, indie hackers and more!
Get the template here →
jeden
Another Framer template I just launched yesterday - this one is a one-page portfolio template that you can get for FREE.
Get the template here →
Frameplate
On the back of launching my first template and seeing how active the Framer community is, I decided to launch Frameplate, a gallery of Framer templates created by the community. I add a new template every weekday and I’ll be working on making it one of the best places to find templates.
Browse the templates →
NEXT MONTH, I WILL..
March was a pretty hectic month so I'm planning to focus on 3 main points in April:
Launch at least 2 new Framer templates - a free one and a paid one.
Redesign my portfolio website - I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and after making 4 portfolio templates I think it's high time to take care of mine.
Get back into React (I miss coding!)
CURRENTLY, I’M…
📘 Reading:
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro - this one has been on my reading list for a little while now so I was pretty excited to finally get to it. I’m 30% in and it doesn’t disappoint so far.
🎧 Listening:
Make Lemonade podcast - this is a new addition to my podcast rotation this month. It's by the founders of Lemon Squeezy and they do interviews with creators like Thomas Frank and Arvid Khal.
📺 Watching:
Succession season 4 is finally here. Nothing more to add - just watch it!
COOL SH*T
shot.so - create amazing mockups for your social media, website and more!
colourcontrast.cc - building templates means I got to look a bit more into accessibility and came across this super handy tool to check contrast between your text and background.
MadNotes - recently I’ve had a thing for super basic apps that have a limited number of features. Madnotes is one of them - a minimalistic markdown notepad.
Thanks for reading this third log - you can find the previous ones here if you fancy checking them out. And if you liked this post please consider sharing it :)
You can also follow my journey on Twitter where I share updates regularly and sign up for my newsletter to get the next Monthly Log in your inbox.
See you in the next one 🫡