Reports › Idea report #001 · Digital products
Selling spreadsheet templates worldwide
A zero-inventory digital store one person can run
Published 2026-10-20 · research as of 2026-10 · free preview + paid full report. No income is guaranteed; figures marked “estimate” are the author's estimates from public data.
The idea
You build spreadsheets that calculate automatically (budgets, debt payoff, wedding planning, PTO tracking) and sell them as instant downloads. A merchant-of-record platform such as Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy handles checkout, sales tax/VAT and file delivery, so there is no inventory, shipping or invoicing.
Why it works
- Build once, sell repeatedly: each file can be sold any number of times with no marginal cost.
- Real search demand: the Etsy keyword “budget template google sheets” shows about 40,500 monthly searches (RankHero, updated 2026-03), though interest fell 33% between Aug 2025 and Jul 2026.
- Multi-tab “system” templates list at roughly 4–8× the price of single forms in an Etsy price index of 91 listings (TableTemplates, Jul 2026). These are asking prices, not sales data.
- Platform fees are published and predictable: Gumroad 10% + $0.50 per sale; Lemon Squeezy 5% + $0.50 (+1.5% for non-US payments).
First steps
- Pick one narrow audience (e.g. people paid biweekly) and one problem (a paycheck-by-paycheck budget).
- Build 3 templates and test every formula in both Excel and Google Sheets.
- Open a Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy store and write one helpful how-to page per product.
Key sources
🔒 Full report — $7
The free preview ends here. The full report (PDF) adds:
- Etsy price benchmarks by category (median, range, share under $5)
- Conservative and middle revenue scenarios with every assumption shown
- Tax & legal checklist for the US, UK and EU
- Day-by-day 30-day plan
- Risk table and feasibility scorecard
- All sources
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General information only — not investment, tax or legal advice. Platform fees and policies may change after the research date; check the official pages before acting. The site operator runs a spreadsheet template store (Plainsheet) using this model.