One of the appeals we keep hearing about automation platforms is that you can build a workflow solution, package it as a template, and sell it on a marketplace. The idea of monetizing work we’ve already done sounds great. But I’m skeptical about whether this actually happens in practice or if it’s just marketing narrative.
I’m wondering: has anyone actually built and sold automation templates successfully? Not as a main business, but as a realistic revenue stream. What’s the market actually like? Do people buy these things, or do most teams prefer to build custom?
If you’ve tried this, what templates actually sold versus what you thought would sell? And did the revenue justify the effort, or is it really just a nice-to-have for people already using the platform?
We’ve sold a few templates but it’s not a standalone business. We built specialized workflows for our specific domain—email lead nurturing, customer data synchronization—and listed them. Handful of sales, decent revenue stream, but maybe $2-3K per month. Not life-changing, but real.
What worked: templates solving very specific problems in niches where people actively search. What didn’t: generic templates that platforms already offer through templates of templates. We competed with free/built-in options and lost.
The effort to prepare a template for sale—documentation, support, updates—is bigger than building it for internal use. You’re committing to maintaining it. If you’re expecting passive income, you’ll be disappointed. But if you build something valuable and are okay fielding questions, it can work.
We tried selling templates for a different industry than we operate in, thinking we’d found a gap. Turns out there was a gap for a reason—the niches we picked were too small. We made minimal sales.
But we also built one for our own domain because we had customers asking for the same automation repeatedly. Started selling that as a template, made reasonable money. Not passive at all though—we update it when platforms change, answer questions, troubleshoot implementations.
If the marketplace is saturated with similar templates, demand is thin. If you’re solving a specific pain that other people clearly have, there’s revenue. But don’t expect it to scale without ongoing work.
The reality is most templates don’t sell significantly, but good ones in specialized domains can generate steady revenue. We sold maybe 15-20 annually of our education sector template at reasonable prices. Enough to be worth listing but not enough to build a business on. The work to keep them current and supported is ongoing.