I love to do blog posts that answer questions I get in my community and questions I see in Facebook Groups. Yes I hang out on Facebook occasionally. 😉 Todays question I see all the time! “Where do I start making a digital planner?”
Making a digital planner is a simple 6 phase process, each stage builds on the next. It’s not just open the design software and jump in.
A planner made that way isn’t going to get much use. The first phase is research, followed by planning, then creation, testing, and the work to list it in the shop, and finally a review of products to see what is selling.
I have a Digital Planner Creator’s Quick-Start Toolkit, that will help you get started making a digital planner. Check it out here.
6 Project Phases to Create a Digital Planner
| Step Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Get Creative | The non-tech stuff… who is your planner for, what templates do you need, what size will it be? |
| Inspiration Station | Now it’s time to plan out the fun stuff… what colors, fonts, graphics and layouts do you want. Are you going to use tables, boxes, grids or dots or…? |
| Build-a-Planner | This is where you open the design tool and create your templates, add dates, and link the pages of your planner |
| Share the Love | Ask a few friends to test your planner, while you test it too. It’s great to gather feedback and testimonials here too! |
| Launch Party | Now it’s time to create your shop descriptions, mockups, add it to your shop and email your list. (don’t forget to do a little SEO research when you add your description) |
| Review | The review is all about figuring out what is selling in your shop. Do you sell more dated, or undated, a specific theme or type of planner. This is the key to more sales. |
I’d love to give you a bit more info on each stage below, but don’t get overwhelmed. The process becomes a habit and most of these stages are less than an a half hour of work. The bulk of your time will be spent in the “Build-a-Planner” stage. Think of it as Build a Bear kind of fun! The goal is to get started making a digital planner… it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
How to Get Started Making a Digital Planner?
1. Get Creative – Research to get started making a digital planner
A good digital planner starts with research. You can get a lot by looking at Pinterest, and on Etsy to see what templates people need to accomplish their planning. I’m a firm believer that a good digital planner is tied to a niche audience.
Question to Ask When Choosing Templates
Choosing the templates is one of the fun parts of when you get started making a digital planner – make it a game.
- What does my person need to track?
- Do they need to see the week at a glance?
- Are they scheduling projects
- task daily
- weekly
- monthly
- quarterly
- yearly
- What’s going to make their life easier?
- Do they need dashboards for contacts?
All of these questions will help you make a planner that will help your person accomplish their goal of being organized and productive. Your goal is to create pages that will help them with this task.
This stage can take a long time if you don’t set a timer and just make a list… says the queen of the rabbit hole. My digital planner organizer also has a tab for listing all the templates and links to my inspiration. This helps me remember.
Timeline: I use a timer and do 30 minutes, no more. You can get more than you need in this time once you pin down where you want to do your searches.
2. Inspiration Station – the fun stuff to get started making a digital planner
I can fall down a rabbit hole with this stuff. It’s fun to pick fonts, colors and graphics. But when you get started making a digital planner it’s important to go with basics.
My first planner design had fancy font’s and lots of background graphics… when I look at it now I cringe.
Keep the fonts simple and create a repository of brand assets to speed up planner creation.
I now use my planner organizer and workflow for each product line.
The fonts are simple and understated, the colors are in line with my brand, and I have brand graphics that I use. This simplifies and speeds up creation so I can put more planners in my shop.
Timeline: Once again set that timer and spend 30 minutes on this task… this isn’t where you want to spend a lot of time.
3. Build-a-Planner – more fun stuff to get started making a digital planner
This is where the tech can start to feel heavy. If you haven’t chosen a platform to make your digital planner with, I love Affinity Publisher!
I did a complete review of the best software for you to figure out what works for you! You will see that Affinity Publisher tops my list.
Side note… the reviews are based on my use of the programs. I don’t receive a commission to recommend a specific tool. But even if I did, I wouldn’t recommend anything that I don’t like. I’m funny that way.
This is where you will create the pages and do the work of making a digital planner. Each tool is slightly different. For example, some digital planner tools offer pre-made templates for different planner sizes, while others allow you to customize the page dimensions yourself.
Deciding planner size is an important step when you get started creating a digital planner because it will determine how much information can be included on each page, as well as how the planner will be used. Ultimately, the choice of planner size will depend on the individual’s preferences and needs.
But the main concept is to keep a standard look and feel throughout the planner, keep things in sections so you can hyperlink to the main section, and setup a link plan ahead of time.
Build-a-Planner Journey
Your build-a-planer journey will include the following for all the planners you create:
- create your templates
- add dates
- add hyperlinks
I do recommend you keep a project tracker of your own like my Magic Digital Planner Organizer and Workflow.
Creating a planner is a medium sized project and it has a lot of moving pieces.
Timeline: This process can take a lot of time think 40-80 hours when you get started making a digital planner from scratch.
When you first get started creating a digital planner, I recommend starting out with basic templates that you purchase with commercial use rights or PLR, and using automation tools for adding links and dates this can cut the time down to 1 focused day or 6-8 hours.
Affinity Publisher has a great import feature for dates and some hyperlinks (the hyperlinks are clunky at best). And PDF linker is amazing for generating links if you are just selling the planner PDF.
4. Share the Love – more fun stuff to get started making a digital planner
One of the most important steps to creating a usable planner is testing it. But as a professional software engineer I can tell you, testing your own planner only goes so far.. You NEED other people to test!
This phase is a great time to grab some testimonials for your planner too. This helps with sales. I will say I am horrible about this. I am just so grateful they are testing I forget to ask for a testimonial.
So don’t feel pressured to add this step initially, but try to find a couple of people to test your planner links.
5. Launch Party – get that planner out into the world
Your launch party can actually be quite simple. Create your mockups and listing descriptions, add it to your shop of choice, and finally send out a couple of emails.
You can add layers… maybe you post it on Facebook, or create a few Pinterest Pins.
I can promise you if you just add it to your shop without sharing you won’t make the kind of sales you want (if any).
The saying “Make it and they will come” does not apply here.
Traffic is the life blood of your shop and making digital planner sales. You can get traffic from many sources but my favorite mostly passive sources are SEO in the shop descriptions and blogs, Pinterest and my email list.
There are people out there with a lot more skill on this subject than I, but I’m here to help with the basics. To sell your planner you have to get traffic to your shop.
Find a way that works for you, and then build in new ways and traffic sources, in the next and final section we’ll talk about the review process and figuring out what is working.
6. Review
The review is all about figuring out what is selling in your shop. Do you sell more dated, or undated, a specific theme or type of planner. This is the key to more sales!
I have already given you a lot of information. I’m not going to dump on you here. But I do think it’s important to keep a log of your products, the price and the number of sales. I also track the traffic source for those sales using utm codes in my pins, blogs and emails.
If you have absolutely no idea what a UTM code is no worries… it’s just some info you add to the URL of your product when you direct people to your product. This code gives Google analytics a road map, so you know where your traffic came from. 🙂
Key Take Aways!
Making a digital planner doesn’t start with the design tool, it starts with knowing your audience and getting organized. (Make sure you grab the toolkit… it will help with this!)
Question: Where do I get started making a digital planner?
Answer: There are 6 phases to making a digital planner, and each phase has several steps. But the big picture is this:
- Get Creative – The non-tech stuff… who is your planner for, what templates do you need, what size will it be?
- Inspiration Station – Now it’s time to plan out the fun stuff… what colors, fonts, graphics and layouts do you want. Are you going to use
tables, boxes, grids or dots or…? - Build-a-Planner – This is where you open the design tool and create your
templates, add dates, and link the pages of your planner. Your very own adventure game… - Share the Love – Ask a few friends to test your planner, while you test it too. It’s great to gather feedback and testimonials here too!
- Launch Party – Now it’s time to create your shop descriptions, mockups,
add it to your shop and email your list. (don’t forget to do
a little SEO research when you create your description) - Review – The review is all about figuring out what is selling in your
shop. Do you sell more dated, or undated, a specific
theme or type of planner. This is the key to more sales.
Let’s get you started with this process with the Digital Planner Creator’s Quick-Start Toolkit
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