I Made My First $19 Selling Notion Templates In 2 Years As A Solopreneur
Building a business is the hardest and the most profitable journey you can pursue in your life.
Or so I thought…
Until I made my first sale of $19 for one of my Notion templates.
I learned that the rewards one gains in the end make the effort worth it, so the entire journey feels happier than ever.
You can sense this form of happiness if you’ve made your first $$$ dollar online.
If you haven’t made it there,
Let me show you how it happened for me, so you can get that feeling too.
This is exactly what I would do (did) to earn my first $.
#1 - You Need A Huge Mindset Shift
"Shift your mindset from 'I need money' to 'I create value.' When you focus on solving problems and adding value to people's lives, wealth becomes a natural byproduct."
Most people forsake this idea, turning a blind eye to it.
Let me tell you this :
Unless you get a shift in your mindset, you can never make money or sustain it in the long run.
Because there’ll be days when you feel at the lowest point in your life and business.
Those are the days when you must never give up to gain an upper hand on the bright days to come.
Hanging in the ‘lows’ & Enjoying the ‘highs’ is how you run the business you love.
I’ve been on those days - a lot of days.
Trust me.
#2 - Learn And Master A Skill
"Skills make dreams happen. They build economies. They make people rich and famous."
When I say “skill“, it doesn’t have to be a super complex skill with a lot of moving parts in it.
I chose Notion and Canva because they were tools I used every day already.
Building systems and designs out of them felt a breeze since I was already familiar with them.
Choose a tool
Learn the basics
Adapt the tool to your uniqueness
Build a solution for an existing problem
Share it with people in the digital space
It’s that simple.
You don’t need to spend 100’s of dollars on courses trying to learn a current in-demand skill for the market’s needs.
People care about the problem you solve more than the tool you use to solve it.
Go for this first.
#3 - You Need People To Know You
“If you know how to build an audience, you will make any business profitable.”
This is probably the first step I would take to build my business starting today, because…
Even if you learn the greatest skill ever known in human history, if it can’t be displayed to people, you can’t get recognized.
I know you’ve heard this like a hundred times, but…
Building an audience is the key to making money online.
But, as long as you provide value to people in return for the dollars they pay you, you become a trustable person.
You need to develop a close circle of people who like & trust you enough to pay you because they know you’ll not ask them for money if it isn’t worth it.
That’s the level of authority you will gain if you have the right people.
But…
How do you Build an Audience ?
Teach people what you learn
Share your personal interests
Inspire people with new aspects of things they perceive as the problem
This is the shortest way to put it, but that’s the core of building your audience.
I built my following on X by giving out value this way.
Treat them as “your friends” rather than a follower count on a dashboard.
#4 - Build A Product You’ll Pay For
“If you build for yourself, you’ll always have product-market fit.”
Once you made enough friends you can rely on, it’s time to build the product
I have failed at building a good product again and again.
It’s all those failures stacked up that led me to my first successful product.
FYI, I started by creating E-Books as a digital product.
My first e-book looked good to me, but it’s the worst product I built now that I give it a thought.
So, yeah. It’ll take time for you to master building your best product that gets you $$$.
But, don’t focus on the dollars for a moment.
Instead, focus on how valuable your product can be turned into.
This shift in idea made me build my “Social Media Manager“ template in Notion.
This template isn’t something I made in one go.
Building my freebies like “Daily Planner“, “Habit Tracker“ and a lot more made me learn the ins & outs of Notion.
I knew the value of building this template since it’s built upon hours of effort, but I wanted to give it away for free.
But, I finally decided to make it a paid product for $19 to test how well it does.
And then, I did a giveaway on X.
100+ people wanted it.
Once the giveaway was over, I got my “sales notification“ for the $19 payout making me realize 2 facts :
Pricing it for $19 is the right choice for the value I put in
People do recognize the value I bring to them
From this point, I’m now building more templates with unique perspectives on problems I can solve.
You can check out the templates I built if you like.
#5 - The Dark Side
Honestly speaking, none of this would’ve been possible if I had given up once in my journey.
When there’s victory, there’s always failure.
With failures comes the bad impression that you can’t do anything.
You might question yourself :
“Am I good enough ?“
“Can I really do this ?“
“What if I fail in my business ?“
“I haven’t gotten results after all these efforts, what do I do ?“
I can write these questions down because I got these questions myself.
If you’re out there in the other corner of the world trying to build a business for yourself & earn your first $,
You’re good enough and you’ll get that notification on your mobile one day.
Trust me with these words.
Anyway, that’s my journey up until this point and I’m so grateful to myself for working hard to get there.
Oh…
Talking about my journey,
I’m building a completely organized system in Notion focusing on the core domains to develop your personal lifestyle - “Personal Life OS Bundle“
This system centralizes your personal development in a dashboard & makes you level up your growth with a transformative lifestyle.
You can check out this bundle system and join the waitlist for a massive discount during the launch.
Thanks for reading my journey.
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See you later,
Templater Guy.