What I've learned about selling digital products
Ticket sales, recordings and setting up my tech stack, is TikTok here to stay and a few links worth the click.
It’s always been an ambition of mine to sell digital products. By that I mean creating webinars or courses which I can upload once to my website and sell many times over at a small fee.
Sharing knowledge is something I’m passionate about and this lets people buy some of my expertise for a far smaller fee than if they were working with me one-on-one. I also hope to always bring a down to earth approach to subjects like marketing and SEO that I myself, hunted for when I first started out.
I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t like the idea of “making money while you sleep”, a passive income dream that the LinkedIn gurus sold to us.
In actuality it’s never that simple is it? If it was we’d all chuck a few digital products up on our website and then retire to Ikos for the remainder of the summer (where I’m currently manifesting a 2023 holiday!).
However last year was finally the year I took this type of knowledge sharing online. Now that I have a few digital products under my belt (two “masterclass” events and now two downloads) I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned along the way
It’s been far easier to sell events than downloads
For my recent Masterclass event on keyword research I had a goal of selling 20 tickets. I ended up selling over 30. This was mainly from promoting via my Instagram, LinkedIn and this newsletter. I (perhaps stupidly?) decided to hold it a week after Christmas so I think I could actually have sold more if I hadn’t been promoting it during betweenmas.
However, after the event I had five people email me telling me they had missed the event but could they buy the recording?
Excitedly (passive income here we come!) I got the masterclass ready on my website (link here if you’re interested 😉).
I sent all five contacts the link…
And not one of those five people bought it.
This makes me think that it’s easier to sell an event ticket than a recorded version. I’d guess that this is thanks to the live nature which gives people a place and time to watch the content.
It also puts a bit of healthy FOMO for us to be at the event or risk missing out. For the social media event I held last year I didn’t resell the content afterwards so you had to buy a ticket pre-event to receive the recording, whether you were attending live or not.
My sales have been helped considerably by others sharing on their channels (social, newsletter)
Even though I have a higher than average engagement rate on my social media and newsletter there have been two boosts to ticket sales thanks to the lovely Louise and Helen sharing my events on their channels.
This sent people my way who bought tickets. It also taught me that you can sell to people who are having their “first touch” interaction with you. This is reassuring as it means that sales aren’t always dependent on just the people who know your work well.
I also do believe I write a pretty good sales page for my Masterclass events which I bet helped with this. It was easy to find (added to the top nav of my website and in my Instagram link). Once on the page, the user could then see what the event would cover, who it was for and what they would learn - i.e. they could clearly see the value, even if they didn’t know who I was.
Automation really helps - and you only need to set your systems up once
To be able to sell digital products I’ve had to set up:
Squarespace commerce
Stripe payment system
Email blast tool (I used Squarespace for this too)
Zoom webinars
The cost for these systems was minimal but it did take a bit of fiddling around to make sure everything would talk to each other nicely. However, once I’d set up all of these tools I could use the same settings and just duplicate for each new digital product offering. This has definitely made it quicker to get my second and third digital products up and running.
Selling in your sleep really IS a good feeling
This weekend, feeling sleep deprived and with a cold I was using precious baby-free time to wait for it…do a full house clean. Glamorous I know, but as I quickly checked my emails I realised I’d sold a keyword research Masterclass for £39.
This was already up on my website and I didn’t have to do a thing, which really did feel great.
Creating digital products is not easy. There’s a lot of thought, design, promotion and value that goes into them. But creating something once and then being able to sell it to anyone, anywhere, can be a really rewarding way to do business.
It certainly was for this Cinderella anyway.
Have you had success with digital products? Is it something you aspire to create? I’d love to hear your experience.
Yours,
Beth
Interesting reads & links 🧐
I really enjoyed this short marketing podcast on TikTok predictions for 2023 and beyond. It covered why TikTok has found a way around the US government’s concerns (sharing how its algorithm works), how this may limit innovation on the platform allowing channels such as YouTube to catch up, and why your content strategy needs to be different for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts (💯 agree on this).
There’s been so much hype around content marketing and AI lately and I won’t bore you with repetitive pros and cons for using AI as part of blogwriting or keyword research. However, for a full take on what it can/can’t/should be used for this guide is a great go-to (written by a human)
Content marketing hero Taylor Loren sums up TikTok and Instagram trends for 2023. Her note on storytelling across each platform is spot on.
Thought this was a fascinating TikTok on how to prepare for interview rounds if you’re going for a job at a big tech company (Amazon, TikTok, Meta etc.)
Thanks for reading ❤️
Hi I’m Beth 👋 I create content and SEO strategies that help companies to grow organically. I’ve ran marketing and teams for startup and scaling companies like ScreenCloud, Growyze, Twilert, Countfire and Eventbrite. I’m also a mentor to marketers looking to grow and have fulfilling, financially rewarding careers.
You can find out more about what I do on My website or Built by Content.