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Digital products are everywhere.
Why is that?
Because they’re popular in the digital age.
Creating and selling your own digital products is a great way to bring in an income from home (or to add to your existing business).
There are 5 main things we are going to cover:
- Picking Your Product & Creating It
- Discussing Features & Benefits of Your First Product
- Drafting Your Sales Page
- Buy Buttons & Download Pages
- Driving Traffic to Your Order
Let’s discuss:
Pick Your Product and Get it download Ready
Before you can put your first product up for sale, you have to get it download ready.
It’s even possible you already have a few products that are almost ready to publish.
If you don’t, find something quick and easy to put together.
Examples:
- turn 10-20 of your most helpful blog posts on a topic into an ebook
- start with a PLR eBook to edit and tweak to work for your market and target audience
The first part of this process is of course to pick the product you want to get up and selling first.
Here are a few things you should consider when picking this product:
make It easy for you
Think about what’s easy to finish:
- What is almost ready?
- What excites you the most?
There are a few things to learn when it comes to getting that first product up for sale.
You want to spend your time and energy on learning these new tasks and getting them done, not on writing something new from scratch.
TIP: stick with a downloadable PDF for this first product. It’s one of the easiest products to put together and get ready for download.
Look for something you can finish up quickly. You want to be able to move on to the next set of tasks within a day or two. Start with something that’s almost done and keep it short. You can get it download ready by the end of the day.
make it easy to sell
The next step is copywriting, which means getting ready to sell the info product.
Make it easy on yourself and increase your chances of success by choosing a product that you know your audience wants.
- What questions do they frequently ask you?
- What have they specifically asked for?
- Are they interested in something you’re already working on?
THAT is the product you want to pick up and put the finishing touches on.
make it easy to do #2
Think of a tv show. The pilot episode might be great, but you could lose viewers for the second or third episode if it has nothing to do with the storylines in the first.
TIP: choose a product that will help you come up with the next one. (it has to make sense for your brand). This will get you in the habit or regular product creation.
Think: what will your customers need after they buy this first product?
So, do you have your product in mind? Fantastic!
You want to go over it before you download and publish it:
- Read it
- Edit and make changes
- Proofread
- Check your alignments
Your last step is to download it as a PDF file.
You now have something to sell and deliver to your customers.
Congratulations on a job well done!
Next, we will do some of the leg work that will make writing the sales page quick and easy.
Let's Talk about the features & benefits of your 1st product
This section is all about preparing to put together the sales page.
The biggest hurdle for new sellers is making the offer and getting the product up for sale.
Is that the reason you’re not selling digital products yet?
If so, I GOT YOU!
Let this section be the little nudge you need to get the sales page up with a buy button.
Doing this will also make crafting future sales messages easier and (hopefully) more effective.
Two Things
Ready to get started on your sales message and call to action?
Awesome.
Ask yourself two questions:
- Who is your product for?
- How will they benefit from it?
Now, reread the list you just made.
BAM! There’s your list of features and benefits.
Simple, right?
Take a look at your finished product with fresh eyes. Grab a notebook or notepad and get ready to start writing.
As you go through your content, make note of what the product does:
- What material does it cover?
- What exactly does it teach?
These are the features of your product (first piece of info you need).
Example: let’s say your info product is about container gardening.
Features of the eBook may include things like:
- choosing the right materials to build a raised garden bed
- what soil to use
- what to plant
- where to best position the container garden
All of these subjects are the product’s features.
Features don't sell
Remember: features are great, but they don’t successfully market a product.
Benefits sell.
To find the benefits, start by looking at the features and the overall theme of your product.
Ask yourself:
- What will your readers and customers get out of it?
- How will they benefit from the information you share?
Example: container gardening (as used before). Some of the benefits may include things like:
- growing your own organic vegetables
- having a higher yield of produce
- less weeding
- making gardening more comfortable
- being able to garden with little space
- growing a few tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberry plants on a patio
The key to figuring out the benefits:
- Think about your customers
- What do they want to get out of your product?
Once you have a short list of those benefits, your sales page will almost write itself.
That being said, on to the next section:
draft a compelling sales page
Let’s talk about quickly writing a compelling sales page.
For low-end products: you won’t need much to grab your visitor’s attention and to get them to click that buy button. That’s what sales pages are all about – getting as many people as possible to make a purchase.
A simple sales page has a few key elements:
- headline
- a few benefit statements
- CTA (call to action)
- the buy button
Let’s take a closer look at each of these elements and in the process, draft a sales page.
Feel free to follow along and work on your own page in the process.
the Headline
Your headline has one job: grab attention and get them to read your sales page, so pull them in with something interesting:
- Make a controversial statement.
- Ask a thought-provoking question.
- Tease them with a major benefit statement.
Quickest way to get good at writing headlines?
Pay attention to them in other people’s:
- sales pages
- emails
- book titles
- etc
Take notice of magazine covers:
- What grabs your attention?
- Why?
Write down any solid headlines you come across.
Add them to a file/document/note on your phone that you can pull from whenever you need a headline for your own work.
the benefits
Immediately bridge the gap between the headline and the features/benefits.
Keep it short and to the point. Too wordy? They’ll click away.
How do you connect the dots between the two?
- Tell a story
- Paint a picture with words
Making the connection will keep readers interested.
the highlights
Aside from the headline, the most important part of your sales page is the features and benefits section. As you might have noticed, I LOVE bullet points because that is the quickest and easiest way to put things together.
Think about 3-5 product features.. and turn them into benefit statements.
Let your readers know what’s in it for them.
What’s the difference between a feature and a benefit?
Let’s stick with the example of the container gardening ebook.
Feature: reducing weeds.
Benefit: growing your own food without having to spend hours pulling weeds.
Clear? Cool. Let’s keep going.
the ask
Yes, you’ve put in all that work.
You’ve made a strong case for your product.
BUT
You still have to ask potential customers to buy.
This is that call to action (aka CTA) that we spoke about.
So how do you do this?
Don’t overthink it. Keep it simple and just ask.
Example: “So what are you waiting for? Click the button below to grab your copy!”
That’s it!
Your sales page is just about finished: just add a working buy button and you’re ready for your first customer.
Setting up a Buy Button
& a download Page
Simply put: other than the product itself, the bare minimum you need to start making money from your product:
- a buy button
- a download page (and of course the product itself)
It’s not much more complicated than that.
Granted, you can do a lot with products:
- shopping carts
- funnels
- upsells
- downsells
BUT that’s for another day and you won’t even be able to build out a product funnel unless you get that very first product up and selling.
Why? You have nothing else to offer at the moment.
So let’s just focus on the buy button.
Think about it: how will you take the money from people who want to buy from you?
Your options are:
- use a shopping cart (like Podia or Kajabi)
- use a third party payment platform (like JVZoo, Clickbank or Gumroad)
- keep it super simple and use a PayPal buy button
PayPal Buy Buttons
To keep this post as simple as possible, I’m assuming you’re going with the PayPal Option. Almost everyone these days has a PayPal account and if you’re running an online business, I’m fairly certain you have one as well. If you don’t, stop reading and go sign up.
If you have a personal PayPal account, you need to upgrade to the business version.
My Recommendation: use a different email address than your personal one to keep them separate.
It’s quick and easy and something you should be doing if you’re using PayPal at all in your business. Once you have the business account set up, creating that first buy button is quick and easy.
PayPal has simple tutorials that can be found HERE.
During that “setting up the link” process, you will have to set a price for your product.
Keep it simple and keep it low. In most markets, $7-$17 for a first product is a good start.
Your goals are simply:
- start making sales
- build a list of paying customers
Don’t get too hung up on how profitable it will be:
- pick your price
- keep it low so it’s easy to start making sales
- move on
Get that button code and add it to your sales page.
product pickup/Delivery
In the process of setting up the buy button, you need to indicate where you want to redirect your customers to pick up their product.
In short, you need a download page.
Create a simple page that thanks them for their purchase and give them the link to the PDF file.
If you’re using WordPress, you can easily create a page that doesn’t show up in the website menu (make sure it’s unchecked before you publish) and then upload the ebook file through your media section.
TIP: Use a plugin like “Easy Media Download” to help deliver your media.
Publish your page, add the link to it when you create your PayPal button, and you’re ready to test the process.
Unfortunately, you can’t buy your own product with the same PayPal account.
This would also be a great reason to use a different email address for your business: you can use your personal PayPal account to make the test purchase.
If that’s not possible, ask a friend or family member. If you’re able to, watch them go through the purchase process so you can make sure it runs the way you want it to.
Everything working as expected? You’re ready to make sales.
YAY!
Start driving traffic to
your offer
Okay..
- Your sales page is up
- The buy button is working
- Your product is ready for download
In other words? You’re ready to start making sales. YAY!
Before that can happen, you have to start driving traffic to your offer.
Here are three simple ways to drive visitors to your brand-new sales page and start making those all-important first sales:
Links on your blog or website
You’ve put some time and effort into growing your blog readership, right?
Time to put that growth to good use: tell them all about your new product.
Write a blog post to announce the launch.
Promote the product on your blog going forward.
Where does it make sense to promote the post/product?
- Mention it in the sidebar with a graphic
- Link to it in your main menu
- Link to it in relevant posts
- Add links to posts that already get regular traffic
- Add a CTA where it makes sense
- Mention it on social media
- Mention it in your email newsletter
Reality Check: don’t expect an abundance of sales from that effort. It will most likely be a trickle over time. That’s how these things work in the beginning: you put in the work now to reap the rewards down the line.
Think of links on your site as a reminder to buy after it has already been introduced.
links on social media
As mentioned, it’s time to leverage your reach on social media, no matter how big or small it is.
List the platforms you are active on:
Come up with a few posts for each platform (I included links for my Notes Bundle so you can get your ideas on paper) and start posting!
- Create some attractive images for Pinterest and Instagram.
- Record a short video introducing the product for YouTube.
- Link to the blog post on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Start to cross promote (an Instagram post about your YouTube video for example).
Encourage your friends and followers to like/share.
Once you start spreading the word on social media, ask your current circle of influence to help spread the word for you.
links in your newsletter
The most effective way to do your initial promotion is through email.
If you’re already emailing your list regularly, it is the best way to launch a product and get those initial sales.
Sit down and write an email for your readers:
- Why do they need this product?
- What will they get out of this?
- Focus on the benefits for consumers
Don’t stop at just one email!
Think: how else can you work it into future emails?
- Mention it in passing
- Keep a blurb in the P.S. for the next few weeks
- Answer some questions you’re receiving about your product (if one person asks, there’s a chance others will wonder the same thing)
Keep adding blurbs about your product regularly going forward and the sales will continue to come in.
Best part? As your list/follower count/readership grows, the amount of orders will grow right along with it. YAY for that!
From there, the sky is the limit!
Explore other marketing options like:
- recruiting affiliates
- paid advertising
Your next steps?
- Invest a portion of your profits into marketing
- Set aside some time to create your next product
Before you know it, you’ll be well on your way to growing your income with digital products!
Stock Photos:
resources
Notes Bundle
12 Notes Pages!
- Lined Pages: Notes, Thoughts & Ideas
- Circles: Notes, Thoughts & Ideas
- Squares: Notes, Thoughts & Ideas
- Graph Paper: Notes and Doodles (2)
Business Marketing Bundle
Planners:
- Weekly
- Social Media Calendar
Trackers:
- All 6 major platforms
- Blog Posts
- Affiliate Programs
Everything you need to get your business marketing strategy on paper!
