In this guide, we’ll cover the basics you need to know about how to sell digital products from anywhere you choose. This is designed to help you if you would like to sell the following types of digital products:
- Ebooks
- Membership Programs
- Ecourses
- Audio/Video downloads
This is a basic (read: for those just getting started with selling digital products online) but comprehensive “Getting Started” guide. Let’s get started….
Step 1: Create Your Product
For many, this is the most exciting part…creating a product you’re proud of to share with the world. If you haven’t created your product yet, there are a few useful things to consider *before* you create it, which will help determine how well your ebook or other product will sell. These include:
- Is there a market/need for your product?
- Do you already have a specific type of audience in mind? Do you already have their “ear” or a way to communicate with them?
- Do you have the tools & resources you need to create a *great* product?
- How are you going to market the product?
Is there a market for your product?
There are a few things you need to consider before you even begin to create your product. The biggest mistake most first-time product creators make is that they create a product which no-one wants to buy.
The best way to avoid this is to do some market research first. It doesn’t have to cost you anything but time…leverage your existing networks such as Facebook, Twitter or any other places you hang out where you know like-minded people and people who may be your target customers. Here are a few things you can do:
- Create surveys and do a prize draw to give away some of your product for free to people who complete the survey.
- Become active and network on Facebook pages & groups to get to know the kind of people who may be your target audience. Ask questions, chat, engage – but make sure you don’t p*ss the page/group owners off.
- Participate in LinkedIn Groups and keep an eye on the kinds of questions, challenges and problems your target audience talk about.
- Take part in Twitter chats to meet and engage like-minded people and ask them for feedback and opinions, once you’ve got to know them.
Even if you don’t have your own audience yet, there are still plenty of ways to gather feedback and do your research – just get creative.
Tools to Create Your Product
There are tons of free tools you can use to create your own digital product – if you’re smart, you don’t need to spend a penny. The only thing I’d recommend investing in is the design and look and feel of your product.
The first impression is important – don’t blow it right upfront – so consider investing in some design services and then bootstrap the rest using the following free or good value tools:
- Google Docs to create ebook documents, presentations/slides and other content
- Skype & Call Recorder (Mac) or Skype Recorder (PC) for audio products such as recording audio interviews or seminars.
- Garageband (Mac) and Audacity (Mac & PC) to create audio content
- Jing to create free, short screencasts and videos of your screen (good for tutorials).
- iShowU (Mac) or Camtasia (Mac & PC) to create longer screencasts & tutorials.
- Bluehost for web hosting an unlimited number of websites on a single account.
- WordPress.org to create a basic site either for your sales page and/or your actual product.
- Buddypress to create a free social networking site that integrates with WordPress.
- Amazon S3 to store and host your audio and video files.
- Aweber or Mailchimp to deliver email course content.
- WordPress plug-ins like WP Audio Player and Flowplayer to display content.
- WordPress plug-ins like S2Member to create a membership site for free.
Step 2: Set Up Your Sales & Delivery Channels
Once you’ve created your product, you’ll need to figure out how you’ll sell and deliver it from a technical perspective. You may have covered some of this in step 1 if the product itself is a membership site but you’ll still need to figure out the sales process and ensure you’ve got everything you need in place.
A basic sales process – and what’s required at each step – goes something like this:
Step 1. Prospect visits sales page –> You need a sales page.
Step 2. Prospect hits “Buy now” button –> You need a “buy now” button.
Step 3. Customer receives product, either:
- Digital ebook –> You need a way to automatically deliver the ebook file.
- Membership login info –> You need a way to deliver this info.
- Audio file –> You need a way to automatically deliver the audio file.
- eCourse –> You need a way to deliver the course content.
So, in summary, you’ll need:
- A sales page
- A “buy now” button
- A way to deliver the digital product
Here’s how you can get each of those…
Create A Sales Page
The cheapest way to do this is to use a simple page on self-hosted WordPress website. Use our free video tutorials (scroll to the bottom of the page) to help you get started or this free course walking you through how to get started with WordPress.
Aside from the actual technical platform to host your sales page, you’ll need to consider the actual contents of your sales page. At the very least, you’ll need:
- A headline
- Compelling text which encourages people to hit your “Buy now” button
- Graphics for your product and buttons
- Testimonials
If the above sounds overwhelming, I’d highly recommend spending $85 on Premise, a premium WordPress plug-in from the folks behind Copyblogger which helps you create effective sales pages and teaches you how to do this step-by-step (this is not about the technical stuff, it’s about how to create the contents of your page).
This is by far the most valuable tool you can use if you need help with actually putting together the contents of your page for the maximum number of sales. It’s not cheap but it can be used for as many sites/products as you like so over the long term, its one of the best investments you’ll make.
If it’s still beyond your budget, then pore over these free articles on Copyblogger and apply all the information you soak up when it comes to creating your sales page.
Set Up A Buy Now Button & Your Delivery Channel
Back to the technical bit…you’ll need to create a “Buy Now” button for your product. The delivery channel you plan to use to actually deliver your product will determine which service – Paypal or Ejunkie – you need to use to get the code for your button.
Here are some of the common set-ups and related tools:
1. To deliver an ebook
A common and easy set-up is to use Ejunkie, upload your file there and then get the code for the “buy now” button to add to your site. When a customer clicks on the button and purchases your ebook, they’ll automatically be sent an email with a link to download the ebook.
2. To “deliver” membership of a forum/site
If you need to direct your customers to a sign up/registration form or other content relating to a private site, the easiest set-up is to use Paypal’s built-in “Buy now” or “Subscription” buttons.
When you set this up, you’ll be given an option (in the Advanced section), to automatically send customers to a URL once they’ve completed their payment. This means you can send them to a private registration page only once they’ve paid. Ejunkie doesn’t offer subscription payments so if you’re planning to collect recurring payments, Paypal is the easiest option.
Ejunkie also enables you to do re-directs upon payment, so if you’re selling something for a one-time fee, you could also use Ejunkie.
3. To deliver an audio product
Like ebooks, Ejunkie is a good option to deliver digital files. There is however a restriction on the file size you can upload to Ejunkie (100MB currently) which may not be enough for audio/video files.
In this case, you could use something like Amazon S3 to store all your large digital files and simply re-direct people to the URL of the file upon completion of payment. It’s also possible to do the re-direct via Paypal, so either tool could be used in this instance.
4. To deliver an eCourse
If you’d like to deliver a course which consists of regularly delivered content by email, you can set this up using the autoresponder functionality of a mailing list service such as Aweber or Mailchimp. You’ll need to set up the sequence of emails as an autoresponder series and then give customers a way to sign up for this (private) list.
The easiest way to do this is to again use the re-direct option in Paypal or Ejunkie and direct them to the URL of your sign-up box (this is available via Aweber or Mailchimp when you set up a web form to enable people to sign up to the list and receive the emails).
Tools Checklist
- Paypal for subscriptions (e.g. like the Odyssey ~ Premium) or one-off payments.
- Ejunkie for products which require a digital download such as an ebook.
- Aweber or Mailchimp to deliver an email course in a sequenced fashion (e.g. like this one).
Step 3: Plan Your Launch & Marketing
Now you’ve got your product finished, your sales page complete and your delivery channel is set up and ready to ship, there’s only one thing for it…to release your product out into the world and find some customers!
There are 2 approaches here, and whichever you choose will depend on 3 things:
- Your own personal style and preference of marketing
- How much money you want to make from this upfront
- How much time you have to plan and implement a launch
There is research that shows the greatest number of sales come in the first few hours after a launch – which is why some people spend as much time planning the launch as they do creating the product.
To prepare for a BIG launch like this, you are going to need to do some or all of the following…and much of it starts months in advance of your product even being ready to go on sale:
- Connect with big players in your industry/area and ask them to review your product when it’s ready which means they’ll effectively be sending their audience to your sales page – this is only really effective if you’ve got a prior connection or relationship with them which is why it can take months to do this. If you suddenly, out of the blue, send them an email about your product, they’ll probably ignore it – they get pitched on these things all the time. This is a long term, slow burn activity.
- Send out review copies to big players, people of influence and anyone else with an audience who you think may get value from your product. Again, the idea is that they’ll review it, want to interview you about it or send their traffic your way when you launch.
- Build a group of affiliates (who may be the people above) who will be paid a % of your product sales made from their affiliate links. This is again a long term, slow burn activity.
- Go on a guest blogging spree to spread your name and influence on key players within your niche – this again relies on you having made contact or connections with other bloggers beforehand.
- Build up interest and excitement amongst your audience weeks before you launch – which means spending time to actually build an audience you can tell. The best way to do this and to get people ready to buy stuff you sell is to demonstrate the value you can add by sharing useful (and often free) content before you even have anything for sale – many people release free workbooks etc. in the run up to a launch to demonstrate the quality of their stuff. Again, this is another long term, slow burn activity.
- By leveraging all of the above come launch day, the idea is to create enough hoopla and buzz about your launch that the sales come flooding in!
If the above is not your style or you don’t have time or inclination to do this, then that’s ok. The reality is that your launch will be much lower key (fewer sales, too) but also far less time- and labour-intensive. For the record, this is our approach too!
In this case, it’s still a good idea to do the following:
- Build up a mailing list from your blog/site – this is useful because it’s a dedicated group of people who’ve expressly given you their permission to communicate (not just sell!) with them.
- Build up an audience on various social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (whichever platform is the most appropriate for your audience) – if you don’t want to create your own pages/profiles etc., make sure you’re active and a regular on others so you become a familiar face.
- Send a free copy of your product to people you already know and who may have an audience (however small) who matches your target audience. You don’t have to go for the big boys, sometimes the smaller blogs and sites have far more responsive and loyal audiences than the bigger ones.
- Gather testimonials from people who’ve seen and reviewed your product and display them prominently on the sales page.
The key thing about your launch and how successful your digital product is from a sales perspective is to realise that once you’ve created it, marketing it is something you need to be doing on an ongoing basis.
The sales won’t continue to roll in unless you continue to market it. Establishing healthy marketing activities prior to your launch is the key to a long term, profitable product which has a longer shelf life than just a few days or weeks.
Selling digital products is a great source of (semi-passive) income for location independent entrepreneurs – it’s semi passive because you’re still going to need to market them and provide customer support for them, unless you outsource this. It is also a great way to extend a services business and add additional channels to your business. It is however hard work but oh-so-worth it.
Now…what are you waiting for? Go create your product!
P.S. If you’re curious about all the digital products we’ve created over the past few years, you can see the whole catalogue here.
