How I made 250$ selling Notion templates

And how you can do it too

Photo by Sincerely Media, on Unsplash

I started selling Notion templates as a side hustle back in July 2024. For the first two months, I had zero revenue.

Now, I’ve made over 250$ selling notion templates. Here’s what I’ve learned.

What are Notion templates?

You’ve probably heard about the Notion app. If you haven’t, it’s a productivity software that allows you to organize all your life and projects. It’s basically like an advanced notes app, with some simple programming elements.

Anyone can learn how to use Notion, but it’s not that simple to create productive systems that stand out. It’s a process that takes time. That’s when Notion template creators come into play: they create templates that people can buy and duplicate into their own notion account to use them for personal or business endeavours.

There are hundreds of advanced, seamless templates that save people lots of time and money. This is why the notion template business is so great.

My first two months selling Notion templates

As I’ve said before, I started selling Notion templates in July 2024. For two whole months, I saw no revenue. I was beginning to lose all hope, thinking I’d gone into a business model that was too saturated, and that I’d never stand out.

Despite all my negative thoughts, I persisted. By the end of August, I’d made my first 50$ by selling Notion templates. From then, it all skyrocketed. By the end of september, I’d made more than 250$ in revenue from my shop.

What is so good about Notion templates?

The secret to selling Notion templates is that it’s basically a zero cost business. You can literally create everything from your computer without investing a single cent. Being a digital product, you don’t need to pay suppliers or shipping costs. You’ll keep almost all of the revenue, except for fees you pay when you sell a template, to the marketplace you’re listed in.

For example, I started with Gumroad and they take a 10% commision for each sale. This is very low compared to the costs of selling a physical planner.

How do I market my templates?

I started selling my templates on two marketplaces: Etsy and Gumroad. I did this because I wanted to test out which would be the best performing one.

Here’s a comparison based on my experience:

• Etsy: a lot more competition and little demand. Possible to stand out if you have great listing photos (by using Canva premium or hiring a designer). Easier to get a first sale, but harder to maintain with time.

• Gumroad: less saturated and more room for creativity. Harder to get revenue at first but after a few months it becomes exponential.

As you can probably tell, in the end I stuck with Gumroad. This is because it’s a platforms that offers a lot more functions than Etsy for marketing. These are some of the things I like the most about Gumroad:

• Possibility to create email marketing funnels

• Only pay fees when you make a sale

• Less saturated, growing marketplace

• Easy to use, friendly interface

In my opinion, Gumroad is the easiest platform to grow in, but you need to learn how to stand out. The thing about Gumroad it’s that you have to bring in your own traffic. You can make sales on their built-in marketplace, Gumroad Discover, but you need to make 10$ in revenue before you get featured.

This is why I want to share with you my journey selling Notion templates. If I had known all of this information from the start, it would have been so much easier for me, and I’d probably saved a lot of time and stress. But I had to learn it on my own by trial and error.

The conclusion is that, building a creative business is definitely possible, and even easier nowadays where the internet can connect us with millions of people around the world. I am very excited to keep sharing my business journey with you and looking forward to learning together.