Here’s how to sell digital products in 2026, my honest and updated take, refreshed for September 2026. I wrote the first version of this back in June, and going back through it now, some of it doesn’t hold up anymore. AI moved faster than I expected these last three months, and I think most articles on this topic haven’t caught up yet. This one has.

I think most of you already know part of the answer here, especially if you’ve spent five minutes on TikTok watching someone flash an income screenshot that looks almost fake.

Every day, I see someone talking about making money online, selling digital products, building a business around a template or an ebook. Millions of dollars? Yeah, I’ve seen those screenshots too. And every time, part of me still thinks, “I wish that could be me.”

Now, I’m not saying physical products are a bad idea. Plenty of people build real businesses that way. But after spending a lot of time researching different online business models, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: digital products still make more sense for someone doing this on the side, working a 9 to 5, with limited time and even less patience for shipping labels.

You create something once. If it’s actually useful, you can sell it again and again. No warehouse, no inventory, no supplier emails at midnight. In most cases you can start with a small budget or close to none.

That’s why I’m updating this. Is it still worth starting in September 2026, with AI changing what “useful” even means? I think the honest answer is yes, but not in the same way it was three months ago. Let’s get into it.

Why Digital Products Are Becoming So Popular

It’s not just that digital products are popular. They’re becoming the default way ordinary people test a business idea before committing real money to it.

People who started creating digital products two, three, or five years ago and stayed consistent are now making real income from it. Not all of them became millionaires. But a lot of them built something that earns while they sleep, which is something a regular job simply doesn’t offer.

One thing I keep asking myself is why not digital products. Selling something physical means production, packing, shipping, and eventually a return you didn’t see coming. Digital products skip all of that. You build it once, and if people find it useful, you can sell it hundreds or thousands of times with no warehouse and no shipping fees.

Making the first sale still isn’t easy. Nothing worth doing ever is. But for people working a 9 to 5 and trying to build something on the side, I think this is genuinely worth paying attention to, more so now than when I first wrote this.

You don’t need a huge budget. You don’t need employees. You don’t need to quit your job. You just need to start with something specific enough that it actually solves someone’s problem.

Can You Really Build a Business With Just One Hour a Day?

I ask myself this constantly, and I’d guess you’re asking yourself the same thing right now.

I believe the answer is yes. Not because it’s easy, and not because everyone who tries will succeed. But because one hour a day, done consistently, adds up to more than most people expect.

Most of us are stuck in the same loop: work, eat, sleep, repeat. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably thought about a way out at least once.

While researching successful creators, I noticed something. Most of them didn’t start with unlimited free time. They started after work, late at night, on weekends, one hour at a time.

So ask yourself honestly. How much time do you spend scrolling social media every day? Thirty minutes? An hour? More? If you have time to scroll, you have time to build something.

• A Canva template.
• A Notion planner.
• A digital workbook.
• A mini ebook.
• A spreadsheet tool.
• Something useful.
• Something that solves a problem.

One hour a day, over a year, is more than 365 focused hours poured into something that could keep paying you back.

The goal was never to get rich overnight. The goal is to start.

Consistency beats intensity almost every time. The key isn’t speed. The key is showing up, even when progress feels slow.

What Actually Changed in the Last Three Months

Here’s the part I think matters most right now, and the part I got wrong when I first wrote this article.

On September 3, OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, a model that can control a computer directly. It fills out forms, updates a CRM, and builds a spreadsheet without a human clicking through each step (openai.com). It scores 72.6 percent on the OSWorld 2.0 benchmark and finishes tasks roughly 47 percent faster than the model before it.

I think this matters more for digital product creators than most people realize. If your ebook or course teaches someone the manual steps to do a task, and that task is now something an AI agent can do on its own, that product just got a lot less valuable. The instructional content that used to be worth paying for is becoming something AI does for free.

That doesn’t mean digital products are dead. It means the value moved. The stuff worth selling now teaches judgment, not procedure. Deciding what to automate, how to review an AI agent’s work, when to trust it and when not to, that’s the layer AI still can’t do for someone. I think that’s where a real opportunity is opening up right now, and almost nobody is talking about it yet.

The same shift is happening with the tools people use to build digital products. Canva relaunched this year as an AI first platform, replacing its template heavy approach with AI agents that build designs from a plain language prompt instead (qz.com). If Canva itself can generate a decent template from a sentence, a generic Canva template pack gets harder to sell at a premium. The templates that still hold value are the ones with real taste and a specific angle baked in, not something anyone could type into Canva’s own AI and get for free.

Notion made a similar move earlier this year with Custom Agents, built directly into the product. A plain static Notion template, just a database with some views, is becoming table stakes. What’s actually selling now is a template paired with a working agent behind it, something that does part of the job automatically instead of just organizing information.

If your digital product’s whole value is “I did the manual work of organizing this for you,” AI is coming for that value fast. If your product’s value is “I know which decisions actually matter and I built something that reflects that judgment,” that’s a lot more durable.

What Digital Products Still Sell in 2026?

Competition is higher than ever, but people are still paying for things that solve a specific problem well. Here’s what I think still holds up, updated for where things actually stand right now.

1. Notion Templates

Plain templates are getting commoditized now that Notion has its own agent layer. What still sells is a template built around a specific agent workflow. A budget tracker is fine. A budget tracker that pairs with a configured agent to flag overspending automatically is worth more, because that’s the part a buyer can’t just recreate in five minutes with Notion’s built in tools.

2. Canva Templates

Same story. Generic social templates are getting squeezed by Canva’s own AI. The templates I’d still bet on are the ones built around a specific niche someone actually understands, a very particular audience, a distinct visual style, something that took real taste to put together rather than a prompt anyone could type.

3. Digital Planners

Still popular with students, professionals, and small business owners, and this one hasn’t shifted much. The demand here is more about structure and habit than automation, so it’s held up better than templates that were purely about layout.

4. Ebooks

This is where I’d be most careful right now. A generic “how to do X” ebook, where X is now something GPT-6 Astra or a similar agent can just do, is a shrinking market. What still works is an ebook built on a real, specific point of view, something closer to “here’s what actually happened when I tried this” than “here are the ten steps.” Experience is the part AI can’t fake yet.

5. Online Courses

Same logic applies. If your course teaches steps an AI agent now performs on its own, I think that course has a shelf life measured in months, not years. Courses that teach strategy, judgment, and how to supervise AI tools responsibly are the ones I’d bet on holding value into next year.

What I Think Is Already Dead

I want to be direct about this part, because most guides won’t say it plainly.

Plain AI generated PDFs with no real editing or personal input, sold without disclosure, are risky in more ways than one right now. Static templates with zero differentiation, the kind Canva or Notion’s own AI can spit out in seconds, are losing pricing power fast. And ebooks or courses that only teach manual steps for tasks an agent can now do end to end are, I think, on their way out within the next year.

None of this means stop making digital products. It means stop making the kind that AI just replaced.

Tools You Can Use to Create Digital Products

You still don’t need expensive software. Most creators build with:

• Canva, now with its own AI design agents built in
• Notion, including its Custom Agents feature for anything workflow based
• Google Docs
• ChatGPT, for drafting and refining ideas, not for pretending the finished product wrote itself
• Figma
• CapCut

Most of these tools have free plans, which is exactly why the products built on them need a real point of view to stand out. The tool was never the differentiator. It’s the judgment behind how you use it.

Where and How to Sell Digital Products

Eventually you need a place to actually sell what you make. Many creators start on marketplaces like Etsy or Gumroad because they’re quick to set up and let you start selling immediately.

If you’re selling on Etsy, there’s something you need to know that wasn’t true when I first wrote this article. Etsy now requires sellers to disclose in the listing description if an item was created using AI (Etsy Seller Handbook). This isn’t a suggestion. Reports from earlier this year show roughly 12,000 listings removed and 8,500 warnings issued in a single quarter for AI related violations (ngini.com). If you’re using AI anywhere in creating your product, whether that’s the artwork, the mockup, or the written description, disclose it. Skipping this isn’t a shortcut, it’s a good way to lose your shop.

As a business grows, many creators move toward something more scalable than a marketplace listing. This is where Shopify becomes a popular choice. Instead of listing products on someone else’s marketplace, Shopify lets you build your own store and a brand people actually recognize.

With Shopify, you can:

• Sell ebooks
• Sell templates
• Offer digital downloads
• Launch online courses
• Create membership products
• Build an email list
• Customize your storefront
• Manage customers in one place

without needing advanced technical skills or learning how to code.

The real advantage is ownership. You’re not just selling a product, you’re building a business and a brand that belongs to you.

👉 Ready to start building your own digital product business? Start your Shopify store here

Things You Should Know Before Using Shopify

Alright, look.

Shopify isn’t completely free. Then again, nothing is really free in this world, right?

Once the trial period ends, you’ll need to choose a monthly subscription plan.

👉 Check the latest Shopify plans and pricing here.

Also, Shopify is just a tool.

You’re still responsible for:

• Marketing
• Product creation
• Customer support

Shopify provides the platform, but success still depends on creating products that people actually want.

The good news is that you don’t need to worry about building a website from scratch or dealing with complicated technical stuff. Shopify handles most of that for you, so you can focus on building and growing your business instead.

Real Examples of People Making Millions From Digital Products

You don’t have to look very far to find people making serious money from digital products.

Creators like Nathan Barry started by selling ebooks and digital products before eventually building a multi-million-dollar business.

Ali Abdaal built an entire educational business around digital products, online courses, and productivity resources.

Thomas Frank turned productivity systems and Notion templates into a thriving online business, and I think his early success is part of why plain Notion templates are getting more competitive now.

But honestly, the examples that interest me most aren’t the famous ones.

They’re the thousands of ordinary creators selling templates, planners, ebooks, study materials, and digital downloads every day.

Most of them aren’t influencers.

Most of them aren’t celebrities.

They’re simply people who created something useful and kept showing up long enough for it to work.

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