In the last year or so, I’ve built some “mini apps” in Google Sheets. For example, a daily weight tracker for weight management/loss/gain, a per-customer and per-project time tracker for freelancing, and a few more - just for my own use.

But it occurs to me that those tools might be good for me to hop on the digital product sales bandwagon. They’re certainly better than some Etsy planner or whatever digital products the Instagram “wealth” influencers are pushing these days.

My questions are these:

1.1. Since these tools are built in Google Sheet, do you know of a way that I can protect customers from sharing the tools with people who haven’t paid for them? It’s very easy to share access to a Google Sheet and make a copy for yourself.

1.2. Or should I not concern myself with piracy at all? I remember I read in a Tim Ferriss book that you don’t need to bother with stopping piracy, because those who pirate your product was never going to pay for it anyway, and pirated products are, in and of themselves, a kind of advertising.

  1. What do you think of this idea in general? Digital products conceptually, but also in the form of Google Sheet apps