Can I Really Sell a £30 Product 100 Times? A Real Experiment

This may annoy some people — and that’s okay! I am okay with that! I just have to share this, and hopefully it helps someone along the way.

I’m a big advocate for having alternative income streams — “passive income” as it’s more commonly known. I support clients to build alternative income streams, and I have my own digital product business too.

However…This whole “open your laptop, spend 40 minutes, create a digital product, sell it 100 times and make £3k” bullshit really winds me up.

Let’s be real — creating the digital product is usually just the very start of the journey. That product is not going to magically sell itself. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were the case? So where exactly are these 100 magical buyers coming from to give you your £3k?

These people are selling a pipedream. A dream that sounds easy, quick, and super achievable — but the truth is, it just doesn’t work like that.

And here’s the kicker — they’re selling you a course for around £300, and the very first step is “Sign up to Stan Store with this handy 14-day free trial!”

That free trial often runs out before you’ve even created your product, never mind building an audience to sell it to. And boom — they’ve just made £5 per month in affiliate commission. That’s why they do it!

[Following some research: if someone signs up for the Creator plan on StanStore at $29/month (approximately £23.50*), you'd earn about £4.70* each month they remain subscribed].  

It makes me so angry — as you can probably tell!

The people I really feel for are the neurodivergent entrepreneurs, desperately trying to make a living, or escape the rat race. People who are time-poor, overstretched, and easily influenced by these online promises. They buy into the dream, quickly realise it’s not as simple as it’s been made out to be, and then hit a wall.

Sales don’t come. Or they struggle to even get the product finished.

And what follows? A crushing spiral of rejection, failure, self-doubt, and all the horrible thoughts that can take days, weeks, or even months to shake off.

I’ve seen this happen again and again during my doom scroll sessions.

It’s made me so frustrated, I’ve decided to do something about it — by sharing a real, raw, unfiltered breakdown of what it actually takes to create and sell a digital product.

As a neurodivergent business owner myself, still early in my digital product journey, I know how hard this really is. If I didn’t have the knowledge I’ve gained through years of learning, training and trial-and-error, I could’ve easily been sold that pipedream too — and FAILED.

So I’m writing this blog as the first part of a series (and maybe even a YouTube series — who knows!) to give a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to build and sell a digital product. From idea to (hopefully!) sales.

The Digital Product Experiment: Can I Really Sell a £30 Product 100 Times?

The rules I’ve set myself:

• Goal: Sell a £30 product 100 times = £3,000

• Product Type:. workbook, template pack, course, mini-guide

• Price: £30 flat — no discounts, no early bird offers

• Time Tracking: Every hour logged — product creation, sales page, emails, content, admin

• Budget: Track any spend (ads, tools, outsourcing, design help)

• Marketing: Organic only — no paid ads, no big launch budget

• Duration: Track how long it actually takes to hit that target — whether that’s weeks, months, or longer

  
  

I’ll be using Canva to design the product, and in the spirit of full transparency, I’ll also use ChatGPT to help with wording, structure, and ideas.

This is not a 40-minute Canva magic trick.This is me — a real business owner — documenting the full process.

Time. Tech. Tantrums. All of it.(And trust me, there will be tantrums.)

I'm not an expert, but I do have some experience creating digital products — including things like colouring books, journals, and planners — and I’m familiar with some of the tech involved. So yes, I probably have a bit of a head start compared to someone who’s brand new to it all.

That said, my digital product business is still in its early days. This experiment will be a brand new product, built completely from scratch.

But it’s real. And it’s mine.

I should also note that I’m doing this while running my full-time business. This isn’t a side project that I am working on. I have clients, deadlines, admin, and all the usual spinning plates that come with running a business full-time. So this experiment? It’s happening in real life, in real time — squeezed into evenings, early mornings, and pockets of time in between everything else.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s really like to try and build passive income around a busy business… well, you’re about to find out.

Let’s go.

And I’d love to have you along for the ride.