This Teacher Sells Digital Downloads for $10. Her Side Hustle Now Makes Six Figures a Month: 'It Seems Too Good to Be True, But It's Not.' When one middle school teacher needed to make some extra income, she started a remote side hustle with no physical products and incredibly low overhead. Now she brings in six figures each month, and offers courses teaching others how to do the same.
By Frances Dodds Edited by Mark Klekas
There are very few things you can create once and then sell thousands of times over. Most businesses aren't a fish and loaves situation. But then, Lisa Fink is an evangelist of sorts. Only she's not promising miracles.
Six years after starting a fully remote side hustle — one she was dubious would make even a few hundred dollars — she's made a million in revenue, and retired 20 years early from teaching middle school.
Now, Fink teaches courses showing people how to follow in her footsteps. "I want others to feel the relief I felt when passive income began rolling in," she says. "There's absolutely enough room for everyone." Here, she shares her key insights.
Fink, 45, lives in St. John's County, Florida, with her husband and four Yorkies. She considers herself a "peacemaker and a people-pleaser" who loves to laugh ("tears roll down my face when you get me going"). And in 2017, she was happily employed, teaching middle school social studies, when life served up some lemons.
"My husband lost his job of twenty-one years," she says, "and we'd just moved into a new home two months prior. We began worrying about paying the bills and covering the new mortgage on my salary alone. We all know teachers are paid terribly."
Fink decided to try designing some printable games for kids that teachers could incorporate into their lesson plans, or that parents could download and print off for rainy days. At the time, physical "escape rooms" were a popular activity, so Fink tried to recreate the experience on the page, with reading passages, ciphers and comprehension questions. She had no design or business experience, but she created a website called TeacherThinkTank, and opened a digital storefront on the platform Teachers Pay Teachers. She started selling her creations for $10 each. Those first months were hard. She was putting in 20-30 hours a week on top of her teaching job. But gradually, she got her footing.
"When a product line began to take off, I realized I needed to capitalize on it and create something similar," she says. "I also realized that when I created something too similar to an activity offered by other sellers, sales only trickled in here and there. Once I figured out how to put my unique spin on things and add a twist of fun and mystery, things began to change. It's all about standing out in the crowd."
By six months, she was consistently bringing in five figures a month, she says, and she started selling on Etsy and Shopify as well. "I'm a big believer in not putting all your eggs in one basket," she says.
That mentality applied to the products she was making as well. In addition to printable escape rooms, she began making printable color-by-number games, scavenger hunts, digital secret message activities and virtual tours. "I wanted to have something that meets the needs of all learning styles," she explained.
At the same time, while she thinks it's important to diversify your products and ways of reaching customers, it's important not to split your attention too much. "Try to focus on one thing at a time. Looking back, I was trying to do it all at once and when you're spread thin, the effort becomes minimal to each aspect. If social media isn't right for you right now, skip it and wait until you're ready. If opening your own e-commerce website isn't in the cards right now, focus on product creation."
Another thing she encourages people to do is build up their email list from the get-go, since selling on other platforms gives you less control than having a direct line to the customer.
"I did not understand the importance of it in the beginning," she says. "I wish I would have been gaining subscribers from year one, because no algorithm can ever change my email list. They are always with me."
But once she got in a steady groove, and scoped out the competition to set her games apart, each new product she created could be sold an infinite number of times, because buyers just downloaded the game and printed it off themselves. "The best part is that the income is passive," she says. "Once I upload a resource, the internet does the rest. One single lesson can sell over and over again. There are no boxes to pack or ship, no inventory to track, and incredibly low overhead spending. I've also added a membership model to my website making lesson plans easily accessible and less expensive for teachers."
This past year, the business was doing so well that Fink started offering courses to teach other people how to make and sell printables online. She now offers three courses: "Easy Escape Rooms," "Simple Scavenger Hunts" and "Cloaked in Fun." "You don't have to be a teacher to sell printables or kids' games," she says. "I'm sure my teaching experience played a role in my success, but this is something that homeschool moms, bloggers, busy parents or even corporate individuals can take advantage of. You just need one idea to get you started."
Ultimately, Fink says, since she left her teaching job, she's thrilled that she can still play a part in kids' education — while making a much better living. "It warms my heart to know that my resources are used by hundreds of thousands of teachers," she says. "But during the 15 years I worked as a teacher, I never could have imagined making six figures. Frankly, it was impossible to do in the field of education."
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Today, Fink's husband is employed again, but she's still full-steam ahead on TeacherThinkTank. Even having sold over 250,000 printables and made over $1 million in revenue, all she can see is how much more is on the table. "There are other teachers, authors, or Etsy sellers making three times more than me," she says. "There is a high demand right now for printables, educational or not. You may be thinking that building a successful online business by selling digital downloads seems too good to be true, but I'm proof that it's not."
