So there are lots of options when it comes to selling a digital product. Simply put, this is one of the simplest and easiest ways to get a product that you can then start promoting and marketing. But how do you go about making one? There are plenty of options here but in many cases you’ll be able to simply handle the creation of your digital product yourself. If you are selling an eBook for instance then you only need to create a large MSWord document, include some images and good formatting and then save the final file as a PDF.
Alternatively, if you’re creating a video series, then you can just film yourself on camera and then edit the video neatly using editing software such as Adobe Photo Shop. Creating an email course is even easier. For this, all you’ll need is to write out some emails and then sign up to an autoresponder which you can use to automatically send your emails. A good choice is AWeber (www.aweber.com).
The main tip when doing this is to make sure you come up with a digital product that will play to your strengths and that you can be proud of. It’s very important to come up with a digital product you’re proud of because that way you’ll be able to promote it much more easily. When you talk about a product you truly believe in, your passion will come across and people will be far more likely to believe in what you’re offering too.
If you’re kind of shy of the quality of what you’ve created, then your marketing will lack conviction and you won’t attract repeat customers. In terms of creating something that plays to your strengths, that means picking a topic that you know a lot about and that is relevant to the topic or niche of your website and it means creating something you can create well. If you’re a great writer, then write an eBook!
If you aren’t so good at writing though but have an excellent manner on camera, then film a video series! If you can’t do either of those things, then consider using screenshots of your computer/creating slideshows and then narrating them. Alternatively, another popular option is to simply outsource the creation of your digital information product. There are thousands of writers, video editors and other skilled individuals on the web and any one of them will
likely be happy to help.
The best places to find these people are generally freelancing sites which include the likes of ‘Elance’ (www.elance.com) or ‘UpWork’ (www.upwork.com). On either of these you should be able to find someone
with the skills you need and from there it will cost you between $100 and $1,000 depending on the nature of the job you need done and the quality you are looking for (good writers will generally charge upwards of $3 per
100 words).
What To Price Your eBook?
Once you have your digital product, the next question is how much you want to charge for it. This of course is entirely up to you, though you don’t want to charge too much and alienate your audience. We recommend
around $7 for a short report, or $17-27 for a full length eBook (10,000 words plus). What you’ll find when you look around the web is that there are plenty of examples of eBooks being sold for ridiculous prices – sometimes as much
as $50, $100 or more.
While this does happen, the books very rarely manage to provide value for money and in the long run this can lead to
damaged reputations and angry customers. Likewise, you’ll find it much easier to sell a cheaper book to begin with until you have built up a reputation for yourself as someone who can be trusted and who delivers premium content.
A good tip is to start with something small to test the market. Don’t aim to create the eBook to end all eBooks.
Instead, start out with something smaller like a report and sell that for $7. This allows you to very quickly and easily start honing your business model and generating income without investing too much or creating too much risk. Only once you’ve seen that this method is working and you’re earning money, do you then go and invest further into the business model with a bigger product at a higher price point. Remember too – there’s nothing to stop you from experimenting with price points and running ‘split tests’ to see which is the most profitable!
Creating Your Landing/Sales Page
One of the most important tools when it comes to affiliate marketing is to create a landing page. This is essentially a single page, also known as a ‘sales page’, that is entirely dedicated to selling your one product. A sales page will look different from the other pages on a website because it has no links to other parts of the site, no adverts and no distracting images.
In other words, everything on the page is there to serve the one objective of selling copies of your information product or whatever else it is that you’re selling. Often these pages are long and narrow and they contain a lot of text and a lot of ‘buy now’ buttons. Those buy now buttons are your ‘call to action’ buttons and of course they contain the affiliate link you just acquired.
The real magic of the landing page is the text. All the copy here is going to be aimed at persuading people to buy the product and this is where you’re really going to earn your wage. Your objective is to be as persuasive as possible while not misrepresenting what you have to sell. The way to do this is to remember that ‘value proposition’. That means focusing on what the product does for people.
How will their lives be better after they’ve used it? Maybe they’ll be a success with the opposite sex, or maybe they’ll be much richer and happier. Your job is to get them to imagine that possibility and to really desire it. At the same time, you point out their current failings in their situation and why their previous attempts to improve their lot in life may have failed.
In other words, you present a problem and then provide the solution – that solution being the eBook you’re selling or the online course. An easy and fast way to create a sales page is by using OptimizePress (http://optimizepress.com) which is a theme for WordPress. Once you have this landing page, you’ll then be well equipped to market your product very easily.
For instance, if you pay for advertising then all you need to do is ensure those ads are sending the right kind of traffic to your sales page! Likewise, you can hand out flyers with the URL of your sales page, or you can mention it in social media posts. If you’ve written your sales script well then you can expect a large number of people who stumble on that page to end up converting – becoming paying customers!