In an era where most side hustles feel oversaturated, one of the strangest yet most profitable trends quietly exploding online revolves around something as simple as bookmarks—both digital and physical. What started as a quirky organization hack has morphed into multiple income streams that require little to no startup capital, yet scale into full-time revenue for thousands of creators. Here’s the complete playbook.
The breakout method dominating TikTok and YouTube Shorts right now is called the “Bookmark Method.” Creators build hundreds of hyper-specific bookmark folders in Chrome or Edge with irresistible titles like “Quiet Luxury Handbags Under $300,” “Cottagecore Home Decor 2025,” or “Spicy BookTok Recommendations If You Loved ACOTAR.” Each folder contains dozens of links—except every single link is an affiliate link to Amazon, RewardStyle (LTK), ShopMy, or ClickBank products. A 30-second video showing off these “insanely organized” folders, set to a trending sound, can rack up millions of views overnight. Viewers rush to recreate the folders, unknowingly clicking the creator’s affiliate links for months or years afterward. Top practitioners report $5,000–$30,000 monthly with almost zero ongoing work after the initial setup.
Meanwhile, Etsy has become a goldmine for printable and digital bookmark designers. Using nothing more than Canva’s free tier, creators craft aesthetic bookmark templates featuring book quotes, fandom art, smutty romance lines, dark academia motifs, or planner-friendly designs. Sold as instant-download PDFs for $3–$8 each, a single well-optimized listing can generate hundreds of sales per month on autopilot. Shops focusing on niche trends—Taylor Swift lyrics, mental health affirmations, anime characters, or seasonal reading trackers—regularly cross $10,000–$15,000 monthly passive income.
Print-on-demand has supercharged physical bookmark sales. Platforms like Printful and Printify allow creators to offer laminated bookmarks, tassel bookmarks, corner bookmarks shaped like cat ears or dragon claws, and even leatherette engraved designs without ever touching inventory. These products pair perfectly with the “Blind Date with a Book” trend and book subscription boxes, where a $2–$4 production-cost bookmark becomes a $12–$20 retail product with 70–80% margins.
Digital planners for iPad and reMarkable users represent another high-ticket corner of the bookmark economy. Hyperlinked digital bookmark packs for apps like GoodNotes and Notability sell for $15–$60 per set. A single pack of 100 aesthetic, clickable bookmarks themed around reading challenges or romance tropes can bring in several thousand dollars in the first week of launch.
Pinterest, often written off as “old,” has quietly become one of the highest-converting traffic sources for bookmark-related businesses. Creators pin their Etsy products, affiliate links, or free lead magnets into secret boards with laser-focused titles. When users search “Gift Ideas for Book Lovers 2025” or “Cozy Fall Reading List,” they discover and follow these boards, driving perpetual traffic.
Even bulk and custom bookmark sales remain lucrative offline-adjacent opportunities. Teachers order class sets of motivational bookmarks at the start of each school year. Libraries commission branded designs. Corporations buy thousands for conference swag. A Cricut machine and some faux leather sheets can turn this into a six-figure local business.
Perhaps the weirdest success story belongs to the spicy romance community on BookTok, where creators sell animated digital bookmarks as limited-edition collectibles—some fetching $50–$200 apiece from superfans who treat them like trading cards.
The beauty of the bookmark money-making ecosystem lies in its low barrier to entry and multiple monetization layers. Someone can start the same day with zero budget: design five printable bookmarks in Canva, list them on Etsy, simultaneously build twenty affiliate-loaded bookmark folders, film a single Reel or Short demonstrating their “aesthetic organization system,” and begin earning from three separate streams before the week ends.
Success leaves clues. The highest earners combine methods—using their viral bookmark folder videos to drive traffic to Etsy shops, bundling print-on-demand bookmarks into subscription boxes, and selling digital planner packs as upsells. They obsess over niche specificity because the more painfully targeted the bookmark (or folder name) is, the higher the conversion rate.
In 2025, while everyone else fights over dropshipping stores and faceless YouTube channels, a growing army of creators is getting rich organizing the internet one bookmark at a time. The tools are free, the demand is insatiable among readers and aesthetic enthusiasts, and the competition—compared to traditional e-commerce—remains laughably thin.