Stay productive during quarantine: simple ways to make money from home

The number of people who make money from home by selling goods and services online increases by the day. And with the COVID-19 pandemic damaging in-store commerce for many retailers, even more entrepreneurs are stepping out and finding solutions to their offline challenges.

In fact, the U.S. digital goods’ market size is expected to reach 300 million internet shoppers by 2023. That’s about 90% of America’s entire population!

Are you already selling digital products on your site or a third-party service? Or are you just interested in getting started? Whatever the answer is, find out how to join the movement below, and earn extra cash without leaving your couch.

Why selling digital products is such a great idea

There’s a whole bunch of advantages you get when selling digital products that aren’t available to those who sell physical goods. First of all, you don’t have to deal with shipping issues, taxes, complex laws, importing, and so on.

Digital products are much easier to distribute, significantly more sustainable, can be replaced or recreated at any time. With just a little time and effort, anyone is capable of making a digital product worthy of sharing or selling.

Got anything to share? Turn it into a digital product

You are probably wondering what types of digital products you can choose to sell. And the answer is: pretty much everything. Do not hesitate to share your knowledge, talents or opinions. Each of them could likely become a steady source of income.

Another critical question is: what kinds of digital products have a higher ‘selling potential’?

We’ve decided to pass on all the dubious schemes promising easy money in no time. Instead, we’ve narrowed down our pick to just five products that have proved to be the most reliable:

• • Documents. Most often, documents come in the form of templates (anything from forms, such as legal and employment forms, to business plans) or informational pieces. There are also CVs, legal forms, how-to articles, PPT presentations, receipts, gift certificates and tons of other document types you can sell. Just make sure your document isn’t subject to intellectual property owned by someone or something else.

 

• • Electronic books. E-books are relatively simple to produce since they require little more than just written text and a few relevant images. They are simple to distribute, easily used by customers, who can download and read them on e-readers, tablets, computers, and smartphones. Additionally, you can educate, advise, or curate existing content with an e-book and then sell it on your website.

 

• • Courses. e-Learning is an industry open to innovations and is growing with unprecedented momentum. As it expands, we are starting to see traditional educational institutions explore new ways for making their content more available to learners. Learning material can be sold either in the form of a downloadable course or collection of courses or as a subscription to a web-based service.

 

• • Photography and art. Digital products based on visual art include a variety of things, from logos and PSD templates to PowerPoint themes and original artwork. You can create and sell card designs, patterns, backgrounds, drawings, sketches and much more. Note, that high-quality, original artwork can be priced higher. If you can produce artwork digitally, it’s definitely worth selling online (just be sure to license it correctly!).

 

• Music and audio. Audio is a powerful communication medium. There are many different types of digital audio products out there, that users eagerly purchase. It’s not always for music but other types of audio material too, e.g., lectures, musical samples, audiobooks, language lessons, sound effects or even relaxing background noises.

There are, of course, many more types of digital downloads you can distribute online. But since pdfFiller is a document management solution, we’re going to focus solely on this subject as we continue on.

 

Why selling documents online makes sense

In an age of downloadable goods, millions of documents are searched for and purchased daily. Why? More and more consumers prefer to use standard document templates rather than creating them from scratch. Contracts, agreements, rental and eviction documents, vendor and application forms — all these documents can be published and sold online.

 

Sell documents directly to customers

The ability to sell files online directly to customers, without a vendor acting as the middle man, is a relatively new thing. There are just a few services on the market that allow a seller (author or publisher of a product) to distribute their digital products, including PDF documents and forms. And each has its own set of pros and cons. Among their most common drawbacks are cost, lack of security, and limited options for customization.

What you’re looking for is an online selling platform that meets all compliance and security standards while providing a range of possibilities for sellers wishing to sell digital downloads.

With SellMyForms, you can quickly turn documents into digital downloads, distribute them via a URL, embed them on a web page or create a separate website for each form. It enables customers to find your form using search engines and purchase it online in a matter of minutes.

How to sell documents with SellMyForms?

First of all, choose your industry. Then create a professional-looking document template. Use Word, Google Docs or any other document editor to create your sample. You can also select any document from pdfFiller’s library of 25 million fillable documents and customize it according to your needs.

Feel free to edit your form, add images and logos, and insert fillable fields to make it easy for your customers to fill out. Then, create the title, description and price for your form and connect your payment account.

What happens next?

Your form will be processed within 24 hours. SellMyForms will analyze your document and create a landing page with the necessary keywords and content to be indexed by Google and other search engines. Providing free organic traffic (customers) to your form in the future.

Once your document is published, you’ll get an email with all the info concerning your form, a link to your web page and a direct link to your form that you can share with others. You can also track changes via your pdfFiller account and view statistics for your document.

When a customer finds your form and wants to buy it, all they have to do is send money to your payment account.

Make editing and selling documents online simple

Why do users choose SellMyForms? The platform stays ahead of its competitors in terms of security and usability while allowing you to:

• • Protect your sensitive data by enabling two-factor authentication or by storing files in password-protected folders.

 

• • Get unlimited storage for your documents, a powerful PDF editor for better document customization and a free SEO-optimized landing page for each form you publish.

 

• • Embed your forms on external websites by simply copying and pasting a link.

 

• Receive payments via Stripe, the most secure and reliable online payment service on the web.

Since SellMyForms works with Stripe, you can accept payments from almost any kind of credit or debit card. Customers can even pay you with prepaid gift cards. Stripe supports payment processing in over 135 national currencies. It allows you to accept payments in your customers’ native currencies while receiving funds in yours.

Don’t sit on your ideas. Sell them!

All of the things described above have been tried, tested and proved effective as techniques to make money from home. Still, it takes more than learning the right strategies but also a lot of hard work to implement a particular strategy and make a full time living from home.

Use our recommendations as a source of inspiration, and don’t be afraid to think outside the box and come up with your own unique idea on a product to sell.