What is a Digital Product Business
In this post, I want to paint the picture and set the setting for what a digital products business looks like.
What is a digital product?
A digital product is a product that can be shared online, something that can be created once and then sold multiple times.
Some examples include e-books, digital templates, coaching, online courses and podcasts.
Why digital products are awesome.
First, let’s talk about sales.
Automated Sales Funnels
Assuming that we have a product ready to sell we can utilise powerful sales funnels to generate income. I’ll talk more about how to do that later here on the series and how we can use funnels to show our customers how valuable our digital products really are.
Automating our sales is one of the great advantages of working with digital products
Offer multiple formats
Digital products are easily offered in different formats, such as written or video. Also they are very easy to maintain.
Let’s say you have an e-book, for example, and you want to update a section of your book. You can easily edit the document and re-upload it to publish the new version.
If you have a real book, a physical book and you want to update that, that’s almost impossible. People already bought your book.
With digital products, we have flexibility.
Global Reach
You will reach people all over the world. There is no limit of the reach of your products or your digital products as they’re available to anyone with an internet connection.
I’ll go into how to market to the wider audience more later in this series, and give you a step by step guide you can follow.
Passive income
One of the best benefits is the passive income potential. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to put in time and effort, but it does mean you can make money while you sleep. You are not limited to the amount of time you have during the day like you would be if you tied yourself to your product.
And that’s awesome.
What tools do you need to create digital products?
In general, you can get started with some simple equipment, a computer or access to a computer.
Free apps like Canva.com, Anchor.fm, Google Meet with these tools, you can create a range of products from books, printables, podcasts, coaching or webinars.
If you add a couple of additional apps like a Screen casting app, maybe purchase a USB microphone to up your audio quality, you can create your own online courses or audiobooks.
I’m conscious that I don’t want you to feel like the tools needed are a barrier to entry. The best thing is to just get started with what you have, see if you can make it work and then reinvest any income you make into better equipment that will increase the quality of your products.
Earning Potential
Let’s talk about what’s the earning potential you will have with each digital product.
We’ll have two main goals for you here on this series.
- The first goal is to make $1,000 a month with your digital products.
- When we get there, the next step will be to grow to $10,000 a month.
Don’t worry, let me explain a bit more and show you some numbers so you have an idea of how many sales we need to make in each different product.
Let’s start with online courses.
For example, let’s say we price the course at $250, which is a reasonable price, and we make 40 sales this month.
That’s $10,000.
And if we make only 4 sales in a week, we have already met the first goal, which is $1,000 that month.
Next consider Templates.
Let’s say we charge $50 per template and we have 20 people that are interested in buying the template.
They purchase the template from your online store.
That’s $1,000 this month.
Only 20 interested customers and you’ve already ticked off the first goal, of $1,000 with this product alone.
When we grow that to 200 people, that’s $10,000.
These are just two examples, but in this series you will learn about 7 different digital products and the relevant numbers required to meet your goals.
I’ll be talking about Books and eBooks, Audiobooks, Courses, Podcasts, Stock, Printables and Templates.
And maybe you are thinking, Ok, these numbers look great, but how I’m getting there, how I’m making these sales. It’s one thing is to create a product. but an entirely different thing is to sell these products and have people buy these products from you.
So let me show you some strategies you can use.
Sales Funnels
We’ll focus on a basic type of sales funnel.
The main goal of this sales funnel is to attract new people to your business and start educating them on your digital products.
You want to show your potential customers the value of your products and your services for them, specifically.
So that’s the goal. Reach people who might have a problem you can help solve, use social media and other places on the Internet to start showing them what you have to offer, what your products are, their value and how your products could transform their lives or could solve a problem that they have.
Here are a few examples of a sales funnel.
Using the above examples:
From a YouTube video, you are driving people to your website where they will join your email list. And from the email list you will set up an email marketing sequence that will show your potential customers the value of your products and services.
From a podcast episode you can talk about and sell your eBook or your e-book.
If you have a Facebook group, you can post your relevant YouTube videos there to promote and sell your printables.
There are more details about the sales funnel process later in the series to help you implement solid sales systems which you can use to sell more digital products.
Multiple Digital Products Increase Revenue
One of the best ways to increase revenue is to create multiple digital products. I dont just mean multiple of the same type, but different digital products about the same topic or solving the same problem.
A quick example could be a video course that teaches people to sew.
The main product would be a masterclass that teachers people how to sew more complex clothes.
This can then be converted into an eBook that people can purchase.
You could even turn this into coaching programs with students who want to take it to the next level and prefer that one on one interaction that you can then sell for a much higher price.
Why is doing something like this great for increasing revenue?
First of all, you have multiple streams of income and as a digital products business, it’s a very good idea to have multiple streams of income, especially if you’re depending on other platforms to drive traffic to your product.
Everyone has a preferred learning style. While some of your customers may like your video courses, others may prefer it in a written format to read and follow along with at their own pace.
Another similar benefit is that you can reach different audiences on different platforms.
There’s certain types of people that end up on these different types of platforms. Certain people listen to podcasts, others watch online courses, and if you have products in different areas, you have a better chance of reaching and growing your brand by getting to these different types of customers.
If you only did podcasts, then the size of your audience would be greatly limited because your then on podcasting platforms.
And while some people may want to learn sewing through podcasts, a lot of people that want to learn sewing through video content, through online courses, through books and other methods.
When you have multiple products, you see snowball style growth as you cross promote your products.
When people have only one product its common to see them having more linear growth. By offering multiple types of products and showing their value on different platforms you a more likely to see exponential growth.
And exponential growth is what we’re aiming for.