In this article, I share details of the 5 digital products that have collectively made me $1200+.
In the past, I was like many people who thought it was hard to sell anything online because they lacked experience. Also, I have seen many people get scammed and lose their money by being promised to be taught how to make money online.
When I started to create content, my idea was to fill a gap that I had noticed on YouTube. People with a foreign accent created many ArchiCAD and other construction tutorials, and something familiar to the African context was missing.
So, I started documenting the things I had learned and posting them on my YouTube channel. The idea was to create a learning community for beginners, helping other beginners learn how to use common construction software. This grew to over 12K+ subscribers. Google AdSense started sending some earnings my way, and hey, I started making money online.
Then I realised that the community I had built wanted more resources. I packaged some of my best video tutorials into a course and shared them on Udemy and Skillshare. Also, I created some other digitally downloadable products to supplement these video resources.
Some of the digital products I will talk about are not mine. However, I am an affiliate of the original creators so they pay me when a person makes a purchase. That arrangement is called affiliate marketing, which we discussed in an earlier post. This way, I show my audience awesome products from all over the world, even if they are not mine, and all of us benefit from the opportunity.
Without taking much of your time, here are the 5 digital products that have made me over $1200 online, without a physical office or store:
1. ArchiCAD Keyboard Shortcuts Collection
Keyboard shortcuts are keys or key combinations that provide an alternative way to do something that would typically be done with a mouse.
While working in ArchiCAD, using the mouse and the menus can be very slow and inefficient. You work with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse.
However, you can learn to use keyboard shortcuts alone to work faster and save yourself some time to focus on more valuable aspects of building and growing your business.
The ArchiCAD keyboard shortcuts collection is meant to help speed up your drafting, modelling, and documentation work in ArchiCAD. Check it out now on the BIM Marketplace. It is a 4-page PDF document suitable for both Mac and Windows users.
2. Septic Tank and Soak-Away Pit Drawings
In areas where the municipal sewer line is unavailable for connection, septic tanks and soak-away pits are used for waste collection and disposal. It is common in residential areas away from the cities.
Most users had been requesting tutorials on how to model these in ArchiCAD or where they could download a pre-made model. So, I thought it wise to create the model and drawings for them to satisfy that need.
I reasoned that these structures are standardised, with standard septic tank capacities depending on the number of occupants in the building.
Therefore, we do not have to always develop these models and drawings from scratch. I built an ArchiCAD model and converted it to a BIMx hypermodel file for optimised viewing on the web, mobile and desktop. Then a 4-page PDF file with septic tank ground plan and sectional views, a 2-page PDF with soak-away pit plan and sectional views, and a tabular presentation of the corresponding dimensions to adopt for each depending on the septic tank capacity determined by the number of building occupants designed for.
These save modelling and drafting time. They are listed for download on the BIM Marketplace platform.
3. MSBIM Pro ArchiCAD Template and Cost Estimating Pack
When starting a new project in ArchiCAD, you are required to choose a default template to get started. A template contains all project preferences settings, placed elements and tools default settings for the project.
Using the default template supplied by Graphisoft would mean that every time you start a new project, you waste time customizing the project’s title blocks in the master layouts, adding layers and custom layer combinations, interactive schedules, and custom materials, among others.
I want to help my audience avoid those inefficiencies so I share with them the MSBIM Pro ArchiCAD template and cost estimating pack. This template helps us with the following awesome customizations:
- Elegant preset views for building elevations, sections, plans and construction details,
- Ready customised schedules to create reports for all model components automatically,
- Automatic building quantities extraction and linkage to an Excel bill of quantities template. This makes quantification and costing easy, with a refresh link in the Excel file to update quantities when the model gets updated. This eliminates manual quantity take-off, and
- A robust library of 1500+ 3D parametric ArchiCAD objects is ready for use in your interior design or architectural visualisation projects.
Head over to the product page on Gumroad to explore more about it.
4. MEP Professional ArchiCAD Template
The MEP Professional ArchiCAD template is similar to the earlier discussed MSBIM Pro ArchiCAD Template, save that it is meant for mechanical, electrical and plumbing projects, while the other one is for architectural building projects.
This template is for people using the ArchiCAD software to create models for MEP projects, including plumbing pipework systems, hot-water and cold-water systems, drainage systems, electrical installations, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
Check it out on the Gumroad product page.
5. ArchiCAD Key Features E-Book
The last item on this list is a 123-page e-book that packs together step-by-step tips, demonstrations, workflows and real-world examples of projects to teach you how to use the ArchiCAD software.
It teaches beginners how to use ArchiCAD as a building information modelling tool to produce excellent quality drawings and models and automate building quantity extraction while saving time.
Download the e-book here.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope you got inspired to start experimenting with digital products today.
