What 33 Notion Products Taught Me About Selling Digital Products
Most of the lessons had nothing to do with Notion
I have 33 Notion-based products on Gumroad.
Writing systems, content planners, productivity templates, creator toolkits. Some of them sell. Some of them don’t.
A few of them probably shouldn’t exist.
So, this is sort of a field report. Three years of building, pricing, updating, and occasionally wondering why I made a template for something I could have explained in a paragraph.
The ones that sell themselves
A small number of products do most of the work. That’s the pattern. Not the one I wanted, but the one that showed up.
The products that sell consistently have one thing in common: they solve a specific problem that people are already searching for. Not “productivity system.” Not “content planner.” Something narrower.
My Substack SEO guide sells because people Google “Substack SEO.” My Medium Growth Guide sells because people want to know how Medium works in 2026.
The search intent is clear. The product matches it.
The ones that don’t sell have vague names, broader use cases. “The Creator Toolkit.” Nobody searches for that. Doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just not specific enough.
Price is the least interesting problem
I spent way too long thinking about pricing. $9 or $12? $15 or $19? Should I bundle? Should I discount?
None of that mattered as much as whether the product page answered the question: “What do I get, and why should I care?”
The products priced at $15 sell about as well as the ones I tried at $9 or the ones at $49.
If you have to convince someone your $12 product is worth it, the product page is the problem. Not the price.
Free products are marketing
Some of my best-performing products are free.
A free template gets downloads. Downloads get you on someone’s radar. Some of those people come back later and buy the paid version or something else entirely.
I’ve talked about this before. Gumroad does more than most people think, and the free product funnel is one of its great features. You set the price to zero, people “buy” it, and now you have their email. That’s not a hack. That’s just how it works.
Updates matter more than launches
Launching a product is great. You post about it, you get some sales, you feel productive. Then a week passes and it’s quiet again.
Updating an existing product is often more valuable than launching a new one. A product that stays current keeps selling.
I’ve updated a few of my products multiple times. New sections, better formatting, updated links. Each update gives me a reason to mention it again. And the people who already bought it get the update for free.
Most of my 33 products don’t get regular updates. I probably should fix that. But the ones that do are the ones that keep showing up in my dashboard.
The catalog effect
One product is a product. Ten products is a shop. Thirty-three products is a catalog. And a catalog changes the dynamic.
When someone finds one product and likes it, they see related things. They buy a second one.
The downside is maintenance. Thirty-three product pages, thirty-three descriptions, thirty-three sets of screenshots. Some of those descriptions are outdated. Some of the screenshots show old Notion layouts. I know.
But the catalog also means I have something for almost every article I write. Writing about Substack? Link the SEO guide. Writing about Medium? Link the growth guide. Writing about productivity? Link Superwriter. The products and the content work together.
What I’d do differently
Fewer products, earlier. I didn’t need 33. I probably needed 10 good ones, updated regularly.
Better naming. I have products with names that tell you nothing about what’s inside. I have products with generic names that sound like every other Notion template on the internet.
And I’d think harder about whether something should be a product at all. Some of these could have been a blog post. Or a series.
Some of them were blog posts that I turned into templates because I thought everything needed to be… a product. Nope.
I wrote about selling maps to mountains you’ve never climbed. I’m not completely without guilt here. A few of my early products were maps to places I was still figuring out myself. I’ve updated most of those since.
Gumroad is enough
I’ve tested Gumroad, Payhip, and Lemon Squeezy side by side.
For what I do, Gumroad is enough. The 10% cut is steep, sure. But the audience is built in, the checkout is clean, and I don’t have to think about VAT. And I get email automation on top.
The Bottom Line
Thirty-three products is a lot. Too many, probably. But the process of building them taught me a lot about selling digital products, working with email lists, and more. I’ve enjoyed that.
Anyway, the bottom version (note to self if you will): make fewer, better products. Name them clearly. Update them. Don’t overthink price. Give some away for free. And don’t turn everything into a product just because you can.
Most of my revenue comes from five products. The other twenty-eight are context. Some of them earn a few dollars a month. Some earn nothing. That’s fine.
The catalog is the strategy. The individual products are just pieces of it.