I just heard about the possibility of building automations and selling them as templates on a marketplace. The pitch is appealing—you build something valuable once, and it generates passive revenue.
But I’m skeptical. Selling software-like products is fundamentally different from building internal tools. You need documentation that actual strangers can follow. You need support. You need to maintain it as the platform updates. And finding a market that actually wants to buy your specific automation sounds harder than it sounds.
I’m wondering if anyone here has actually done this successfully. If you’ve built and sold automation templates, what was realistic about the revenue, and what surprised you about the effort involved? Did you need to market it heavily, or did the marketplace discovery actually work? And more importantly—what kind of automation actually sells, versus what sounds good in theory but nobody wants to buy?
I’m trying to figure out if this is a legitimate revenue stream for people building automations, or if it’s more of an aspirational feature that sounds good in the pitch deck but doesn’t actually materialize.
I’ve sold about thirty templates so far. Revenue-wise, it’s supplementary income, not a livelihood. Most of my templates generate $5-20 per month, which adds up to maybe $300-500 across the whole portfolio. A few have done better—my customer feedback automation hit about $100/month at peak.
Here’s what I learned: you need to solve a real problem that people already know they have. Generic templates don’t work. I tried selling a basic lead logger and got zero sales. I built one for Slack-to-spreadsheet integration and it moved consistently because people search for that specific thing and know exactly what they need.
Documentation and support matter more than you’d think. I spent 4-5 hours documenting each template with screenshots, setup steps, and common issues. That upfront work made sales easier because people could actually follow instructions.
Marketing is real work. Discovery on the marketplace is weak. Most of my sales came from mentioning templates in forums or commenting on related discussions. The marketplace itself doesn’t drive traffic for unknown sellers.
It’s not passive income. Updates to the platform occasionally break your templates, and you have to fix them. Customer questions come in. But if you’re building automations anyway, packaging a few for sale takes reasonable effort for modest returns.
Marketplace sales typically generate modest revenue unless you have high demand templates. Success requires solving specific, clearly-defined problems rather than generic workflows. The most successful templates address workflow gaps that people actively search for. Support and documentation are non-negotiable—templates with poor documentation get returns and poor ratings. Most sellers should expect 8-20 hours per template for packaging, documentation, and ongoing maintenance. Revenue per template ranges from $5-100 monthly depending on specificity and demand.
Template marketplace success follows a power law distribution—a few templates generate meaningful revenue, most generate minimal. Sustainable revenue comes from templates that address recurring workflow problems across many organizations, not niche automation. Documentation and ongoing maintenance are ongoing costs that many sellers underestimate. If you’re considering this, focus on problems with clear search intent and measurable demand before building and packaging.
We built the Marketplace specifically because we saw people building valuable automations and wanted them to have a way to monetize. The reality is what you’d expect—it’s supplementary income, not primary revenue for most people.
What works is solving specific problems clearly. Someone looking for “Slack message to spreadsheet” knows exactly what they need. Generic templates get buried. The sellers doing best are usually the ones who’ve already solved the problem internally and understand exactly what documentation and support it requires.
The marketplace discovery isn’t perfect, but it’s there. Some of our top templates generate solid recurring revenue. Most generate modest amounts, which still helps offset the cost of your Latenode subscription.
If you’re already building automations, packaging a few for sale takes reasonable effort. But go in expecting supplementary income, not a business. The real value is that your automation work has the potential to generate revenue instead of just sitting as an internal tool.