217: Behind the Revenue: How I Actually Make Money in My Digital Product Business
If you’ve ever wondered how successful creators actually make money—and what revenue streams are really worth pursuing—this episode is for you.
This week on Creator’s MBA, I’m taking you behind the scenes of both of my brands—HobbyScool and DestiniCopp.com—and walking you through the exact business models and revenue streams I use today, including:
What I do now to generate consistent, scalable revenue
What I no longer do (like done-for-you services and high-ticket coaching) and why I walked away from them
The pros and cons of each major business model so you can choose what’s right for you
There are a lot of shiny business models out there—and it’s easy to feel like you have to do it all. But what really matters is choosing a model that fits your audience, your goals, and how you want to spend your time.
🔍 What You’ll Learn:
The 7+ revenue streams I use to run two profitable digital product businesses
Why I moved away from high-touch offers like 1:1 Zoom coaching and DFY services
How I’m evergreening my virtual summits to increase revenue without starting from scratch
The pros and cons of low-ticket products, memberships, affiliate revenue, sponsorships, and more
The critical questions you should ask when choosing a business model that fits you
If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by all the possible ways to “make money online,” or wondering whether you’re on the right track—this episode will help you find clarity and confidence.
Let’s build a business that actually works for you—without burnout, without overcomplicating, and without chasing trends.
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:00] The importance of choosing a business model that fits your lifestyle, audience, and long-term goals
[00:02:00] A quick tour of common digital product business models—from low-ticket to high-ticket and everything in between
[00:04:30] HobbyScool breakdown: How I make money with live summits, evergreen funnels, low-cost products, and memberships
[00:07:30] Why I’m starting to evergreen my summits—and how this adds long-term value to every event
[00:08:30] DestiniCopp.com breakdown: Funnels, front-end products, HelloContent store, and two memberships
[00:10:30] What I no longer offer: Why I phased out done-for-you, done-with-you, and high-ticket 1:1 coaching
[00:12:00] The real pros and cons of each model: low-ticket, memberships, courses, affiliate revenue, sponsorships, and more
[00:17:00] Three questions to help you choose the right model for your business
[00:19:00] Action step: How to evaluate your current (or future) offers and realign your business model for growth
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How I Make Money Online
When it comes to growing a digital product business, there’s no shortage of shiny business models out there. From high-ticket coaching to $27 funnels, memberships to summits, it can be hard to know which path is right for you.
As someone who runs two digital product brands and has tested nearly every model out there, I want to take you behind the scenes—what’s working, what I’ve walked away from, and how to choose a model that aligns with your goals and your life.
Whether you're just starting out or re-evaluating your offers, this breakdown will help you map a more intentional (and profitable) path forward.
The Most Common Revenue Streams for Digital Product Creators
Let’s start with the landscape. Here are some of the most common revenue streams for creators and digital entrepreneurs:
Low-cost digital products (eBooks, printables, templates, toolkits)
Online courses or mini-courses
Memberships and subscriptions
Virtual summits or live events (with free access and paid VIP passes)
1:1 coaching or group programs
Done-for-you or done-with-you services
Affiliate marketing
Sponsorships and ad placements
Product bundles and collaborations
High-ticket offers (typically $1,000+)
You don’t need all of these. The key is choosing a few that work together and support the business you actually want to run.
My Business Model (Behind the Scenes)
I run two core brands—HobbyScool and DestiniCopp.com—and I use different revenue streams in each to align with their missions, audiences, and content strategies.
🖌️ HobbyScool
HobbyScool is a creative lifestyle brand focused on crafting, hobbies, and helping people turn their passions into income or everyday joy. Here’s how we make money:
Live Virtual Summits – We host 5 summits per year (moving to 4 in 2026). Attendees join for free, and we sell VIP Passes and bundle access. We’ve also started evergreening our summit content so that people can continue to purchase and benefit from it long after the live event ends.
Low-Cost Digital Products – Think printable planners, coloring books, digital journals—all sold via our Shopify store.
Memberships – Our Craft & Create Club and Part-Time Passion Club deliver monthly prompts, themed projects, and light training.
Sponsorship & Ad Revenue – We generate income from summit sponsors and newsletter ad placements.
Affiliate Revenue – A portion of our revenue comes from sharing tools and platforms we use and love.
🧠 DestiniCopp.com
This brand supports digital product creators with systems, tools, and strategies to grow predictable, scalable revenue.
Here’s what that looks like:
Low-Cost Front-End Funnels – These evergreen funnels help me build my list and generate daily sales from small offers.
Shopify Store: HelloContent – I sell low-cost digital templates, plug-and-play systems, swipe files, and occasional one-off workshops designed for creators running courses, memberships, or email lists.
Memberships – I run two:
Newsletter Profit Club – Focused on growing and monetizing your newsletter
Digital Product Growth Lab – Focused on building scalable systems for consistent product revenue
Affiliate Marketing – I earn revenue from promoting a select group of tools that I personally use and stand behind.
Occasional Sponsorships – Primarily in the form of sponsored emails and summit partnerships.
What I Don’t Do Anymore
❌ Done-for-you services
❌ Done-with-you coaching
❌ High-ticket 1:1 offers
There’s nothing wrong with these models—they can be incredibly profitable and transformational for clients. But they didn’t align with the kind of business I wanted to build:
Scalable
Semi-passive
Designed to serve a larger audience
Built around systems, not my calendar
So I phased them out and leaned into memberships, evergreen funnels, and low-cost offers instead.
Pros & Cons of Common Business Models
Here’s a quick breakdown to help you evaluate what’s right for you:
🛍️ Low-Cost Digital Products
Pros: Scalable, accessible, easy to automate
Cons: Requires traffic (ads, SEO, collabs), lower margins without upsells
🤝 Memberships
Pros: Predictable recurring revenue, builds long-term loyalty
Cons: Requires consistent content and community engagement
🎓 Courses
Pros: High value, works well in funnels
Cons: Low completion rates, content-heavy upfront
💼 Affiliate Revenue
Pros: Low lift, no fulfillment
Cons: Income depends on others, requires audience trust
🎙️ Sponsorships
Pros: Great for monetizing newsletters, summits, podcasts
Cons: Requires an engaged list or audience size
🧑🏫 Done-For-You / High-Ticket
Pros: High profit margins, deep client impact
Cons: Trades time for money, harder to scale solo
So… What’s the Right Model for You?
Here are a few questions to help you decide:
How much time do you want to spend delivering your offer?
Want freedom? Lean into passive or semi-passive models.What kind of audience are you serving?
Are they budget-conscious DIYers or high-touch learners?What kind of business (and life) are you building long term?
Start with the end in mind, and reverse-engineer the model that gets you there.
Final Thoughts
There’s no perfect model—only the one that fits you.
You can build a wildly successful business with:
Low-cost products sold through smart funnels
A high-retention membership
One great summit per quarter
Or even just a killer affiliate strategy
The key is choosing intentionally, building systems around your model, and giving it time to grow.
If you’re ready to create a system that drives consistent, predictable revenue from your digital products, check out the Digital Product Growth Lab.
These are the exact models and strategies I use in my own business—and I’d love to help you find the one that fits yours.
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Creator's MBA podcast, your go-to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without worrying about the social media algorithms.
I hope you enjoy our episode today.
Hi there, Destini here, and welcome back to the Creator's MBA podcast, the show where I help you grow consistent digital product revenue using smart systems, scalable strategies, with a little help from ai. And in today's episode. I am pulling back the curtain and giving you a behind the scenes look at how I actually make money online and what you
[00:01:00] can learn from it as you build or refine your own business model.
Now today I'm going to walk you through the most common revenue streams for digital product businesses. Which ones I use in my two brands and which ones I don't do anymore and why I moved away from them. The pros and cons of each model, so you can choose what works for you personally. Now, I will say there are a lot of shiny business models out there, and it's so easy to get distracted by what other people are doing. But what really matters is picking a model that aligns with your audience, your own personal business goals, and your lifestyle. So let's get right into it.
The first thing I wanna talk about are what are your options, and I wanna give you a little quick tour
[00:02:00] of digital product business models. So when we talk about business models for digital product creators like you. What we're essentially talking about is how you generate income from your expertise, your content, or your audience.
Now, here are the most common ways people like us will monetize. The first is low cost digital products. So think like eBooks, templates. The second is courses and mini courses. The next one are what I would define as memberships or subscription type models. And then we might have some live events in there, like summits, and you might monetize those with like a VIP pass and a funnel that goes on the back end of that.
You might have some one-on-one coaching or group programs.
[00:03:00] You might have some done for you or done with you services. Even though we might be creating like digital products too, you can do, and make money from affiliate revenue, sponsorships and ad placements.
Especially if you have built up your audience. If you have built up your email list, you can make money like from bundles, very similar to the summit type model that I talked about. And you can also make money from more high ticket type offers, where you might have a higher ticket type group coaching program that might have some done with you or done for you services in there.
Now, you don't need to do all of these in your business. In fact, I would argue that you probably shouldn't. It would be too much to have all of these revenue streams in there, but really
[00:04:00] understanding all of your options helps you build a more intentional and profitable business.
First, let me kind of break down my revenue streams and how I actually make money online, and I'm gonna break this down by brand, so you can see how I use different business models in different ways. There's a lot of similarities here. I wanna break these down. The first is my B2C brand, which is HobbyScool.
So HobbyScool is what I would consider like a creative lifestyle type brand. So it's for crafters and hobbyists and creative entrepreneurs who want to have fun, make things, and maybe even. Monetize their skills. So here's how we make money in HobbyScool. The first is we host live virtual summits. I do five of those a
[00:05:00] year, or that's what I'm doing this year, and it has free access to the live virtual summits.
And on the back end of that, I sell our VIP pass and it has a funnel that goes along with that. But we are also starting to evergreen our summits, meaning we're going to repurpose the content and we'll continue selling these VIP passes even after that live event has ended.
So we're going to basically evergreen the summit, treat it like it's live, like run it like a live event like we normally would, even though it's a event that we have ran in the past and we're gonna still sell the VIP passes. There. And what I love about that model, it really does add that long-term value to each summit that we're producing.
So if you've ever put together a summit or been involved in it in any sort of manner, you know that that host has. Put a ton of
[00:06:00] time and energy into that. We spend probably, you know, at least, three to six months before each of our events, finding speakers, working with them, answering them que, answering their questions, getting their information, following up with them, putting all the promo material together for them to promote.
So there's a lot of work there. Being able to kind of repurpose that content is a huge benefit. The other thing we sell in HobbyScool are our low cost digital products. So we're selling things like printable planners, coloring books, digital journals, and we're doing all of that through our Shopify store.
So these are low ticket offers that people can purchase basically anytime. The other way we monetize in HobbyScool are memberships. Right now we have two and we're gonna be adding a third one, or that's my goal.
I'm still working on it, but the first is the Craft and Create Club, and then we have our
[00:07:00] part-time passion club for people who are interested in kind of monetizing their hobby. The other revenue stream that we have in HobbyScool are sponsorships and ad revenue. Now, I don't do a ton of this, but I do monetize at sometimes through sponsored email placements.
I might have some event type part partnerships there, where I'm getting revenue in. And then affiliate revenue. Again, I don't do a ton of this, but I do earn some commissions from a few select tools and platforms that I use and love, To me, it's easier to promote if it's something that I generally use and believe in. Okay, now let me move on to my personal brand, which is my DestiniCopp.com brand, which is part of the Creator’s MBA podcast. And this brand is focused on helping digital product creators grow and scale their businesses.
And here's what I do under this particular brand
[00:08:00] first, again, I have these low cost. Digital products, these low cost front end type products. So I sell these, products through optimized funnels that also help me grow my email list and generate basically daily cash flow. So these might be swipe files, mini trainings, tool kits.
Also, I have a Shopify store here, which is called HelloContent, where I sell marketing templates, course resources, workshop materials, content bundles, and really all of those are designed to help other creators get results faster, right? It helps them put together their lead magnets, they're sales pages, they're emails, sequence, and then membership.
So I have two in my personal brand. I have my newsletter profit club for. Creators who are wanting to grow and monetize their newsletters. And then I have my digital product growth lab for business owners who are ready to implement systems that drive consistent digital product revenue
[00:09:00] from their products here too.
I also have affiliate revenue, so there are some. Products that I use on a regular basis, like my email marketing software, some other, design tools. Obviously I promote Thrive Cart. I'm a huge fan of that, The other area that I earn revenue are affiliate revenue, and here I promote platforms and tools that I use specifically in my business that I use on a regular basis and I love, and then occasional sponsorship.
So it's not a huge revenue stream for me here. I do earn money from some email placements and sponsorship collaborations. So here's what I no longer do, or what I have walked away from and said, you know what? This is not going to be part of my business model going forward. The first is done for you services.
So I used to do that. I have done
[00:10:00] that in the past. I've also been a Facebook ads consultant. completely walked away from done for you services, so that's not in my business model. There's nothing wrong with that if that's part of your business. but I have made the decision that that's not gonna be a way that I earn revenue.
Also more done with you type programs. I don't have any of those right now. Will I do them in the future? I might. I might launch like a done with you type program that's more higher ticket where I work with people, you know, like for six weeks to put together like a webinar funnel or a tripwire type funnel.
But right now I'm not doing that. And I don't have it on the, roadmap to do. Not saying I won't do it in the future, but right now it's just not there. Also, one-on-one high ticket coaching. Now, I did fail to mention in my personal brand I do. One-on-one
[00:11:00] coaching via Voxer. Okay. So I do that for my VIPs in my digital product growth lab, so people can basically upgrade and purchase the one-on-one coaching through Voxer.
I do that on Wednesdays, so if they have. Any questions whatsoever, I'm there all day. They can ask questions, I'll answer them. What I'm not doing is what I would consider, like my one-on-one high ticket coaching where I'm getting on Zoom calls every single week with somebody and, you know, basically being extremely, extremely hands-on in their business.
All of these business models that I have talked about today or ways to earn revenue can be extremely profitable. So it really kind of comes down to what is. Your vision for your business, and how do you want to spend
[00:12:00] your time?
Now? For me, I decided and made that decision to serve a more broader audience at a lower price point rather than a smaller audience at a higher price point. Again, I'm not saying that either one of those decisions are right or wrong, but that's just the. Decision that I made. So that kind of begs the question, what are the pros and cons of each of these business models?
So here's what I have learned over the years. 'cause I feel like I have done absolutely anything and everything there is. Out there to do, except maybe for an agency model. I haven't done that, and I definitely don't wanna do that, but let's talk about these.
Okay, so for low cost digital products, I'm gonna give you some pros here. I think they're great for list building and kind of getting that daily revenue. I also believe that they're scalable and they're easy to automate.
[00:13:00] Some cons are, is you need traffic, right? You need a lot of volume for that model, either through ads or SEO or collaboration.
And I would say that for me, it's been mostly collaboration and I'm thinking about HobbyScool here mostly we've done that through collaborations, and that has certainly worked with the virtual summit model. We've also done some paid ads and a little bit of. SEO and Pinterest. There also, margins can be very thin unless they are kind of paired with the upsells or funnels.
And we have definitely have done that and that has helped tremendously with the, the profit margin there. So in our funnels, we make sure, you know, we have the VIPs Pass sale, we have order bumps, we. Most of the funnels will have like three upsells on the back end of that. The next business model are memberships.
Now, I definitely love memberships. I have four of them right
[00:14:00] now, and we're thinking about adding a fifth one, But here's the reasons why I love memberships. First of all, it gives you that predictable monthly income, and it builds customer loyalty.
So you're interacting with your clients, with your customers on a regular basis, so they know you, they love you. It also requires, on the con side, it requires regular content and retention efforts, so you're almost constantly having to. Prove yourself, right? 'cause you want people to stay in your membership and it can be time consuming without systems.
So you have to have those systems in there. And I do think that we have some really, really solid systems in place for our memberships. Next one is courses. So the first would be more higher ticket without ongoing delivery. That's a pro to a course, right? You can charge a little bit more for it, and you don't have to deliver like
[00:15:00] monthly content like you do with memberships.
Also, courses work very, very well with Evergreen Funnel, so you can do your live launch, take the content and evergreen it. A con to this would be lower completion rates unless you have support that is included,
Also, courses can require a lot of. Upfront creation. Now, generally what I suggest you do is kind of do it live with a cohort of students, take that content and either kind of rerecord it or even use that content. So that's kind of my preference for creating courses. Now let's move into like affiliate and sponsorship type revenue.
The pros to this would be low effort and it can have a high ROI if it's aligned with your audience. So I'm very, very particular about who I do sponsorship partnerships with, affiliate partnerships with. [00:16:00] 'cause it really can work very well, or you don't see a result if it's not aligned with your audience.
A pro, here is you don't have to create products, but depending on your audience size and audience trust, you might not make as much. Money and it can be inconsistent or quite frankly, really out of your control. Now moving into the done for you or high ticket coaching, more of the higher priced offers.
some of the pros are you have high margins and you can have a transformational impact, With those type of offers. And it can be for some people. Easy to sell if you have authority in the marketplace, but here you are really trading that time for money and it's very, very hard to scale these without a team.
A lot of times with these
[00:17:00] higher type. Offers, you know, you might even see people having like a sales team to really sell them if you're, you know, if they're having to sell like an $8,000 package or a $10,000 package, it's hard to do that without a team, a sales team behind it. And you might even have to hire people to help you deliver it.
So you're gonna, in most cases, you're gonna have a team behind you for these higher ticket type. Offers. So now let's move into how to choose what's right for you. And I will say that there are no perfect business models out there. I, I do think what I have landed on is perfect for me, might not be perfect for you, but I absolutely love my personal business models.
But here are three questions that I would kind of put out to you to help guide. Your decision for your own business.
[00:18:00] The first is, how much time do you want to spend delivering your offers? If you want more time freedom, I would say lean towards more passive or semi passive models. That's me. That's kind of where I want to be.
the next question is, what does your audience actually need? How do they like to buy? Think about it. Are they more do it yourself type people, or do they want more handholding, more step-by-step guidance? Do they want you to kind of do it for them? And also what. Sustainable for you both mentally, emotionally, and logistically?
Right, because just because something is profitable doesn't mean that it's the best fit for your business or your life. Okay, so here's your action item for this week. What I want you to do is take out a blank piece
[00:19:00] of paper and list every product or offer you have or want to have. And next to each one, I want you to write down how it delivers value, how it generates revenue, and how much time or energy it requires from you.
And then ask yourself what's working. What's worth kind of doubling down on and what's not aligned with you anymore. So just think about that. If you are doing like done with you or done for you type offers. Is that what you want to continue to do in the future? So just ask yourself those questions if you want support choosing the right model and kind of building it out with smart systems that generate consistent digital product revenue.
I'd love to have you inside the Digital Product Growth Lab.
[00:20:00] thank you so much for tuning in to the Creator’s MBA today.
If this episode help you clarify your next step, please share it with a friend and leave us a review. I would love to help more creators find this show. Until next time, keep building smart, scalable systems and I will see you soon.
Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.