What it Takes to Build a Successful Website Template Shop
With digital products like website and social media templates becoming increasingly popular in recent years, it's no wonder that you might have considered joining in on the passive income movement by creating your own! 💸
But have you ever wondered if selling digital products online is actually a viable and reliable source of income and what it actually takes for a template shop to succeed? 🤔
If you don't know us yet, we're Big Cat Creative, and we've been selling Squarespace website templates since 2017. While it did take a little while to get things going in the beginning, our template sales have consistently grown from the very first year to over 7000 templates sold today! So if you had to ask us whether you can make money selling templates online, we'd obviously have to say YES!
Of course, there are a lot of factors that will influence just how successful a digital products store might be, and this is exactly what we had a chat about with web design business guru and teacher extraordinaire, Paige Brunton.
In this little interview, we're sharing all the juicy deets about our template-selling journey, what worked, what didn't, and how you can achieve reliable digital products sales with your own template shop too, so make sure to tune in!
Based on our experience, here are all the elements you need to think about to give your template shop the opportunity to shine! 👇✨
Skills and experience
While you definitely don't need a university degree or extensive industry experience to have a successful template shop, you do need to feel confident in your design skills, the platform of your choice (we love Squarespace!), and your understanding of the strategy behind a successful website design.
Given that your customers and potential client base will look to you as an expert, having these skills and knowledge is crucial to improve their experience and give them the very best product they can get. This will mean satisfied customers, better reviews, and more sales in the long run!
Of course, you won't become an expert overnight. These skills will develop overtime as you build templates and practice website design, but doing your own research and working on improving your skills to at least reach a base level will do wonders for the success of your template shop.
How do you learn website design skills?
Just like any other craft, designing websites and website templates is a hands-on skill, which means the very best way to learn is to practice, practice, practice!
If you are literally just starting out, there are tons of great courses and resources out there (both free and paid), that will teach you all the basics, including design best-practices, the ins and outs of different website building platforms, and the basics of UI/UX (aka good, strategic website building that will actually help your customers convert).
You can get started by simply looking on Youtube, or browsing through the blogs of designers that you admire (you'll find plenty of helpful tutorials on ours and Paige's youtube channels and blogs for example 😉).
Then as soon as you get the chance, open up your website builder, start a blank trial website, and have a play around! Really get to know your way around the platform, do some mock designs, and see what the platform (and you!) are really capable of.
The goal is to build your confidence and really learn the ins and outs of your website builder of choice. Once you feel like you've really got the basics down pat, try to get some experience with actual clients.
How do you get experience?
Moving onto real life clients might sound daunting, but it is truly one of the best ways to learn! Not only will you have a full project brief to work with, you'll be able to get real life feedback on your designs, giving you insight into what works, what doesn't, and what skills you still need to improve on.
To make it a little less daunting, we highly recommend starting out by designing websites for friends, friends of friends, or family members. Spread the word, let your inner circle know that you're starting on your website design journey and chances are, someone, or someone they know, will need a website!
You can start by offering your services for free or at a discounted rate, and the more projects you'll do, the more you can charge, and the more confident you'll feel!
Now, you might be thinking, ok but I only want to sell website templates, I don't want to work with clients 1:1...
The truth is, you should be treating your website templates just like any other 1:1 website design project. You want to identify a target client, prepare a (imaginary) brief, set a timeline, create a moodboard, and develop a website, just like any other website project. So the best way to learn that process and to feel confident in it, is to actually take on a few clients to get it down pat.
👉 Read our full post on how to get started as a website designer
Selling on marketplaces vs. your own website
One question that we get a lot is, do I actually need my own website to sell templates?
And the answer is, it depends (but probably yes 😂 )!
While we have personally focused primarily on selling templates on our own website, there are many others who have had amazing success selling their digital products uniquely on marketplaces like Creative Market or Etsy.
Why you should sell your templates on marketplaces?
Design marketplaces are online platforms where artists and designers can upload and sell digital products that they have created. These products can include just about anything creative from fonts to graphics, and of course templates!
There are several advantages to selling your designs on such marketplaces, including large built-in audiences and enormous traffic which you may not have access to if you have just started a site. It means less hassle and marketing effort for you, but also benefits potential customers who can get easy access to a wide range of unique and professional digital products all in one place.
It's important to remember that different marketplaces do specialize in different themes or products, and appeal to different audiences, so make sure to consider your templates' ideal customers and which marketplace they might be most likely to use when choosing which one(s) you want to list on! Here are some marketplaces that you may consider for your template shop:
Creative Market
One of the biggest design marketplaces out there, Creative Market has millions of visitors, and just about as many listings from creatives from all over the world. It's well-known, well-trusted, and world-renowned, qualities that can certainly be beneficial to your template shop if you choose to list on there. While Creative Market may be great for exposure, the sheer competition may however impact your sales. Additionally the strict intake rules and 40% commission on every sale that you make through them is also important to consider.
Etsy
While originally primarily focused on handcrafted goods, Etsy has recently risen the ranks as a platform for digital products. A global marketplace powerhouse with millions of users, Etsy can be a great place to get some extra eyes on your templates though visibility can sometimes be difficult without paying extra for ads. Etsy currently charges a $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee, and 3-5% payment processing fee, making it more affordable than Creative Market, with an audience base that is also more broad and perhaps less designer focussed, which can be to your advantage.
Ghost Marketplace
Ghost Marketplace is a newer marketplace created specifically for all things Squarespace. Due to it being quite new, Ghost Marketplace might not have quite the millions of visitors that Creative Market or Etsy have, but its Squarespace niche makes it well-known within the Squarespace community and a great option to list on if you're planning on selling Squarespace templates! Ghost Marketplace does charge a 30% commission and also has quite strict intake requirements which you can check out here.
While listing on marketplaces may sound like an easy, set and forget, way to set up your template shop, putting all of your eggs in the marketplace basket can also have disastrous consequences given the uncertainty of their longevity, high fees, and potential fee increases.
Why you should list on your own website?
To give you full control over your products and pricing, we can't recommend selling on your own website enough!
Not only will this mean that you get to keep 100% of the profits, having your own shop means following your own set of rules, being able to implement your own branding to help your shop stand out from the crowd, and will be incredibly beneficial for your credibility and growth in the long run!
It is important to consider that setting up your own website can be a bit of an investment, both in the time and effort that it will take you to create it, but also in terms of pricing, given that you will need to pay for a subscription to host your site, as well as for your domain. But overall, it's well worth it!
👉 How to set up a shop on Squarespace
Why not both?
Of course, you could dabble in both to give your visibility an even bigger boost! List your templates on your website as well as on marketplaces for the most exposure and best results!
👉 Where to sell Squarespace Templates to reach more customers and make more sales
Drive traffic to your website
While marketplaces have large built-in audiences, when it comes to selling on your website, traffic depends entirely on your marketing efforts!
This might sound daunting but there are a few easy ways that you can drive traffic to your site, and the one that has worked best for us, has been creating searchable content!
Searchable content and SEO
By searchable content, we mean blog posts, youtube videos, and tutorials, that directly answer the questions that potential clients might type into Google. By landing on your website to read through your content, these potential clients will then likely also take a look at what you're offering, and the rest is history!
A whopping 90% of our traffic comes from Google and other search engines thanks to searchable content and SEO that goes along with it. Blogging and YouTube have been instrumental in building our audience and driving traffic to our shop so this is a strategy that we can only recommend for other template shops!
👉 How to start a blog with Squarespace
👉 7 blog post ideas for designers to attract more clients
In addition to this type of long-form content, you can consider adding a few other avenues to your marketing strategy, like social media, email marketing, or affiliate marketing to boost your visibility:
Social Media Marketing
These days, it's near impossible to run a business without having an online presence on at least one of the major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest. Pick your poison by thinking about where your potential clients might be hanging out and start posting! This will be the perfect opportunity to engage directly with your audience and reach tons of people really fast.
👉 How to grow your business and get clients with Instagram
👉 How to create an organic Pinterest marketing strategy for your business
Email Marketing
You'll hear it from everyone in the business world: Start building your email list today! An email list is a direct line of communication with potential customers that actually want to hear from you. Give them updates on new products and sales, or sway them with a nurturing welcome sequence and they'll become loyal customers in no time at all.
👉 How to get started with email marketing
👉 How to create freebies that actually grow your email list
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is like having a bunch of friends who help you spread the word about your digital products. You partner up with other people or businesses who have their own audience that might be similar to who you would like to sell to, they promote your stuff, and in return, you give them a small commission for any sales they bring in. This gives you access to an entirely new audience of people who already trust the person promoting your products. And since you only have to pay your affiliates when you make a sale, it's pretty low risk but can bring in big rewards!
Create strategic content
The content you create to spread the word about your business should cater to your ideal client (aka the people you want to attract to buy from you!).
Knowing just who you want to be buying your templates is definitely easier said than done though, so here are some tips to help you narrow your vision:
Choose an ideal client
To get a clearer idea of your ideal client, start by thinking about who you are creating your templates for. This may be slightly different for each individual template that you create but there should still be an overarching theme.
Think about questions, like:
Are they female or male?
What is their age group? (eg. 18 - 25; 25 - 35; 35 - 45; etc.)
What do they do? (photographer, author, doula, etc.)
What do they enjoy? (flowers, the sea, girly things, etc.)
What are they attracted to? (trendy magazines, color palettes, swirly fonts, etc.)
Why do they want a website? Why don't they have one yet?
Do some research
Once your ideal client is clear in your mind, research what this type of person might be searching for on Google.
This will take some serious 'putting yourself in the shoes of.' It might take the form of simple brainstorming, or more in-depth keyword and competitor research. If done correctly, it should give you a clear idea of what your ideal clients' problems are and what questions they might have.
All you'll need to do then is to create content that solves their problems! This might include helpful guides and tutorials, how-to videos, and FAQs.
Niche down further
If you choose to niche down further, like if you choose to create digital products for yoga studios specifically, tailor your content specifically to that audience. For example, you might create a post about the best website templates for yoga studios or how to create a website for a yoga studio.
The more niche you go, the less competition you will have, and the more likely those specific clients will be of finding you!
Put it together!
Remember, the goal is to generate traffic while attracting potential customers who are likely to make a purchase. Finding that sweet spot might take a bit of trial and error but once you find it, you'll see an increase in sales.
Have a promo!
While long-term marketing strategies like blogging and Youtube mean that you don't have to rely on frequent promotions, having a sale every so often can definitely be beneficial to give you a quick income boost and grow your audience.
Running promotions can be an entire marketing strategy in itself so you can put in as much or as little effort as you want into them!
Choosing the right dates to run a promo
Remember to pick your promo dates carefully. While you'll likely want to run a Black Friday sale because this is the time that people are ready to buy and might go to a competitor that is holding a sale if you are not, you might want to skip promos during the period right after while people tighten their wallets in preparation for the holidays.
The right dates might vary on the industry that you are targeting, and a quick Google of the best times to run your sales or when people are buying will give you all the answers you need to optimize your promo events!
Other times which can be good to run a promo might be in the mid-year when things might start to stagnate a bit to help you pick up the pace, or when you're launching a new product.
What kinds of promotion can you run?
There are tons of different promo styles that you could run, anything from giveaways to simple sales, will be sure to boost engagement and bring in more sales in their own unique way.
Giveaway
Giveaways are promotional events whereby leads are asked to sign up, share a post, or do something creative in exchange for the possibility of winning something (probably a free template in your case!). Everyone loves free stuff so this is a great way to drive engagement and generate a bit of a buzz, especially on your socials! Giveaways can be especially beneficial when promoting a new product to essentially raise awareness about its existence.
Discount code
Sharing a simple discount code with your email list or social media followers can be an effective technique to drive sales with a small incentive. The discount doesn't have to be huge, anywhere from 10 - 20% off will do! Of course the higher the discount, the more likely your potential customer will be to redeem it!
Sale
Sale events whereby you lower the price of some or all of your products for a certain period of time are sure to get potential customers through the door, and closer to checkout! Ours typically range from 25 to 30% off, though some shops go up to 50% off or even 60 - 70% for clearance sales. Sales often happen during holidays, end-of-season times, or just because you're ready to clear out old stock to make room for new stuff!
Live Workshop
A live workshop is an interactive event where your potential customers can learn directly from you about a specific topic and ask all the questions they want! They are one of the most engaging forms of marketing out there and are a great way to invite your audience into your world, all whilst leading them to your products.
What improves template sales over time?
Keeping up with trends
Over the past seven years in the template biz world, we've learned that keeping your template designs up-to-date and appealing is crucial for consistent sales.
Trends change rapidly in the design world so to make sure that your template designs don't quickly become outdated, you'll want to keep your template shop looking fresh with relatively frequent new designs that hit the brief!
Of course, trends might not matter quite so much depending on who your ideal client is. If you are targeting professionals like lawyers, counsellors, or psychologists, incorporating design trends in your templates will matter a whole lot less than if you were targeting your templates at other creatives, bloggers, or influencers.
Do more of what's working
As you build more and more templates, the key is to start experimenting with different styles to identify what resonates with your customers. Once it becomes clear what designs are the most popular, do more of that and let go of the ones that don't work as well!
Improving your website and sales page
While continuous improvements to your website and sales page are also important to help keep your site visitors in the loop, marketing efforts and ensuring that your designs meet customer needs will make the biggest difference to bringing in more sales overall.
Diversify your products
Following many, many inbox requests, we expanded our offerings from just website templates to including strategic sales page templates, as well as matching social media templates for all of our website templates.
Our customers loved it, and we knew they would because so many were asking for those exact products! The lesson here is: Listen to your customer requests. And if they want something, give it to them!
An additional reason that these additions to our template shop have been so effective, is that they complement our website templates, making them the ideal add-on to provide our customers with a more comprehensive toolkit for their online presence.
For your own template shop, try to think of what other valuable add-ons you might be able to create. This will not only provide greater value for your customers but also boost your sales.
But make sure that it will actually sell! If no one has been asking for it, adding extra products will just make managing your store more cumbersome, increase the risk of complications, and double your marketing needs which can be both time-consuming and costly, especially if you would like this new product to be as prominent as your main templates.
How to get started with creating website templates
If you're interested in selling website templates, here's a recap of all the steps you need to take to get there! 👇
1. Get confident with your skills
Choose a website builder you love (like Squarespace), and practice, practice, practice! Feeling confident in your design skills, how well you know the platform and its capabilities, and your general understanding of website design strategies will be key to the success of your templates and template shop. To help you build your skills, use resources like online courses, Youtube, and blogs!
2. Get experience
Once you feel more confident in what you can create, you'll want to put it all to the test by getting some real life website design clients. Start by offering your services to friends and family for free or at a discounted rate to help you build experience.
3. List your templates online
After you've created your first templates, it's time to list them online! Choose whether you would like to list them on your own website, or on various marketplaces like Creative Market (or both!).
4. Market your templates
To generate traffic and get extra eyes on your templates, choose a marketing strategy that suits you and start creating strategic, searchable content that attracts and solves your ideal clients' problems. Choose whether you want to start a blog, Youtube channel, podcast, use social media, email marketing, or a combination of all!
5. Run promotions
Everyone loves a sale! Decide whether you would like to implement a promo strategy for your template shop and when you might want to run these sale events.
6. Keep up to date!
The tech and design worlds are ever-evolving and change very rapidly. Make sure that your template designs and tutorials are regularly updated, focus on popular designs, and improve your website and sales pages based on what resonates with your customers.
Starting a digital product business, like selling Squarespace templates, requires dedication to learning and improving your design skills. With the right approach to marketing and a willingness to adapt to customer needs, you can build a successful and sustainable business. Whether you choose to sell on marketplaces, your own website, or both, the key is to stay proactive and keep your audience engaged.
For more tips on running a successful template shop, make sure you sign up for our FREE training! It goes deeper into designing templates, opening your own template shop, and all of the things we’ve learned over the years in being a web designer. So make sure you check it out!👇
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