Month: December 2020

Categories
Finance Technology

Make Passive Income Selling Digital Products Online

So you’re looking for a side hustle. Who doesn’t want some extra money for rent or a new car?

There are two kinds of products you can sell online: physical and digital products. Physical products are just that: something that you can actually touch—smartphones, T-shirts, mugs, and more. Digital products are those that don’t need to be delivered to your customers’ homes such as eBooks, training videos, online games, or even graphic design.

We’re going to focus on selling digital products. We’ll walk you through the different types of digital products you can sell and exactly how you can start selling.

Benefits of Selling Digital Products Online

The gig economy is gaining its footing among millennials as it can be an easy and simple way to get some extra money without having to quit your day job. Read on to learn more about it and how you can get a piece of the action.

Did you know that as of 2017, 44 million Americans are reported to have a side hustle? People aged 18 to 36 are earning themselves some extra money aside from the income they receive from their 9 to 5 jobs. A considerable chunk of them, about 36%, earn at least $500 a month from side hustling.

If you’re thinking of creating an online business, side hustling can be a good starting point as it lets you test the waters. Side hustling can give you freedom as you can work only on things that you are passionate about, on your own sweet time. And since consumers are spending more time and money online, the potential is huge!

What are the Types of Digital Products?

The big difference between physical and digital products is the amount of work involved when managing your side hustle. We all know that selling physical products can mean coordinating with courier services, inventory management, product development, and more.

In general, if you want an easy side hustling venture that’s convenient and simple, selling digital products online is highly recommended for its many advantages. Here are some of the most viable digital products you can sell online:

eBooks

Self-publishing has become big nowadays as it gives a chance to budding, yet talented writers that can’t get into traditional publishing. If you don’t know anything about writing code but have a knack for the written word, then selling eBooks is for you. Not only can you pursue your passion for creating the next bestseller, but you’re also making money as well.

Graphic Design

If writing isn’t your thing, designing logos, icons, letterheads, and many others can be your niche. There is a great demand for artwork that businesses can use for their marketing strategies. You can create templates or customized work and sell them online for entrepreneurs or people who just love to buy art.

And if you are skilled at acquiring clients but not at designing, hire a freelance graphic designer to help you with the workload. You get the clients and your freelance partner gets the work done. Just be sure that you’re charging enough to make at least 50% profit from the split.

Software

If you are adept at writing code, you’re one step ahead. The software industry is seeing a lot of growth opportunities. The markets are already established and a clamor for useful software that you can turn into profits. Desktop software, mobile apps, or web-based apps are the most feasible to sell online as they provide value to customers and continuous earnings for you.   

Training Courses

If you’re knowledgeable in your chosen field of industry, you can sell training courses online. eLearning is a growing industry and even established institutions are getting on the bandwagon. Make yourself stand out from the rest by adding more value. For example, if you love knitting and cats, you can create an online course on how to knit cat sweaters and offer it to the knitting and cat communities.

Music and Audio

Whether it’s for entertainment or communication purposes, music is an excellent product to sell online. You can create soothing music, background noises, original songs, or even karaoke versions of popular songs. Then, you can hum your way to the bank.

Professional Services

Website design, translation, coaching, proofreading, or consultancy are some of the services you can sell online. Find the best method of showcasing your offering (website, social media, email, etc.) and find the clients in need of your services. In this case, you’re using a digital method to sell your time in exchange for an output.

Photography

Selling your photos online can be a great money-making side hustle. Website owners and bloggers use stock photos. By providing them with your photography, you can make a fun and profitable business. You’ll gain recognition as a photographer and your photos are almost guaranteed to be used frequently. You can also take in commissioned photos for businesses that can afford to pay for customized images.

How to Start Your Side Hustle

There are many more digital products you can sell online so don’t limit yourself to the ones listed above. As long as you have the determination to start a side hustle, you can start one and reap its benefits.
Here are a few tips to start yours:

Define Your Goals

Before you begin your side hustle, you need a clear definition of your goals. Determine what your expected outcome is and work your way from there. Do you want to forego your 9-5 job and work at home? Or do you just want an outlet for your artistic pursuits? Knowing what you want out of it will determine how you’ll go about your business.

Identify Your Skills

You can’t sell vocal training videos if you can’t carry a tune even if your lifelong dream is to become the greatest singer that walked the earth. Be realistic with your skills and identify where you’re really good at. With millions of people selling their wares online, you need to be competitive enough to create your space in the digital world.

Get Validation

One paying customer is all you need to get the validation for your side hustle to work. This will prove that the product or service that you’re selling has a market. Your business won’t move forward or may even fail if there is no one willing to buy it.

Stand Out from the Rest

Even if you see a thousand other people selling the same product like yours, add a twist to it to make it your own. It’s a good idea to keep tabs of what your competition is doing. You want to outperform them. 

Final Thoughts

Launching your store can be an exciting challenge and a fruitful one if it starts providing you with enough to let go of your day job. Once you build a strong foundation for your side hustle, you can easily turn it into something more stable and profitable to allow you the freedom and benefits of having a business that sells.

Categories
Lifestyle

12 DIY Wall Decor Ideas You Can Steal

Thinking of ways to add life and energy to your blank walls? Whether you’re at home or in your office, a little wall décor here and there are sure to perk up any room. And you don’t even have to spend a lot of money as you can create them yourself.

Here are DIY wall décor ideas that are guaranteed to have your creative juices flowing. Get ready to roll up your sleeves and start decorating the walls in your home or office. Take pride as you prettify your space with works of art that you can call your own.

Painted Wall Pattern

Add bursts of colors in any room of your house or office. You can decorate the walls with flowers, leaves, teddy bears and other designs for your kids’ room. You can also use your logo as a pattern if you’re decorating your office walls.

This adds more charm to your room instead of just plain paint or wallpaper. You can create a stamp or paint the walls yourself. Don’t be afraid if you think you don’t know how, just release the inner artist in you and have fun.

Source: Katie’s Pencil Box

Decorate your walls with several framed family portraits or artworks that you love. You can choose one or two complementary colors to use as a theme. Arrange them in a group with different frame shapes and sizes to add interest and variety.

Source: DIY Mama

Recycled Calendar Art

Some calendars feature beautiful artworks or amazing sceneries that sometimes it’s hard for us to throw them away. Now you can put them to good use as DIY wall décor ideas. Have them framed and hang them on the walls of your living room or office.

Source: All Those Details

Clothesline

Get an empty picture frame and place strings on the inner edges. Add some clothespins and hang your favorite photographs, postcards, or memorabilia. You can replace the photos as often as you like or you can even add more strings to allow you room for new ones.

Source: CommonCreativ ATL

Wood and Leather

Showcase the memories of your travels or pictures of your beloved pets using wood and leather. Create a frame with scrap wood and leather to hang your photos or artworks. You can create different sizes and make them interchangeable. Hang more than one and tell a story for a great conversation piece.

Source: Bonnie Christine

Paper Punch Art

Using a circle puncher and the most beautiful gift wrapping paper you can find, create this paper punch art. Line the cut paper on a plain whiteboard and hang them on your wall. You can go crazy and create a mosaic or use different combinations of paper and background colors.

Source: Mer Mag

Scrabble Board

Perfect for entertaining guests in your home or office, this scrabble board is sure to put smiles on your visitor’s faces. Not only is this a brilliant wall décor, but it’s also fun and engaging while on your office break. Place magnets under each scrabble tile, frame and hang a scrabble board, and start playing the word game!

Source: The Twice Remembered Cottage

World Map Mural

Decorate your room with a map mural of the world. Use a projector and trace a world map on your wall. Place markers on places you already visited or are planning to go to. Perfect for the wanderlust in you as you can use your wall instead of a globe.

Source: Burlap & Denim

Washi Tape Décor

For a minimalist design but is packed with elegance and style, try using washi tapes on your walls. Create crosses, stripes, boxes, or many other shapes. This requires little artistic talent but will make your walls look appealing. Try using a combination of colors or shapes and sizes.

Source: Emily Loeffelman Lifestyle & Design

Glow in the Dark Décor

Ideal for your kids’ bedrooms, (or yours), place a multitude of glow in the dark stars in the ceilings or walls. Watch them light up when you turn off the lights or nighttime comes. Your kids will love it and can be a good replacement for nightlights. Turn the nights into something magical with one of the easiest DIY wall décor ideas.

Source: Marino Bambinos

Letter Wall Art

Spray paint some cardboard letters and hang them on your walls. Write a message or choose your favorite words and place them in different rooms of the house or office. Use gold or silver paint to make it classier but any of your fave colors will brighten up your walls.

Source: 346Living

Clipboard Wall Art

For an easy and simple way to decorate your wall, hang clipboards. Clip pictures, messages, artworks, or your favorite quotes. You can change them whenever you wish or whatever the occasion is. Choose different sizes and makes of clipboards to hang small business cards or large posters.

Source: Craft-O-Maniac

Marbleized Wall Art

Bring out the modern art enthusiast in you with this framed marbleized art that you can do yourself. Add color and interest to your walls and instantly liven up any wall in any room. Look for tutorials on how you can paint or have someone do the painting for you. It doesn’t have to be an expensive painting, just something that will add pizazz to your wall is more than enough.

Source: The 2 Seasons

Categories
Lifestyle

Valentine’s Day Blog Ideas You Wish You’d Thought Of

Bloggers have done similar tactics from marketers to use holiday marketing in their blogs. This helps bring in readers and increase traffic, provided they’re covering something new that other marketers haven’t touched yet.

A common topic often covered by marketing blogs is anything that’s crafty and can be done with sticks and glue. It’s a great way to showoff their artistic abilities meanwhile providing awesome content that’s as much fun to read as it is to create.

Another popular theme is creating a comprehensive guide on how to pull together a Valentine’s day marketing theme. This is great if you have extensive experience on the subject matter and your professional input has depth to it. This strategy is great when combined with visuals such as detailed infographics and step by step tutorials.

In this article, we look at 12 different bloggers that used three different styles for their Valentine’s Day blogs. 

Printables

Printables are one of the most popular Valentine ideas from bloggers. Some bloggers would create cards or other design assets that their readers can present to their loved ones.

Hey, Let’s Make Stuff

Cori George isthe DIY blogger behind “Hey Let’s Make Stuff”. She’s also known to prepare SVG printable files of her crafts for her readers to enjoy and use in their lives.

In 2019, Cori created Valentine’s Day Card printables for her readers. She has six designs that any of her followers can use to give to their significant others or loved ones. Cori also demonstrates how her readers can fold the cards properly and the sizes needed for printing.

Printables are one of the best Valentine’s Day ideas because not many find the time to head to the store and buy a stock card. Plus, Cori ensures that her readers are guided through the process of showing how to give the card through folding.

Tell Love and Party

Sara is the owner of the Tell Love and Party blog. She writes about party, DIY, and interior posts, among other things. She also creates printables for her readers.

Her Valentine’s Day printables are famous quotes turned into typographies from the shows: Friends, The Office, and Parks and Recreation. Fans of the shows will love to receive this because not only will they get the reference, but they will laugh as well.

She also has other Valentine’s Day printables such as cake toppers, postcards, and stickers for her readers to enjoy.

Guides

Guides have been a popular type of blog post that many bloggers and marketers use. Some bloggers have used guides for their Valentine’s Day Ideas, and it works.

The Beauty Department

Kirstin Ess and Amy Nadine run and are co-founders of the Beauty Department, a hair and make-up focused blog. 

In 2013, The Beauty Department posted their “Why Not” blog post guide for make-up enthusiasts. There, they use red lipstick, lip brush, red glitter, and clear lip gloss.

On the infographic style guide, photos of how to apply make-up are shown.

Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about giving gifts. The Beauty Department wants to instill confidence in their readers during Valentine’s Day by looking good. Even if the glitter look doesn’t shout kissable lips, the aesthetic can boost the individual’s confidence even for a day.

BarkPost

Dog lovers everywhere will love this blog. BarkPost provides readers everything and anything dog-related. Funny, good, and cute dogs are some of their many features on the blog.

In one of their blog posts, they listed different stationery ideas that dog lovers would love to receive on Valentine’s Day. They provided illustrations or graphic designs from different designers, which are all aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Whether the owner is giving it to their loved one or their dog, BarkPost’s list is one of the best Valentine’s Day ideas for dog lovers.

Impurrfect Life

Kamira runs Impurrfect Life, a blog she started after losing her cat to cancer. She doesn’t only blog about losing pets, she also creates designs and hosts giveaways.

For Valentine’s Day 2018, she posted an infographic she created on how to spend Valentine’s Day with your pet. For many, Valentine’s Day is shared with significant others and loved ones. But for those who have fur babies, Valentine’s Day is also another reason to show their fur babies an extra dose of loving.

On the infographic, she shared that you can have some quality time with your pets or give them gifts. For those who have yet to have their fur babies, they can either adopt or volunteer. It’s one of the best Valentine’s Day ideas in the list because it presents how fur parents can show their love for their fur babies. Meanwhile, those that don’t, can benefit from it too by adopting or volunteering.

Visuals

Visuals can enhance any blog posts because photos can contribute to the readability of the blog. By adding a simple text-type visual or graphic design, readers can click on the blog or skim the blog post. Plus, if the visuals are related to the topic, readers may get an overall feel of the blog post.

The Kitchn

The Kitchn is a magazine that provides recipes, lessons, and advice for their readers.

For those who love astrology (and chocolates!), they can get a kick out of the infographic created by The Kitchn. They even provided descriptions below of how those chocolates relate to one’s zodiac sign. 

The descriptions may or may not connect with you, but it’s a clever Valentine’s Day idea. It enables to establish a connection with the reader. Not only that, the infographic is shareable to other people. This could lead people to their website and eventually learn more new recipes along the way.

Fatherly

Fatherly is a website that provides advice and news to fathers. Not many websites or blogs focus on fathers, and Fatherly is leading the pack.

For their list of romantic gifts to give to wives on Valentine’s Day, they provided a simple graphic design for their blog post header. There, it features some of the gifts they listed on the post. The graphic design serves as a preview of what they’re presenting to husbands and fathers.

From the photo, fathers can get an idea of Valentine’s Day gifts they can give. Also, it might make them click because Fatherly has 11 gift ideas on the blog and the photo featured only six.

Easy Blog Emily

Emily is an up-and-coming 20-something blogger dedicated to helping others to launch their blogs through tips.

In 2019, Emily posted a guide for bloggers on what Valentine’s Day-related blog posts to write for different bloggers. It’s a nice gesture for those starting since she is too. Also, bloggers don’t have to look around as much for new ideas. She’s given them topics that they could write.

Moscato Mom

Lynsey Kmetz runs the Moscato Mom, a lifestyle blog that covers everything food, travel, and wine.

Just like Emily, Moscato Mom provided her list of giveaway tips from bloggers for bloggers. Guides like these can help bloggers come up with their giveaways on Valentine’s Day. It will help establish a stronger connection and better engagement with their readers through their blog posts or on social media.

Food Bloggers

Fifteen bloggers teamed up for a Valentine’s Day giveaway in 2015. They gave away a $300 Amazon gift card to one lucky winner. Their giveaway campaign ran from February 2 to 9.

The graphic design specifically created for the event was good. The copy in the graphic design was straightforward. One can figure out what it’s about and who the event organizers were. All participants need to do was sign up and cross their fingers to win the grand prize.

Pink the Town

Amanda Losier owns the blog Pink the Town. The blog covers different topics like fashion, beauty, and decor.

Back in 2014, Pink the Town partnered with Blush & Bloom, a wedding and event website. They invited readers to join a DIY flower arrangement workshop. Participants got goodies and received a 15% discount at Bicycle Boutique.

Hosting a workshop is a great Valentine’s Day idea. It’s a way to show off the blogger’s expertise and allows for more recognition for the collaborator.

The graphic design for the flyer was apt and on-brand for the blogger. It was colorful and eye-catching so readers get interested in the workshop.

Sarah Hearts

Sarah Khandijan owns the Sarah Hearts lifestyle blog. She has a background in graphic design, so she also provides printables for her readers.

Just like Pink the Town, Sarah Hearts invited her readers to an art workshop. The flyer for the event is simple. The copy also includes the link where people can type. Overall, it’s much better to include the link rather than cluttering the copy.

Key Takeaways

Different bloggers have different Valentine’s Day ideas to attract more readers and differentiate themselves from the competition. Some bloggers go the extra mile to create graphic designs for their blog posts. It’s a good way to add visuals to their blog to enhance readability.

The 12 bloggers utilized these popular Valentine’s Day ideas well because they’re on-brand and they bring readers to their blog. Well-made printables, guides, or visuals make their Valentine’s Day blog more enjoyable for readers.