How to Create and Sell a Tarot Card Deck

Like most products you love and are passionate about, you’re going to start finding your favorites, then wishing the designer hadn’t put orange as the text color or that they’d used prettier pictures or that they’d made the card deck smaller, bigger, thicker, etc. And finally: You’re going to start imagining how to create a Tarot Deck of your own.

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Here are the easy-peasy 4-steps you need to create your first Tarot Card Deck. 

Even if you’ve never used or seen a Tarot Deck in your life – that’s how easy this is to follow. 

1 | Choose Your Branding Colors + Fonts

Like every design project ever started since the beginning of time, you’re going to want to limit your overall look and feel down to some basics like:

• Primary Branding Colors
• Secondary Colors
• Primary Font
• Secondary Font

When in doubt, go with your brand’s colors and fonts so your Tarot Deck is simply an extension of your branding.

2 | Choose Your Card Print Vendor or Printable Size

You’ll most likely sell your Tarot Cards as a physical deck. But selling a PDF of printables that people can print out at home and cut are great, too. A lot of home printers are compatible with cardstock, but just made sure you pick an easy to find paper size like 3×5” or 4×6.”

Alternatively, you’ll want to get the specs from the professional printing service that you’ll be using to find out what size cards are available to print. Once you have that nailed down, then you can get started with the design.

Or, you can outsource the design to a professional. There are many people on Fiverr and Upwork that can do a fabulous job designing things for you, thereby saving you the pain of trying to learn Photoshop or InDesign. 

3 | Create a Standard Layout + Back Image

Even if you’re outsourcing the actual design to someone else, you’ll still have to provide a framework for them to work within.  

First, let me just tell you that I have some good news, some bad news, and then some more good news. Did you like that compliment sandwich approach: good-bad-good? Genius, right?!

The first good news is that the back of every single card in your deck is exactly the same. You just need to pick one overarching design that cohesively ties everything together and that’s the back design of every single card in the deck.

The bad news is that there are 78 cards in a Tarot Deck which is A LOT.

But the next piece of good news is that each and every one of those 78 cards are already pre-defined for you. No staring at a blank page trying to figure out what to put on the card.

The only thing you need to do now is choose alternate images, symbols, pictures or illustrations to go on each of those 78 cards, or ask your designer to surprise you with something wonderful. 

4 | Market & Sell It

Forget about Amazon. The prices on Amazon are incredibly low, and you’re going to need Amazon Prime to really compete. Your best bet is my favorite marketplace: Etsy.

Yes, the Amazon Tarot Cards are there, too at their incredibly low prices. But customers are on Etsy looking for Tarot Cards like yours that are unique and gorgeous – and they’re willing to pay a premium for them.

You can also list your Tarot Cards on your site, but if you don’t already have a built-in audience, then consider running some paid traffic to get customers over there.

Good luck!

I’ve got a full-length video tutorial about creating a Tarot Card deck on my YouTube channel – click here to give it a watch!

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FUN FACT | Did you know that In the fourth quarter of 2020, iPad sales generated about 6.8 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, an increase of more than 2 billion U.S. dollars from the fourth quarter of 2019? Source: Statista October 2020

The good news is that Apple has done all the heavy lifting for you – they’re dominating the market for tablets and even if they weren’t, who cares? Your digital planner can be used on an Android or an Apple tablet. You’re device independent! But having more tablets in more hands helps because it increases your potential customer base. 

How to Create and Sell Digital Planners

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I’m going to give you an easy 4-step system to market and sell your future rock-star Digital Planner. 

1 | To Date Or Not To Date

There are basically two and only two types of planners

1. Dated Planners
2. Undated Planners

Don’t get all wrapped up in the design, the layouts, the colors, the audience (Teacher Planners vs Fitness Planners), orientation (Vertical vs Horizontal), etc. Those are tiny, itty-bitty design details you can figure out later. 

Your first step is simply to figure out whether you’re going to follow the calendar or wing it.

2 | Branding Matters

Before you flood the market or try to create all of your fabulous gazillion ideas, let’s go back to basics. The most successful Digital Planner Shops have a cohesive branding style.

What do I mean by this? It doesn’t mean that their entire inventory looks the same in terms of colors, fonts, layouts, etc. It means that one or a few different themes come shining through. It’s like when you look at a Picasso. You just know it when you see it. 

So determine ahead of time if you’re luxurious, eclectic, funky, urban, flowery, shabby chic, etc and then choose an overall color palette to go with it. It doesn’t mean you’ll use that same palette every time, but if all of your planners are muted and understated shades of beige, then stick with it. If all your planners are bold, shocking colors, then stick with that. 

The moral of the story is that unlike physical planners where people try to purchase ‘ONE TO RULE THEM ALL,’ Digital Planner people often buy tons of digital planners because they’re less expensive. It’s an easier no-brainer purchase and carrying extra digital planners won’t kill your shoulder.

3 | Design It

My personal tech design tool of choice is Adobe InDesign. It’s flexible, tailored to creating beautiful magazine layouts, perfect for typography art and easy to use when you’re creating digital planners.

However, there is a huge learning curve so don’t waste months trying to learn it. Just get out a piece of paper and a pen, write down what you want your planner to look like and outsource the design to someone else or use one of the easier tools like Canva, Keynote or Microsoft Word. 

The moral of the story is technology issues should never be an obstacle to creating a business. Find a way around it. 

4 | Market & Sell It

My favorite marketplace is Etsy. 

Yes, there’s a lot of competition but there are also a lot of customers. 

If you have an already built-in captive audience like Jess, then list it on your site. If not, then consider running some paid traffic to get them there. 

Good luck!

Click here to learn all the things about planner design and creation from Lisa over on her YouTube channel!

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How to Create Digital Products

Your first assumption is probably that you need to create digital products from scratch all by yourself. And that simply isn’t true. You can beg, borrow and buy from others.

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1 | BEG

Alright, alright…I don’t really mean beg. I just couldn’t think of a “b” word that implied you could hire someone to do the work for you. As in you can ask, request, order and then pay that person to create a digital product for you.

Don't ask me about legalities; I’m not a lawyer! But you’ll want to get some sort of release from them in writing that allows you to both sell their work as your own and releases the designer from any future claim on it.

I do this myself! I’m hopeless when it comes to the drawing department, but I still sell illustrations. I can’t draw even a stick man to save my life. I’m just the worst at freehand sketching; even Adobe Illustrator’s built-in tracing tools can’t help me. Hiring someone else can help you sell those digital products that you want, even if you can’t create every single element.

Moral of the story: Do NOT let a severe or even crippling lack of talent or your inability to learn a new skill stop you from going after your Digital Product Empire dreams. Just figure a way around it. I did – and you can, too!

2 | BORROW

You can also borrow from others – AKA Affiliate Marketing

When I said you can borrow digital products, I was mainly referring to becoming an Affiliate of someone else’s digital product. Being an affiliate means that you do the marketing for their product and in return, when a sale is made, they provide you with a commission that is a certain percentage of that sale.

There are also other instances in which people will straight up give you their content to use as a bonus in your course or as part of a Digital Download Bundle.

Why would anyone do this?

Why not?! If someone else’s audience is comparable to or bigger than mine, it could be a great lead magnet for my products. Their audience would’ve never known about my stuff if this fabulous bonus wasn’t part of their curriculum. And yes, many of them are what we consider “competitors.”

Don’t worry – there are plenty of customers to go around for ALL of us!

Have an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset.

3 | BUY

Did I say buy? Yep, that’s right. You can just straight up buy things called white label or private label products. What this means is that someone has created a digital product and has made it available for you to sell. You simply buy it from them and then you can resell it like it’s your own. There are plenty of pre-made digital products out there waiting for you to buy and reuse them.

Why would anyone do this?

Why not?! I do it for both of my businesses. 

For Pretty Fabulous, I love creating and designing planner templates that other creative entrepreneurs can edit and sell as their own, or simply sell as is. There are many people like me who want to help you!

For my Author Brand, I love creating plots, detailed book outlines and fully written manuscripts that someone else can buy and sell as their own. I’m not a ghostwriter. That would be someone who fits more into category #1, Beg, where you hire them to write the story for you. This is another form of premade products that I sell. If I wrote a story but I’m not really feeling it or if I am just too lazy to edit and revise it because I’ve lost interest, I sell it to another author.

There are TONS of people creating products just like this that you can go out buy and resell.

BUT, Lisa – What tools do I need if I do want to create something from scratch?

That depends.

Ha – did I sound like a lawyer right there or what?! 

You need the right tool for the right job. You wouldn’t bring a hammer to a quilting class, would you? Or a sewing kit to a body shop?

There are literally thousands of digital products out there. You need to research the individual digital product market you’re entering (Hello, music clips, workbooks, digital planners, courses, memberships, stock photography library, etc) and then purchase the tools that will serve that market.

Not sure what to create? There’s another blog post on Jess’s website that tells you exactly what to create.

Want to learn more from Lisa? Check out her YouTube channel for all things digital products!

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How to Set Up an Etsy Store for Digital Products

To Etsy or not to Etsy? That’s the first question you’re probably still asking yourself so let’s get that outta the way right now. 

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Should you be on Etsy?

Heck, yah! Do it yesterday. 

Ignore all of the wimpy whiners and naysayers complaining about Etsy fees, copycats and market saturation. I’m not even going to justify any of these ridiculous objections. These are just people looking for excuses to do nothing and who feel the world owes them something. Ignore them and get your Etsy store set up and start making money. 

Yes, you could waste time going down the whole Etsy sucks rabbithole of despair or you could listen to those little ka-ching $$ sounds from your phone telling you that you just made an Etsy sale. I know which one I’d rather listen to. What about you?

Is selling on Etsy different for digital products vs physical ones?

Kinda, sorta but not really. The only difference is that you don’t have to worry about shipping, packaging and all that nonsense. In the Listing Details for each and every single product, you’ll be prompted to select Type. There are only 2 choices: Physical vs Digital.

Once you select digital, the rest of the listing input form will change to remove all shipping related prompts like weight, size, packaging, etc. You’ll be given prompts related to your digital product, instead!

Before You Hit Start

I know what you’re thinking…let me just click that “Open a Store” button on Etsy and start typing away. I mean, you could, but you’re not going to get very far if you don’t have all your information and images ready. So let’s get this thing done in one sitting by preparing first. 

First things first

You need an Etsy account. 

>> PRO TIP: Use a different email for purchasing vs selling 

1. Pick out a Shop Name – you only got 20 characters to work with so don’t be surprised if your first 10 choices are gone already! Make a list of 20-character store words you like.
2. Have at least one listing (more is better) ready to go
3. Create an Etsy banner – don’t worry about the sizing. Canva will do it for you, so hop on over there and select Etsy banner as the template size.
4. Have a business bank account ready to go both for payments and for paying Etsy listing fees. You don’t need to worry about taking payments via Stripe or Paypal. Etsy will take care of all payments and then give you your share afterwards.
5. Set up an EIN (Employer Identification Number) if you don’t want to share your SSN (Social Security Number) on Etsy.
6. Have your Logo and Shop Description ready, as well as any policies you want to share with customers.

Second: Your digital products must be done and ready to go

Yep, that’s right. You can’t set up a shell Etsy Shop and then add products later. Etsy used to let you do that in 20 BC but today, you gotta have something ready to sell before you even get to finish the setup process. So if you don’t have that done yet, stop what you’re doing and go do make some products.

Not sure what to sell – there’s another blog post on Jess’s website that tells you exactly what to sell.

Third: Gather your Etsy listing materials ahead of time

Here’s what you’re going to need to do next:

1. Have your digital download ready to go – it must be under 20 MB
2. Have your sales images ready to go – they should have a 5:4 ratio. I suggest a 3000 pixel width x 2400 pixel height
3. Have your product name and description ready so you can copy + paste – take a peek at your competitors to see what the standard is for the amount and type of information to give. Don’t copy + paste, just look for research + inspiration
4. Know what you’re going to charge for your product – again, look at what the market will bear, not how much you personally feel it’s worth. Just because it took you 30 hours to create it, doesn’t mean you should multiply your hourly rate by $30. Just don’t do it.

Finally: Go list it!

Etsy is always changing things around on their site but when you visit etsy.com, scroll to the bottom and select Sell On Etsy. Then click the big button on the top right that says Open Your Etsy Shop and voila – you’re ready to go!

Lisa is the queen of digital products – you can learn even more info from her on her YouTube channel!

The post How to Set Up an Etsy Store for Digital Products appeared first on Jessica Stansberry.

How to Sell Digital Products Without a Website

How many hours have you wasted browsing through website templates looking for just the right one? C’mon, you can be honest. Don’t worry – I’m right there with you. I’ve done it, too.

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Getting stuck on the tech

If you also factored in the amount of time I spent researching Squarespace vs WordPress vs Showit vs Wix and the amount of time I subsequently spent researching Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver Builder… The total number of hours would actually translate not into hours or weeks, but more like months of my life. 

But everyone else has one!

I bet you know the phrase: If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too? If you’re suffering from comparisonitis, aka “market research,” then you’re probably seeing all these fabulous and beautifully designed websites with amazing photos that look Instagram-worthy and deserving of a million #livingmybestlife hashtags.

And yes, they’re pretty, but do you really need a website and rockstar selfies to sell a digital product? And let’s not forget that branded photoshoot you’ll need to do before you even start designing said website. Is it actually necessary?

The answer is absolutely not!

There’s been a new trend lately where online businesses are deleting their websites and replacing them with sales pages or landing pages. No website to be found anywhere. And you know what? They’re killing it! Yep, that’s right.

The only thing you can do when you land on their URL is buy. No confusing cutesy messages to read. No extremely boring list of their 5 favorite movies that they thought someone would find fascinating even though their entire business is about transformational money blocks. And no Instagram feed scrolling along the bottom of the page to distract you! Your visitor either buys your digital product or they don’t. Now, that’s focused messaging!

But wait…won’t a website make me look more legit? 

Not at all. Maybe 30 years ago when the internet was first invented, but today, sales pages stand on their own. Or better yet, aggregate marketplaces like Etsy will suffice and are actually preferable to building your own site. 

Try this 2-pronged approach to selling Digital Products Without A Website

For those that are just starting out, you probably don’t have an audience (sorry, your friends and family don’t count – unless you have a rich billionaire uncle somewhere who’d love to help boost your traffic with repeat sales). So why not borrow someone else’s audience using platforms like Etsy or eBay? Yes, you can sell digital downloads on eBay. Why not?! Your only limit is your imagination.

The second place you will want to set up shop is on a platform that has no traffic! You can drive traffic there with both organic and paid social media posts. Why do you need this second platform? You don’t! But it will have significantly lower fees than an established platform. The higher fees are totally worth it and completely legit for sites that already have built-in traffic like Etsy and eBay. They’re doing all of the marketing work for you! But when you’re doing it yourself, just send traffic to your own platform.

Best Marketplaces to Sell Digital Products Without A Website

These sites already have traffic and will showcase your product for you:

1. Etsy
2. eBay
3. Zazzle
4. Envato
5. Pinterest Buyable buttons + Shopify 

Best Platforms to Sell Digital Products Without A Website

These are online tools with built-in landing pages and checkout pages, but you will have to drive your own traffic to these sites:

1. Gumroad
2. SendOwl
3. Sellfy
4. e-Junkie
5. Shopify
6. Sellz
7. DPD
8. PayLoadz
9. Pulley
10. FetchApp

Want to learn more from Lisa? Check out her YouTube channel for all things digital products, planners, marketing, and more!

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20 Digital Products to Sell Online (That People Will Actually Buy)

Are you working from home?

So you’re stuck at home, possibly more than you’ve ever been before, and glued to your screen. It could be your computer screen, your TV screen, your tablet, your phone or your Kindle. For me, it’s my new Google Nest Hub Max – ohmigosh, I so love that thing. Did you know you can watch Netflix on it or cast anything from Chrome over onto it? Best investment ever.

It shoulda been you

But back to your new screen time hobby… By now, you’ve probably somehow stumbled upon someone or lots of someones talking about how they made 7-figures from one or a few digital products, and you’re thinking, hey, that coulda been me or that shoulda been me. Kinda like the squatty potty – you might be having one of those “why didn’t I think of that” moments.

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You’re smart + gosh darned it, people like you

You’re smart. You know things. Or maybe you’re creative and you can design things. Or you’re a learning ninja and you can pick up anything after a few videos and start doing it yourself. If that’s the case, then I have some ideas on how to start monetizing those abilities and interests into profitable digital products. 

So, let’s talk about what types of digital products you should consider selling! I have a list of 20 digital products that people are actively looking for and want that you could possibly provide.

But first… What is a digital product?

Definition: Anything that is not physical, doesn’t require a tracking number, or doesn’t have to be attended in person to enjoy. A microwave is not a digital product, but a recipe app is. Attending a live in-person conference is not a digital product, but a virtual summit is.

And second… Anyone can create these digital products, including you

This list is in no particular order, so go through it and see what excites you, NOT what you think you already have experience with. I currently make 6-figures selling Adobe InDesign templates, and when I first started, I had zero idea how to use it, nor had I ever even heard of it. And no, I had zero design experience, knowledge, or abilities. I worked in corporate America for 20 years as an HR Executive mastering spreadsheets, the world’s most boring reports, and text only PowerPoints on compliance.

So I can’t encourage you enough to forget about what you already know and just go after something that sounds fun and interesting to you!

20 Digital Products To Sell Online

1. Courses 
2. E-books
3. Stock Photography
4. Music
5. Video Clips
6. Website Templates
7. Swipe Files
8. Digital Planners
9. Printables
10. Software
11. Virtual Summit Recordings
12. Fonts
13. Social Media Templates
14. Flash Cards
15. Resume Templates
16. Wedding Invitations
17. Live Virtual Workshops
18. Workbooks
19. Patterns for Cricut and Silhouette users
20. Plugins

Want to learn more from Lisa? Check out her YouTube Channel!

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