Master passive income: How Jemilla from Storytella Studios uses Flodesk to create, promote, and sell templates

TL;DR: Small business owner Jemilla Mills-Smith monetizes email templates without ever leaving Flodesk. Discover her story, how she does it, and her top tips for selling templates yourself.

While Jemilla Mills-Smith is busy growing Storytella Studios™ and pursuing her acting career, her email templates are busy earning her $27 per sale. 

As a service-based business owner, most of Jemilla’s income comes from trading her time and skills for money. But thanks to templates, she now has a way to provide her audience with value at scale—and make money while she sleeps.

Rather than turn clients away when they can’t afford her services, Jemilla takes a different approach: she offers them affordable templates they can adapt and use. She was already using templates to save time and streamline processes inside her own business, so turning them into a digital product for her clients’ didn’t take much effort but had huge potential for impact.

She says, “Templates can be a great way to build passive income while showcasing your expertise and positioning you as a thought leader who is worth the investment for your other paid offers.”

Discover Jemilla’s story, how Flodesk has become her all-in-one tool for creating and selling email templates, and how to start monetizing templates yourself.

Jemilla spent nearly four years working a 9-5 job while running Storytella Studios™ and pursuing her acting career before quitting her day job to go all-in on her business. Now, she splits her time between acting stories out on screen and helping brands bring theirs to life online.

As a Messaging Strategist and Conversion Copywriter, she’s honed her “storyselling” skills—a term that conveys her combined approach of storytelling and sales strategy. Her experience spans dozens of clients in a range of industries, but she finds the most fulfillment working with creative businesses who are working to uplift communities in their own way.

Jemilla adds, “What really lights my fire is writing for women-owned and BIPOC-led businesses. I want to help these businesses carve a space for themselves in the market and target consumers that look like us because so often things aren’t made for us.”

As a solopreneur, templates have been instrumental in helping Jemilla scale her business. Rather than starting from scratch whenever she kicks off a new project, she draws structure and inspiration from previous templates. This saves her time and effort while empowering her with proven frameworks she can use to help her clients at scale. 

When it comes to her weekly email newsletter, Jemilla likes to repeatedly use the same template designs within Flodesk. Each template is pre-loaded with her custom fonts, colors, and favorite layouts, which makes writing weekly emails seamless and efficient. She says, “Templates have really helped me streamline the copywriting process as a whole—I’ve been using them in my business myself long before I started selling them.”

Jemilla didn’t intend to start selling templates—it happened organically. “I created my email welcome sequence template because many clients were reaching out for help with their welcome sequences, but they couldn’t afford to hire me to write them. I have a template I use myself all the time, so I began selling it.”

As a service-based business owner, offering templates gives Jemilla a way to provide value and support to those who can’t afford to invest in a copywriter yet. 

“Copywriting isn’t easy, so templates are a great way for small business owners to have agency over their own business and write in a way that sounds like them before they’re ready to invest in external support. You can use my template sequence to welcome people to your email list, launch digital resources, you name it. It’s a way for my clients to easily rinse and repeat for just $27,” she says.

Thanks to template sharing, Flodesk has truly become a one-stop shop for Jemilla to create and sell her email welcome sequence template. 

“Flodesk is part of my every week. I use it for everything. It’s how people join my email list, and Flodesk Checkout was a game-changer for me when I was first trying to figure out where and how to sell digital products. It’s truly an all-in-one tool,” says Jemilla.

Find out how she uses Flodesk to create a passive income stream from start to finish.

Previously, Jemilla housed the copy for her email template sequence inside a Google doc, which created an extra step for her customers to set up their welcome sequence. But now, Flodesk template sharing lets her deliver her welcome email sequence in a beautiful, branded template link that customers can open right inside Flodesk and start using immediately.

“Now that I can create my email sequence template within Flodesk, it streamlines the process even further for customers—they won’t have to worry about getting on Flodesk and plugging in the copy to email templates themselves. It removes an extra step for me AND for them. It’s going to be great for the customer journey.”

Regardless of whether people can pay to work with her, Jemilla is fiercely dedicated to providing her audience with value. She uses Flodesk Email to design beautiful emails and nurture her email list—which has 227 subscribers (and counting). 

“My email list has been a great way for me to express everything I want to say without worrying about a character limit,” says Jemilla. “I use it literally every week to send my subscribers free value and vibes. Plus, the ability to write an email from my favorite templates saves me loads of time.”

Email helps her nurture relationships and build trust before promoting her offers, like templates. She loves how seamlessly Flodesk makes the transition from nurturing to selling. 

“Email marketing is where you begin to build those relationships, so Flodesk is really a start-to-finish place for entrepreneurs to create connections and build passive income with digital products.”

Jemilla began monetizing templates just as Flodesk Checkout was launching, which gave her the tools to build a gorgeous sales page and checkout flow that seamlessly connected with the rest of her Flodesk sales flow. 

“It came at the perfect time. I love how it highlights the best parts of my welcome sequence template,” she says.  

Now, she can create and sell email templates without ever leaving Flodesk.

Want to learn how you can start making passive income from templates, too? Jemilla shares actionable tips to help you get started with examples from her own experience.

Before you put in the work of creating a template, it’s essential to make sure that people actually want and need it.

Here’s my advice: If you’re a service-based business owner, there’s probably one aspect of your business process that blows your clients away or keeps them coming back for more. For me, it’s the market research portion of my business, which involves a highly detailed survey and system for brands to truly get to know their customers.

I believed that transforming this portion of my business into a template format could be impactful for my business. But first, I needed to gauge whether there was demand for it. To test it, I began recording on-screen videos of myself using my template and posting them to my Instagram with a simple question: This is what I’m working on. Would you like to see how you can do this for yourself? 

Try replicating this in your own business to see if there’s audience interest in your template idea before you put time into creating one.

Once you’ve created your template, get ‘beta testers’ to try out your templates before you launch them publicly so that you can identify growth opportunities, make improvements, and capture testimonials to leverage in your launch. 

These beta testers can be friends or members of your existing audience, but make sure they fit the same persona as your target audience so that you gain meaningful feedback and social proof.

Determining what to price your templates doesn’t have to be complicated. Start by asking your beta testers: How much would you be willing to pay for this? This will give you a baseline for how much you can charge for your template. 

You should also consider your break-even point. How much time and financial resources did you put into creating the template, and how many templates would you need to sell to earn that back? Together, these questions can help you establish your template pricing.

Once your template is ready to sell, attract customers by offering a relevant freebie—like a free demo or masterclass that provides free value while highlighting your template. This is a great way to introduce your audience to your digital product and drive traffic to your sales page.

Here’s an example of how I’m growing an audience for my template through a freebie. 

Explore ultra-enticing ways to promote your template through social media and email and convert lurkers into customers. Here are a few of my favorite tactics:

When you deliver your templates, include how-to guides and resources to ensure customers have the best experience possible and see results. For my market research template, I provide my customers with a step-by-step guide that shows them how to use it on 12 different tools—eliminating friction to use and providing them with clear next steps.

There’s never been a better time to add a passive income stream to your business (or an easier way to get started). Turn your skills into stunning email templates, share them with subscribers, and make money while you sleep—all within Flodesk. 

Discover all that you can do with Flodesk. Try it free for 30 days—no credit card required.

Connect with Jemilla at Storytella Studios website or find her on Instagram and Tiktok @storytellastudios.