How To Make And Sell Digital Planners (Step-By-Step)

Want to learn how to make and sell digital planners? I’ve got you covered.

In this post, I’ll show you how to make money by selling digital planners online, either on marketplaces like Etsy or through your website.

We’ll cover every step of the process, from choosing a niche to planning, creating, formatting, and listing your digital planners for sale. I’ll even share some effective marketing strategies you can use to get customers.

First, let’s start with the basics…

What are digital planners?

Digital planners are exactly what you’d expect—they’re just like regular planners, but digital.

Instead of physically opening them up with your hands, you open them up on a tablet device (like an iPad) via an annotation app like Goodnotes, Notability, or Penly.

And instead of a pencil/pen, you use a stylus (like an Apple Pencil) to annotate them.

Digital planners are typically more interactive than regular paper planners too.

They often include hyperlinks, making it easy for users to jump between dates, as well as other interactive elements like stickers, widgets, etc.

Types of digital planners

There are lots of different types of digital planners that you can sell online.

Often, sellers will focus on one particular use case and design their planners to help readers achieve a specific goal. That could be saving money, losing weight, or anything else.

Here are some ideas for different digital planner types you might want to focus on:

Financial planners. These planners help people to stay on top of their finances. They might include sections like a bill tracker, budget sheet, expense tracker, shopping tracker, savings log, and space to jot down your financial goals.
Health & fitness planners. These planners help users to track their fitness journey. They might include sections like a running log, nutrition tracker, workout journal, body measurements tracker, gym planning, etc.
Wedding planners. These planners help users to plan their wedding day. They might include pages for vendor contact details, style inspiration, wedding tips, food/drink menu ideas, music lists, budget tracking, etc.
Travel planners. These planners help users to plan their next vacation or backpacking trip. They might include pages for notes for activities in each destination, luggage packing checklists, travel inspiration, budgeting, etc.
Academic planners. These planners are designed for students and teachers. They’re typically dated to follow the academic year and include ample room for notes and study planning.

These are just some of your options, but there are plenty more. It’s up to you to do your research and decide what type of digital planner you want to make.

Why sell digital planners?

Before I show you how to get started, I want to quickly tell you why I think selling digital planners is such a great way to make money right now.

It’s a trending product. Digital planning is a trendy hobby right now and lots of people are doing it. Just look at the Google Trends data: It shows the number of internet searches for ‘digital planners’ has been increasing steadily since 2019, and there’s over 4x as much search interest now as there was 5 years ago. What’s more, the diaries and planners market is expected to reach $1.47 billion by 2031.
Little to no startup cost. It doesn’t have to cost anything to make and sell digital planners, other than your time. And because you don’t need to invest any money to get started, it’s pretty much risk-free.
(Almost) 100% profit margin. You only have to create a digital planner once, and you can sell it an infinite number of times. And unlike selling physical products, you don’t have to pay for any stock or materials, so almost all of your sales revenue is profit (minus transaction & payment processing fees). In contrast, with most physical products, you’d be lucky to get a 30%+ profit margin.
It’s fun. Making digital planners is a lot of fun if you have a knack for it. It’s creatively fulfilling and gives you an excuse to exercise your imagination and practice graphic design.

How to make digital planners that customers want

There are lots of digital planner sellers out there and competition is fierce. If you want to stand out from the competition and make sales, it’s important to make sure you create a top-notch planner that customers will want. Here’s how to do that.

Step 1: Choose a niche

The first—and arguably, most important—step in creating digital planners is going to be to choose your niche.

Your niche is the specific sub-section of the digital planner market you want to target. Ideally, you’ll want to target a niche that’s not too competitive but still has plenty of potential customers.

And the best way to find that kind of niche is through market research.

You can start by going to Etsy, Pinterest, or Google and searching for ‘digital planner’. Then, browse the results to see what kind of products people want.

For example, if I do this on Etsy, I can immediately see a bunch of different niches:

ADHD planner
Student planner
Wedding planner
Party or event planner
Business planner

Some of these have ‘bestseller’ badges, indicating they’re in demand, which is a good sign. However, a lot of them also seem to be very competitive, so let’s niche down further.

If I type ‘wedding planner’ into Google, and then add different letters at the start of the search string. I can use the search suggestions to find a related sub-niche that people are searching for.

Using this method, I can see that people often search for ‘Disney wedding planner’.

But if I go back on Etsy and type that in, there are hardly any results specifically for Disney wedding planners.

So, there’s virtually no competition. And the fact that it’s a search suggestion is an indication that there’s demand. Therefore, this could be a great niche to target.

Step 2: Determine what should go in your planner

The next step is to start planning what you’re going to include in your planner.

A lot of this will depend on your niche, but there are some essential features that are pretty much universal.

For example, all dated digital planners will include a yearly (12-month) calendar. Most will generally include monthly and daily views too, as well as sections for notes, design elements, and quotes.

Note: Keep in mind that some customers prefer undated digital planners. If you want to cover all bases, you could offer both versions as product variants.

I’d recommend looking at around 10 to 15 of the bestselling planners in whatever niche you’re targeting on Etsy to see what other niche-relevant features they’ve included and using that to come up with ideas for your own project.

For example, if I look at some of the bestselling ‘student planners’, I can see they commonly include sections like:

Assignment tracker
Study session log
Group project planner
Exam preparation checklist
Homework tracker
Academic calendar (dated July – June)

So, if I were making my own student digital planner, it would make sense to include many of these features.

It’s also worth asking yourself what features are missing from the competition. What else could you add to make yours stand out? The more value and unique features you offer, the more you can charge.

Step 3: Get the right tools

You’re almost ready to create your digital planner. First, you just need to choose which tools you’re going to use.

I’d recommend Canva. It’s an online graphic design tool that’s free to use and beginner-friendly. It comes with hundreds of digital planner templates and they’re all fully customizable, making it easy to get started.

Plus, it also has a huge library with millions of pre-fab assets like graphics, illustrations, shapes, etc. You can drag and drop these onto the page, then rearrange, resize, and customize them as needed to create your own unique designs.

There are a bunch of other great tools like Canva on the market but their free plans are usually a little more restrictive.

Canva does have a Pro plan that comes with premium assets and some unique features, but it’s not necessary. However, it will come in useful if you want to offer your planner in multiple size formats as Pro users can resize their canvas mid-project.

If you don’t want to use Canva to create digital planners, another option is Planify Pro. It’s designed specifically for making PDF planner inserts so it’s a little more advanced and has over 3k customizable planner templates.

Procreate is a digital sketch program that’s great for creating digital planner stickers. You can include these as part of the planner package to add value or sell them separately as add-ons to boost average order values.

Note: One more thing worth mentioning here is that if you have limited graphic design skills and you don’t want to create your own digital planner from scratch, you also have the option of buying a PRL (Public Rights License) template from a site like Etsy, customizing it, and then reselling it.

Step 4: Create the basic layout

Start by creating the basic layout for your planner in whatever tool you’ve chosen to use.

If you’re making a dated planner, this will mean adding in all the pages for each month/day/week you plan to include, as well as note sections, etc.

The easiest way to go about this is to start from a template for a particular page, duplicate that page as many times as needed, and customize each one.

Step 5: Add niche-relevant pages, inserts, and features

Once you have the basic structure in place, flesh it out with more specific features based on the plan you came up with in step two.

For example, if you were making a financial planner, here’s where you’d add your budgeting page, expense tracker, etc.

Think carefully about the user experience here. How can you lay everything out in a way that makes sense and provides the best experience for the user?

You don’t have to design each page/insert from scratch either. You can always find a template on Canva or elsewhere, customize it, and add it in.

Step 6: Add hyperlinks

Next, consider adding hyperlinks so that users can flick between different sections in one click.

To do this on Canva, right-click whatever element you want to add the link on, click Link, and then select the page you want it to skip to.

I’d recommend adding a table of contents page at the start that links to important sections. It might also be worth adding tabs like you’d find on a regular planner that link to different months.

Step 7: Customize the aesthetic

The final step is to nail your digital planner design. Choose a color theme and style and stick to it throughout your planner for consistency. You might also want to add decorative touches like graphics, stickers, and doodles.

You might even want to create different variations of your planner with different aesthetics to target a wider base of customers. For example, you could make a ‘boho’ version, a ‘floral’ version, a ‘minimalist’ version, etc.

Step 8: Export it as a PDF

Once you’ve made your digital planner, proofread it to make sure there are no mistakes like typos or broken hyperlinks.

If you’re happy with everything, download it as a PDF file (make sure it’s saved in the correct dimensions).

Now, you have a digital planner to sell. You might want to create a few mockup/preview images at this stage too. You’ll add these to your product listings so your customers can have a sneak peek at what they’re buying.

How to sell digital planners on your own website

I’d recommend selling digital planners through your own website.

That way, you get complete control over your store, prices, and everything else. And more importantly, you keep 100% of your profits as there’s no middleman to take a cut.

What’s more, you don’t run the risk of losing sales to competitors like you do on marketplaces like Etsy. And when you market your digital planners, you won’t be promoting your competitors at the same time—all of the traffic will go to your site, rather than someone else’s.

You can build your website with any ecommerce platform, but I’d recommend Sellfy.

It’s the best ecommerce platform for beginners as it’s incredibly easy to use and takes less than 5 minutes to set everything up.

Plus, it doesn’t charge any transaction fees, and it also has a built-in print-on-demand feature in case you want to branch out to selling physical products alongside your digital planners.

Note: If you don’t want to use Sellfy, see our roundup of the best ecommerce platforms to sell digital products to explore more options.

Building your Sellfy store

To get started, sign up for Sellfy. There’s a 14-day free trial and plans to suit every budget.

Once you’re in, connect your PayPal or Stripe so you can take payments. Then, upload your digital planner PDF file as a digital product.

Building your Sellfy store - Add new product

Enter a product name and description, add your preview images, and set your pricing. Then, save it to add it to your store ready for customers to buy. Sellfy will handle delivery and get the file to the customer after they check out.

Building your Sellfy store - Add product file

If you want to change the way your store looks, you can do so through Sellfy’s Store Customizer. There are also a bunch of built-in tools to help you manage orders, create offers, and more.

Note: You can also sell other PDF files through Sellfy—see our guide on how to sell PDFs online to get started.

How to sell digital planners on marketplaces

The other option is to sell your digital planners on marketplaces.

The great thing about marketplaces is they typically have a huge existing customer base with millions of shoppers, which makes it easier to make sales.

However, they’ll also usually take a cut of your sales revenue, and you don’t have as much control. Plus, you’ll be competing with thousands of other sellers on the same platform.

If you want to go down this route, Etsy is the best place to get started.

It’s a marketplace of independent artists and makers with 90+ million regular customers, and it’s probably the most popular place buyers go for things like digital planners.

You don’t need to pay any monthly subscription fee to sell on Etsy, and you’ll only pay a small $0.20 listing fee per product plus transaction fees on your sales.

Another option is Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). It’s a self-publishing service that authors mainly use to self-publish and sell ebooks and books on Amazon, which are then printed on demand. However, you could use it to sell planners too, both as digital planners and physical copies.

7 ways to market your digital planners

Even if you make the best digital planner in the world, you’re not going to make as many sales as you deserve unless you also spend some time marketing it.

With that in mind, before we wrap up, I’m going to share 7 proven ways to market your digital planners effectively.

Social media

Pinterest and Instagram, in particular, are great places to promote your digital planners.

Create some preview images that show off the best bits and pin them or share them on Instagram. You could even make a Reel to showcase what your planner looks like in action.

To get views on your pins and Instagram posts, work on growing your organic audience by consistently posting engaging content that appeals to your target audience. You might also consider boosting your social media posts via paid ads.

SEO

Optimize your website, product pages, and Etsy/Amazon listings for search to make it easier for your target buyers to find them.

Start with keyword research to find out what search terms and phrases your customers search for, and then optimize around these keywords. For example, you might want to include your target keywords in your product listing title, description, URL slug, etc.

There’s a lot more that goes into effective SEO. See our beginner’s guide for more information.

Paid advertising

Sometimes, you’ve got to spend money to make money.

If you’re struggling to make sales organically, consider running ads on Etsy, or on Google to promote your Sellfy store.

Ads are shown at the top of the results page to customers who search for your target keywords, so it can help you to get a ton of traffic fast—but it comes at a cost.

You’ll need to be converting a good chunk of that traffic to customers to get an adequate return on investment (ROI).

Discounts & offers

Incentivize potential customers to buy your digital planners by running discounts and offers.

You can set this up on Sellfy with the built-in discount tool, or on Etsy by going to Shop Manager > Marketing > Sales and Discounts > Run a sale.

Affiliate marketing

Sellfy now has a built-in affiliate marketing tool that lets you launch your own affiliate program.

In an affiliate program, other people promote your products for you. And in return, they earn a commission on any sale they refer (e.g. 10%, 20%, 30% of the revenue).

You can set your own commission rates and windows, track affiliate performance, and more from your Sellfy dashboard.

Niche communities

Join niche communities on the internet and promote your digital planners there.

For example, if you’re creating an academic digital planner targeted at students, you could try promoting it on subreddits like r/students or r/college, or on forums like The Student Room.

Just keep in mind that in most community spaces, there are rules prohibiting advertising. So if you’re going to go down this route, be subtle about it and try not to break the rules.

Freebies

Consider offering a basic, free version of your digital planner. Then, use it to upsell the more complete version. It’s a lot easier to convince people to download a free planner than it is to get them to pay for one, so this is a great way to get leads into your sales funnel.

Final thoughts

That covers everything you need to know about making and selling digital planners online. The rest is up to you.

To quickly recap what we’ve covered, you can create your digital planners using Canva. Research the market to find a low-competition, high-demand niche, and look at what other sellers have included in their planners when planning yours.

The best place to sell your digital planners is through your own store, which you can build on Sellfy. It might also be worth listing them for sale on Etsy (and other marketplaces) to reach more customers.

Not sure if you want to start a digital planner business? There are lots of other digital products you can sell online instead. Check out the guides below to explore your options:

You might also want to check out our guide on how to come up with new product ideas.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. If you click on certain links we may make a commission.

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