WHY DIGITAL PRODUCTS?

Digital products are such a good way to make passive income.

Because:

  1. You’re not working for someone else. With affiliate marketing, someone else’s product has to be good enough for you to make money.
  2. No shipping costs, which you would have with any physical products.
  3. You don’t need to continually restock products like you do with physical products. With digital products you create one version, and then you have unlimited digital copies to sell.

Digital products for the win!

HOW MUCH PASSIVE INCOME CAN I MAKE THROUGH SELLING DIGITAL PRODUCTS? 

Short answer; a lot.

So yes, you can make decent income selling your own products!

DO I NEED A LARGE AUDIENCE?

Nope!

In actual fact, depending on how much your digital product is, you might only need a couple of hundred site visitors a month.

Because think about it: if your digital product costs around $100, you only need 10 people to buy it every month to make $1000!

So you do not need a big audience or lots of pageviews to earn passive income this way.

AREN’T DIGITAL PRODUCTS ONLY FOR CERTAIN TYPES OF BLOGGERS?

Absolutely not.

I can understand why people think “the only people who sell digital products are people who blog about blogging”.

But that’s because it suits their business model to sell informational ebooks and courses.

Because their audience wants to learn about blogging (speaking from experience).

BUT this does not mean you can’t sell digital products if you write about food, beauty, travel, etc.

DIGITAL PRODUCT IDEAS

Here’s a list of some digital product ideas you can create and sell easily:

  • Music
  • Photography
  • Graphics
  • Fonts
  • Digital art

But obviously, those ideas only work in some niches.

You won’t sell digital fonts as a food blogger. Or music as a fashion blogger.

So, my 3 favourite digital products are:

  1. Ebooks
  2. Courses
  3. Printables

Because these work no matter what you write about.

  • Travel: You can create and sell a travel guide(s) on different places to visit, create a course on how to save and travel for a low cost, or create printable checklists for travelling.
  • Beauty: Create an ebook of your favourite products and where to sell them, a masterclass or course on different makeup techniques or looks, printable face charts to practice your makeup looks on, etc
  • Food: An ebook of your favourite recipes, a course that includes baking videos, printable recipes or shopping lists.
  • Fitness: An ebook of different workouts,a course on weight loss, motivational wall art printables or cheat sheets for exercises, etc.

So you get the idea.

You can 100% sell a digital product, no matter what you are interested in.

WHICH DIGITAL PRODUCT IDEA IS THE BEST?

The best idea for your first digital product is an ebook or printables.

I recommend you choose one of these over a digital course because:

  • They’re quick and easy to create compared to a course.
  • They’re lower investment for readers than a course is.

Why does lower price matter?

Having a low priced product is really important for your first digital product.

Courses tend to be $99+.

Readers are unlikely to give $99+ over to someone that they’ve never purchased a product from before. (Would you? I know I wouldn’t!).

So yes, a course might be a good idea once you have an established audience that has already bought a lower priced digital product from you e.g an ebook or printable.

But for your first digital product, lower priced ebooks and printables are the way to go!

SELLING EBOOKS AND PRINTABLES: A STEP BY STEP GUIDE

Below I’ve made a step by step to help you create and sell an ebook or printables, so you can start earning passive income!

STEP 1: BUILD AN AUDIENCE

Building an audience that enjoys your content is a guaranteed way to make sales of your digital products.

This isn’t a completely necessary step; you can just go for it and create an ebook or printable and list them in a shop on your website.

But if you want to have the secure feeling of knowing that someone wants to buy your digital product before you even create it, I recommend:

  1. Building an audience
  2. Once you have an audience, ask them what products they would be interested in buying
  3. Then creating that product, so they can buy it!

This way, you’re not wasting your time creating a digital product with the potential of not making any sales.

We will look at ways to grow your blog further on in the course.

But before you even focus on getting more page views to grow your income, you can start collecting people’s emails.

WHY BOTHER WITH EMAILS?

  • An email list is the only thing you truly own. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook- all social media could shut down tomorrow, and if you are solely relying on it for people to visit your site, you will lose all your readers. Having someone’s email means you can contact them instantly.
  • Email marketing makes it much easier to sell your own product to someone. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “the money is in the list”, it’s because it’s true. Think about it- are you more likely to buy a product from someone’s site on your first visit? Or once you’ve gotten to know the person after they’ve emailed you over time?
  • Email marketing can all be automated. As part of passive income, you want systems in place so you can be contacting your audience and making sales without having to actually be on your laptop. This can be done with email marketing, as you can automate all your emails.

So if you want to make serious income with digital products, start collecting emails now.

WHAT EMAIL MARKETING SERVICE SHOULD I USE?

Some are hella expensive.

But I use Mailerlite because:

  • It allows you to add images to your emails
  • You can create automated email sequences
  • And it’s free for you until you reach 1000 subscribers.

Plus you can get $20 credit when you sign up.

STEP 2: CREATE AN EBOOK OR PRINTABLE

Once you’ve built an audience and worked out what kind of digital product they are interested in, it’s time to make it!

Making an ebook or printable can seem like a daunting task.

But you can easily make them using Canva for free.

What is Canva?

Canva is an online design software.

It has tonnes of design elements and different layout options. So you can create a stunning ebook or printable without paying anything to make it.

Once you’ve made your ebook or printable, you need to download it.

Then it’s time to list it on your site, and start selling it passively!

STEP 3: LIST YOUR PRODUCT

Now you need to add your digital product to your site.

The thought of adding a shop to my site and asking for money from readers directly to me was really scary.

I didn’t want to have to deal with potential payments going wrong, etc.

So in the end, I didn’t.

Instead I:

  • Created a sales page for my ebook.
  • Added my ebook on SendOwl and linked the SendOwl checkout to my product sales page. So when someone clicks “Buy Now” on the sales page for my ebook, they pay on SendOwl instead. That way I don’t have to deal with any payments on my website!

I pay slightly more for my SendOwl account, to make sure I can have affiliates for my guide and list more products.

But the cheapest version is only $9 per month to list 10 products.

Plus there are no transaction fees! You only pay your monthly billed amount, no matter how many sales you make.

STEP 4: SELL IT!

Once you’ve got your product listed with a sales page and payment via SendOwl is set up, it’s time to start promoting it!

I like to get the word out about my products to my readers by:

  1. Creating posts that are relevant and linking to them throughout.
  2. Putting a link to the product on the main menu at the top of my website.
  3. Emailing my subscribers about discounts, results from the products, etc (this can be set up as an automated email sequence for when someone subscribes).

DIGITAL PRODUCTS: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope I have given you the tools and resources to start making passive income selling digital products!

And more importantly, the confidence.

I know that selling a product you have created can be a little scary.

But perhaps now I have shown you how to sell your own digital products passively, you will be more comfortable starting to do it yourself.

In tomorrow’s lesson, I will be showing you something a little bit less complicated: growing traffic to your blog to increase passive income.

See you then!

Bruno