Printable cheatsheets are a great passive income stream but what is a printable cheatsheet?
An instruction sheet or concise sheet that communicates your knowledge or skill to someone who is looking to develop that knowledge or skill. The easiest description is an exam revision sheet. What did you need to know to pass a certain exam? Did you make notes? You can sell those notes as a cheatsheet.
Cheatsheets work for ANYTHING. Batch cooking, house cleaning, hitting sales targets, paying off debt, you name it, someone wants to know how to do it.
Is there a demand for Printable Cheatsheets?
The Etsy search bar shows there are 13,185 products when the word Cheat Sheet is typed in. A great number of these are medical cheatsheets for passing exams but Tarot and Astrology cheat sheets are also popular. There are even Dungeons and Dragons Cheatsheets.
Erank shows the click through rate on this keyword phrase on Etsy is 100%
On the first page of an Etsy search for cheat sheets, 16 out of 64 are showing a bestseller tag, meaning those listings are selling. My own bestseller tagged items are selling every day.
Selling Points for Printable Cheatsheets
When promoting your cheatsheets for sale, consider what will persuade your customer to buy:
- A Niche Subject
- Concise designs
- Clear Text
- Proof of your expertise
- Easy to print with low ink useage
- PDF annotation app use enabled
How to Create Printable Cheatsheets
Canva is my favourite software for designing eyecatching printables. However, Powerpoint, Word or Excel all offer the funtionality to create a great cheatsheet.
Produce your cheatsheet and save as a PDF document. If you are selling on Etsy, the PDF file will automatically download when the purchaser buys.
Niches With High Potential
I have used Erank and the Etsy search bar (the bar at the top of the Etsy homepage) to research what long tail keywords have a high search level AND low levels of competition. As of January 2024 these are:
- Tarot Cheat Sheet
- Astrology Cheat Sheet
- Sublimation Cheat Sheet
- DND Cheat Sheet
- Nursing Cheat Sheet
Don’t be put off by the current popular niches as you will have competition. If you sell a printable cheatsheet with no competition, you are a market of one. You can charge a higher price because you are specifically helping one person. For example, I can sell a cheat sheet for a student to pass NEBOSH exams. That doesn’t rank as a popular keyword, but I can charge what I like, and I know there is a market based on the large number of people sitting the exams.
Profitability
Etsy can be a cutthroat marketplace, particularly with the onset of AI generated products. Taking the search term of Cheat Sheet, 16 out of 64 listings have a Bestseller tag, therefore are selling regularly. (searched 12th January 2024)
The average price of the 16 bestsellers on the page is £7.70
The lowest price item is £1.04
The highest price item is £56.03
Selling on Etsy does incur fees which are deducted from your payouts. Current Etsy fees can be found here.
Next Steps
- Set up an Etsy seller account
- Research a high search, low competition long tail keyword using the Etsy search bar and the first page search results (scroll down to the bottom see what keywords people are searching)
- Design Your Printable Cheatsheet
- List your Item on Etsy