Thomas Frank made over $1 million in a single year selling Notion templates.
Not software. Not code. Just pre-built layouts that help people organize their stuff.
And he's not even the only one.
The numbers are wild
Thomas Frank sold just two Notion templates — "Ultimate Brain" and "Creator's Companion" — and made $1 million in revenue in 2022. At his peak, he was pulling in $100,000 per month.
Easlo, another creator known as the "Notion Guy," made over $500,000 selling templates. By October 2022, he was earning $20,000 monthly in passive income.
His "Second Brain" template alone sold 4,640 copies. At $79-99 per template, that's real money.
These aren't celebrities. They're just people who got good at a tool and packaged that knowledge.
Why this works
Three things are happening:
1. Software is overwhelming. Notion, Figma, Airtable — these tools are powerful but complicated. Most people download them, stare at the blank page, and quit. Templates solve that.
2. People pay for shortcuts. Nobody wants to spend 10 hours building a budget tracker. They'll pay $29 to skip that.
3. Distribution is free. Post it on Twitter. Share it on Reddit. One viral thread can make you $10K in a week.
What actually sells
Not everything works. The templates making money solve specific problems:
Productivity systems — task managers, habit trackers, "second brain" setups
Finance trackers — budgets, net worth dashboards, investment portfolios
Job search tools — resume trackers, interview prep, application managers
Business systems — CRMs, client dashboards, project management
The pattern: pick a problem people already have and give them the solution pre-built.“I’ve never seen a runway where you walk out in something you stitched 30 minutes ago,” said Rivera. “It’s chaos—in the best way—and the content writes itself.”
The playbook
Step 1: Pick one tool. Go deep on Notion, Figma, or Airtable. Don't spread thin.
Step 2: Build something you actually use. If you made a system to track job applications and it worked, other people want it.
Step 3: Give away a free version. Thomas Frank's free template strategy drove massive traffic to his paid products. Trends Free builds trust. Paid captures value.
Step 4: Post about it constantly. Screenshots. Videos. Before/afters. Most sales come from visibility.
The math that makes this crazy
Here's why templates beat most side hustles: zero marginal cost.
You build it once. You sell it forever. No inventory. No shipping. No limit on copies.
Say you spend 40 hours building a solid Notion template. You price it at $49. If you sell 100 copies, that's $4,900 — about $122/hour for your time. Decent.
But if you sell 1,000 copies? That's $49,000 for the same 40 hours of work. And the top creators are selling way more than that.
Thomas Frank made $760,000 from his "Ultimate Brain" template alone. Trends Most successful creators report earning between $1,000 and $3,000 per month Kajabi — not life-changing, but solid passive income from something they built once.
The compounding part: every new customer is potential word-of-mouth. Every tweet about your template is free marketing. The longer it exists, the more it sells — without extra effort.
That's the difference between trading time for money and building something that works while you sleep.
Is it saturated?
The generic "productivity dashboard" market? Yeah.
But niches are wide open. Templates for specific jobs (therapists, real estate agents, freelance writers). Templates for specific problems (wedding planning, moving apartments, podcast launches).
More specific = less competition.
Thoughts?
Anyone already selling templates or thinking about starting? Reply with what you're building.