Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been talking about how lifestyle bloggers can monetize their blog, specifically by creating digital products for their audience.
Digital products are definitely one of the easier ways for bloggers to start generating income, but there are some important things to know before you list your first product for sale.
Today I’m giving you five questions to ask yourself before moving forward with creating and selling digital products to your audience.
What’s the goal for creating your product?
This is a really important question to ask, and it’s the first one I want you to consider.
You don’t want to start your blog just to make money, but let’s be honest, when you’re creating a digital product (regardless of the type), it’s okay to say you’re doing so to earn a little extra income.
However, it’s also important to remember how you’re helping your audience. For example, maybe through your digital product you’re teaching them something that will improve at least one area of their life.
Instead of focusing just on the income, remember that ultimately you’re helping your audience, so you want the product to be valuable and truly helpful not just something to help you make a quick buck.
Asking yourself this question is also going to force you to think about how this product comes into play with the rest of your brand and your overall goals.
Do you want to expand your blog into more of a lifestyle brand? Do you want to turn your blog into a business? Would you rather it just stay a hobby?
These things will help guide you in many decisions that you’ll have to make when preparing to create your first digital product.
Have you validated your idea?
I’m talking about this more next week, but it’s really important that you validate your product idea before just creating it.
You don’t want to spend hours upon hours creating a product that your audience won’t buy. This is why it’s so important to survey your audience before choosing your topic or pre-selling your product before creating it.
So how can you validate?
Start by sending your audience a survey and ask them what they’re struggling with around your niche. This will keep you from assuming what they’re struggling with and will help you decide on the topic of your product.
You could also put a poll on Instagram and ask people to click ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if they’d be willing to buy a product from you teaching them your topic.
Once you’ve decided on your topic, you could email or DM some of your most loyal followers and ask them if they’d be interested in paying to learn about the topic of your product. If you’re not familiar with pre-selling, then I highly recommend doing this to help validate your product.
Where will you sell your product?
Once you’ve decided what you’re selling and you’re confident people are going to buy it, it’s important to think about where exactly you want to sell your product.
I typically recommend selling your product straight on your site, and the benefit of this is that you’ll get the most amount of income from your product.
There are tons of other platforms, though, where you can easily list your products for sale:
- Creative Market
- Podia
- Gumroad
When deciding where you want to sell your product, think about the pros and cons, the tech setup, and so on.
Related: How to Setup a Shop With WooCommerce On Your WordPress Website
What will your product launch look like?
Launching your product can be as simple or as complicated as you make it.
Creative business owners like myself typically put a lot of work and thought into launching anything, especially digital products. However, it really boils down to teasing your audience that the product is coming and then officially making your product available for purchase.
The tease
When you’re ready to start teasing your audience, share with them that you’re working on something new. You can give away a small preview of the product as a freebie to get people on your email list.
You can also create content around the basics of your content (like the why). Having that content on your blog will be great because once the product is live you can go back and add a link to your sales page in those blog posts.
The launch
When you’re ready to actually launch your product, tell your email list first about your product being available. You can also do a quick 24-hour sale to celebrate the launch. Be sure to share on Instagram as well. Record videos of yourself talking about your product and link to your sales page in your bio link.
Another great idea when you’re launching your product is to have launch cheerleaders to help promote it. This could be your best blog friends or some of your audience members. You can give them graphics to help promote the product on social media. You could also give them early access to the product so they can review it.
Do you need help creating the product?
I’m going to be sharing some steps to take to create your product next week, but I want you to ask yourself if the type of digital product you want to create is going to require you to get help creating it.
This is important because you don’t have to do everything alone, and you might not be able to. In fact, getting help with the design or video editing, for example, can actually take your product to the next level, making it look more professional.
You might consider hiring someone to help:
- Layout your content for your ebook or printables
- Edit your mini class video
- Create promo graphics for Instagram + Pinterest for your launch
Ready to create your first digital product?
Good news! Next week I’m sharing my roadmap for creating your very first digital product. In the meantime, let me know on Instagram the type of product you’re thinking about making for your audience!
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