Want to know all about digital product creation to create a passive income business?
Creating a digital product to sell later on the internet is probably one of the most profitable businesses these years.
Digital product creation can be totally inexpensive and generate a great source of income. Once the product is created, you just need to focus on selling it.
In fact, it is one of the best methods to earn a passive income.
In this post, I will show you precisely what you need to do to create and sell digital products.
Let’s dive in!
- What Is Digital Product Creation?
- What are the benefits of digital products over physical products?
- Which is the easiest digital product to create and sell?
- Examples Of Popular Digital Products.
- Digital product creation and launching step by step.
- Best Digital Product Training Courses
- Conclusion
- FAQs
*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
What Is Digital Product Creation?
Digital product creation is the process of creating non-physical products, generally with the purpose of selling them online.
Also, digital products are used in lead forms as a free download in exchange for an email. This is an excellent method to grow your email list.
The digital product creation phase involves research, collecting information, choosing the format (ebook, video, photo, etc.), and creating the final product to sell it finally.
This type of business can be so profitable that once you create the product, you can sell it worldwide. Even though digital product creation can take time, you can start making passive income for some years. once the product is ready
And what is best, some digital products can be created quickly, allowing you to focus on creating more or simply spend your time on marketing.
What are the benefits of digital products over physical products?
There are some clear benefits digital products provide over physical ones:
- Digital products can be created quickly. This gives you more options to sell and make more money.
- Unlike physical products, you don’t need to keep a stock.
- Digital products can have very high margin profit.
- Once you create a digital product, it can generate income for years.
- Digital products work incredibly well to convert readers into customers.
- You can create digital products even on topics you don’t master with drop servicing.
Which is the easiest digital product to create and sell?
Ebooks.
Ebooks are probably the digital product with the best ROI- They can be created relatively fast, are easy to consume, and generate income through affiliate marketing links in the content and sales.
These days many powerful tools allow you to create ebooks faster than ever. One of the best out there is Designrr. The first tool ever to include content and design in one easy-to-use software platform for professional and stunning instant ebooks.
What makes Designrr so unique is that you can create a beautifully designed ebook direct from your Website, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc. That is a serious time saver!
I suggest you take a look and see how Designrr can help you create a beautiful ebook in record time.
Examples Of Popular Digital Products.
Some of the most common examples of digital products you can create are:
- Ebooks. As mentioned before, Ebooks are great products to make money and are in demand with the rise of Kindle devices. It can be anything from guides, tutorials, reports, or any other idea with an interested audience.
- Apps. Almost everybody has access to a phone these days. Apps are popular digital products and can be presented in the form of a game, productivity, health, and fitness, or any other demanded niche.
- Online Courses. There is no more prominent university than the internet. All kinds of courses are very demanded. You just need to create one online course and start selling on autopilot to make money.
- Podcasts. Podcasts are growing in popularity, and it is a very demanded digital product in 2023. As long as you deliver value to your audience, any niche can benefit from creating podcasts and making money via subscriptions.
- Photography. Photo stock repositories have been working great for many years now. The need to use images for the growing number of websites makes the digital imagery niche an excellent choice to make money online.
- Video. Video was already one of the main trends in these last years, but the pandemic has overwhelmingly increased the number of online videos people watch. It’s easier for viewers to get through the content because all they need to do is click play. It makes a lucrative market for you to start selling, whether informational, promotional, or educational videos.
Digital product creation and launching step by step.
Regardless of the digital products you want to create, the process of creating it would be the same.
The most natural way to start is by brainstorming- For now, all you need to do is to write down every idea you have. You’ll get into the details later on.
Start by responding to these questions to get closer to your final product idea:
- Can you create a unique product, or are there already thousands of this?
- Can you teach customers something new or valuable?
- Are people spending money already on this kind of product? If not, it is probably not a good idea.
- Will this product sell in years to come? you want to make sure you target evergreen products that will generate passive income over the years
- Is it too competitive? You want to stay away from very competitive markets.
If you want to find out what will work, you will need to do some research. You shouldn’t start creating a product until you are sure there is a demand for it. Even if you think that your idea will work, you should double-check.
Trends change, and products which might have been very popular might be losing interest over time. So it would help if you did some research to find out what is working now and what has the potential to work. The key here is to find your audience’s problem related to your product ideas. Next, you should create a product that will fix this problem.
Forums are a wonderful place where to do some niche research. People are constantly discussing issues or asking questions about specific topics on different platforms. You just need to pay attention to popular threads and check why they are popular. Maybe there is a brand new product people don’t know how to use. Or maybe there is an issue that people are not sure how to solve, and you can fill the gap.
Try to look for a “popular issue” within the community, and your product could be the solution to that problem.
Some of the best places where you can start looking for ideas are:
- Facebook Groups: Type in Facebook’s search bar a topic and press enter. Then in the filter column on the left-hand side, look for groups and click on them. These groups would be a gold mine of ideas for that topic.
- Reddit: Type in the search bar a topic and press enter. Sort the results by “top,” and you’ll find the topics that people are more interested in
- Quora: Type in the search bar a topic and press enter. Now scout through the different results and check the ones with more answers. These would be the ones people are debating the most and are worth checking for ideas.
Finally, I suggest you check this niche research post to learn how to conduct in-depth research information.
Next, you will need to make sure your product idea is solid. You don’t want to waste your time and money on something which might not work, so validation is required.
Some methods you can use to validate your ideas are:
Google Trends shows what has been searched over time and can help you identify popular products and opportunities.
Step #1. Go to Google Trends.
Step #2. Type your product idea on the bar and hit “enter.” You can keep adding more terms later on.
Step #3. Then a graphic with interest over time will show. Here you can filter by time and categories. For this example, I have used ‘Home Gym’ and related terms like ‘fitness app’ and ‘home training.’ From the trends below, I can see that home gym has increased in popularity with a stable trend. People at home could then use digital products like a fitness app and a home training program (ebook or video.)
This is an excellent method to validate your ideas with visual and current data.
By doing keyword research, you will get a much closer idea about people’s interest in a particular topic or product. This will allow you to learn if enough people are looking for this product and how competition can be.
For this, you will need a keyword research service. For this example, I have used Keysearch, but the process is the same as any other keyword tool.
Keysearch offers a free trial, and it is one of the best value-for-money services in SEO, so I suggest you give it a try.
This is how to use it for your research:
Step #1. Go to Keysearch (or your keyword research service)
Step #2. In the search bar, type the term you want and hit enter. For this example, I am going to use “home gym.”
We can see that although it has a significant search volume, competition is fairly difficult. You want to niche down to find some good opportunities with less competition.
Step #3. On the right-hand side, there is the option to filter the results. Click on “filter.”
Step #4. Use the keyword filter to refine your results. In my case, I’d like terms with a difficulty score under 40 and a search volume of at least 200 per month. Then click on “Filter.”
Step #5. Next, you will get a list with search terms filtered:
Now you got a list of great ideas with amazing search volume and lower competition. You could create your own digital product based on these results, like ebooks, videos, podcasts, etc.
So this is how you obtain a fantastic list of keywords with little competition. Ta-da!
You can also check my guide to Keysearch for further instructions.
Resources:
Your digital product creation will ultimately depend on the kind of product you want to create. And the web development process plays a pivotal role in bringing your vision to life, encompassing various stages such as planning, design, coding, testing, and deployment, ensuring that your web-based solution is fully functional and engaging.
In the table below, you can find the best tools you can use to create a different kinds of digital products:
Product | Tool | Description |
---|---|---|
Ebook | Designrr | The most efficient way to create visual ebooks quickly. |
Online Courses | Thinkific | Top platform to create and sell online courses. |
Podcasts | Buzzsprout | An easy way to host, promote, and track your podcast |
Online Events | HeySummit | Create webinars, events, conferences, talk series, and more. |
Video | Uscreen | All in one platform for video creators. |
Photography | Adobe Lightroom | Best for photo editions and creating photo catalogs. |
Also, you can simply hire a freelancer on Fiverr, so they create the product for you. This can work specifically well for products that might work well on the market, but you don’t have the expertise to create them.
It is important, though, that you try to choose the best format for your product. For instance, if you were to create a digital product about ‘home gym,’ a series of videos for training at home or an ebook with plenty of exercising at home would be great ideas.
Resources:
- How To Create An Online Course And Sell It: The Definitive Guide
- How To Create a Niche Website That Works
There are many effective ways to promote and sell your digital products.
In this section, I will share the ones that work best for me.
Unlike any other social platform, Pinterest can drive organic traffic to your content for months, making it a top platform to promote your own digital products.
This is something that the rest of networks like Facebook or Twitter lacks. As soon as you post something on them, the lifespan compared to pins on Pinterest is nothing! Your posts will get lost in minutes, if not seconds.
But with Pinterest will stay visible for months or years.
Moreover, if you want more immediate results, you can create Pinterest ads for a very affordable price. That will drive a considerable amount of traffic to the digital product page, increasing your chances of selling the product.
Resource:
Step#1. Head to Clickbank and hit the “Join Clickbank” button.
Step #2. Fill out the form with your data. Then read and accept the conditions and click on “Join Clickbank.”
Step #3. Complete your profile.
Step #4. Fill in the information for selling products and click “Save.”
Step#5. Next, you will access your dashboard. In the left panel, click on Account, and then again on “Create Account.“
Step#6. Insert your account type, nickname and click on “Sign Up.”
Step #7. Next, click on your nickname, and it will take you to the vendor page dashboard.
Step #8. Click on “Vendor Settings” on the top menu.
Step #9. Click on “Add New Product.”
Step #10. Fill in the information and click on “Submit and continue.”
Step #11. Lastly, you will need to provide product details, pricing, and affiliate commissions. Once it is all ready, you just need to click on “Submit for review” and wait for the approval.
Once it is approved, affiliate partners will be able to grab your links and start promoting your digital product.
Of all the strategies, this is my favorite one. It is also the one that works the best with superior ROI.
Email marketing is important for any online business because it is one of the best methods to make serious money. If you manage to get your reader’s email, you will get a chance to land in their inbox. This is one of the most powerful things in this digital marketing era. But for this method to work, you will need two things:
- An email marketing service, and
- A landing page
The good news is that you can actually have them both in Convertkit, and you can sign up for free.
ConvertKit is a full-featured email service provider. Because of its powerful marketing automation, segmentation, and ease of use, it’s one of the fastest-growing email marketing companies. It also features customizable sign-up forms and landing pages, which will help you convert readers into subscribers.
This method is great for selling your products and growing your email list with a list of potential customers for every new product you create.
The previous methods would work great even if you don’t have a website.
Creating a niche website might take some extra time. But it will also make things easier in the future.
There are free apps that you can use to sell your digital products, like Easy digital downloads.
All you need to do is:
Step #1. Download the plugin EDD.
Step #2. Click “Downloads” from your WordPress Dashboard menu.
Step #3. Click “Add New”
Step #4. Enter a Title and Description for the download.
Step #5. In download prices, include your desired price.
Step #6. In download files, include the file name, file URL, and click on “Add file.”
Step #7. In download notes, you can include any note related to the product.
Step#8. Next, add tags for the download
Step #9. Select categories for the download
Step #10. Set a Featured Image
Step #11. Lastly, when everything is ready, click on the “publish” button the same as if you were publishing a page or post.
The item will go live, and you will have access to a shortcode to place wherever you like.
If your digital product catalog grows, you can always upgrade to other solutions like Shopify or Big Commerce. All these methods should help you to make money with your digital products.
Lastly, I suggest checking this post with 10+ free traffic sources to drive traffic to your website and generate more sales.
You might want to read next:
Best Digital Product Training Courses
It takes some trial and error and experience to become a successful seller. But that does not mean you should wait.
Most of us are afraid or reluctant to spend some extra money at the beginning, but I will tell you precisely what is likely to happen:
- First, you will think you can manage, and you can learn all by yourself. Totally agree, but it will take some time until you understand what works.
- Still, you will try to do it all by yourself until you realize that it is simply taking too long because there are so many things to do you just did not count on.
- You will desperate Google “How to sell digital products fast.” After reading many articles, you will realize that they are all the same, and it is not much you are not doing already.
- In the end, you want to accelerate the process, so you will invest in a training course. Once you do it, you regret you did not choose to do it from the beginning.
See, this is how most of us work. Investing in your business is key to success. And the sooner you do it, the sooner you will get results.
That is why I have collected a couple of affordable training that could ease this learning process:
- Digital Marketing Fundamentals 4.7/5 (67 Reviews)
Learn consumer-centric marketing techniques with this fundamental digital marketing strategy and implementation course.
> Learn More.
- Viral Marketing: 7 Secrets To Promote Any Product 4.9/5 (599 Reviews)
Learn the 7 key secrets to being able to sell any product or service online with this in-depth course taught by a world-renowned expert.
> Learn more.
Conclusion
Digital product creation does not need to be complicated or time-consuming.
What is important is to make sure there will be an audience for your product and deliver the product in the best possible format.
Lastly, most people will say to create something you are passionate about. I would say you create something that generates money. You might not have a passion to create it, but in the end, passion does not generate money; demand does.
And remember, you can always hire a freelancer to create the product for you, and you just need to take care of the niche marketing.
Now is your turn!
Are you planning on creating a website with any of these blog types?
Leave a comment below.
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