I've made $210,000 in less than 2 years selling spreadsheet templates on Etsy. Here are 5 easy-to-follow tips for making sales.

• Emily McDermott sells spreadsheet templates on Etsy for Google Sheets and Excel. 
• According to McDermott, people don't have to be experts in Excel to start this easy side hustle.
• She breaks down five steps beginners should take to make their Etsy shops stand out.  

In under two years, I've made CA$280,600 or around $210,000 on Etsy selling spreadsheet templates for Google Sheets and Excel.

I'm not a spreadsheet expert by any means, but I do know how to find digital products that are in demand and will help people to save time on something that would typically take them much longer to do.

I haven't seen a lot of people talking about this, so I thought I would share my best tips for you to start a new stream of passive income for yourself – which digital products are excellent for.

1. I use eRank to find low-competition, high-demand keywords on Etsy

If you're opening a new shop or if your shop hasn't had many sales yet, the fastest way to gain traction is by making something a lot of people are searching for, but that not a lot of people are selling yet.

ERank is also super affordable compared to some other Etsy keyword tools. The most important feature eRank includes is the "keyword tool"; this is an easy search function where you type in a keyword (the name of the
product you want to make) and learn both the level of search volume and competition, as well as find other similar keywords that buyers are searching for. This tool is fantastic for quickly analyzing a wide array of keywords on Etsy.

The "keyword tool" is almost exclusively what I use eRank for. It's a strategic way to quickly identify the products you can make that are both in demand and not highly competitive.

The other feature I use is at the bottom of the "keyword tool" page. You'll see a listing of the actual top 100 listings on Etsy for the keyword you're investigating.

I like to sort these listings by the number of daily views, so I can see how much traffic the best-performing listings for this keyword are actually getting each and every day. This really helps to confirm the level of demand there is for this keyword.

2. Once I have these keywords, I make more than one listing per keyword

Instead of trying to sell just one "bookkeeping template," for example, I would list a few different variations of one.

This has two purposes. The first is to test out which one sells the best. The second is so that when someone searches for a "bookkeeping template," they will see many of my listings – not just one of mine hidden amongst a bunch of others made by other sellers.

3. I keep each template simple and focused on saving people time

You don't need to make anything complicated for people to buy it, trust me. People are searching for a done-for-them spreadsheet because they want to save time on something that would take them longer to do themselves.

People also don't want to be intimidated by a ton of graphs and places to enter their information. They want to buy it and get something out of it in minutes. 

4. I know that people want to buy a solution that they don't want to make themselves

If you look on Etsy, you'll see that spreadsheets tend to sell for a higher price, from $4 to $40, versus printable PDF templates that sometimes sell for just $1. It would take customers a lot more time and skill to make a spreadsheet, so they are more likely to pay a premium for it.

5. I focused on a niche and built an email list around it

If you focus on a niche, like bookkeeping or wedding planning, you can get repeat customers back to your shop the next time they need a template.

I focused on a niche and sent everyone a link to join my email list with their order. It took me a while to see the value in this, but a few months in I sent an email to my list and made $800 that day.

You can get Convertkit for free when you have under 1,000 people on your list, and this is what I used to get started.

Here are some ideas for spreadsheet templates you can sell on Etsy:

• Wedding planners
• Bookkeeping templates
• Habit trackers
• Cleaning checklists
• Personal budgeting templates
• Debt payoff trackers
• Life planners
• Investment trackers

You can sell a spreadsheet version of pretty much anything that's selling as a printable right now that you think would be even faster and better in spreadsheet form. 

I know that making a spreadsheet might seem intimidating, but there's a lot you can learn for free. I used a lot of free tutorials on making graphs, customizing templates, etc.

If I let my fear get in my way, I wouldn't have earned a 6-figure income. The growth in my income came when I went from selling $3 printables to $20 spreadsheets. And I was just selling bundles of simple templates I already created.

If you're already selling printables right now or thinking about selling them, adding some spreadsheets is a fantastic way to boost your income.