It’s time to monetize your website! After all the effort and work you put into your website, all the hours spent writing inspiring blog articles and creating content to share on social media, you’ll probably want to know how to make all this worthwhile. Even if you love sharing your expertise and knowledge with your people, you can’t just give, give, give. There has to be a part that serves you and supports you. In this post I’m going to teach you how to create your first digital product. There is a ton of information waiting for you, so let’s get started.
First, let’s face THOSE FEARS…
Maybe you’re worried that if you ask people to buy something from you, your readers will think you’re a sellout, and that you’ve become part of the big yoga money machine.
But here’s the thing – your audience doesn’t just want you to start selling your services, they need it.
Because creating digital products isn’t (only) about the money. It’s about helping people. You’re not going to spam your followers with things they don’t need. Your digital product is going to help your audience improve their life. You are making some money off it too, but it’s really an exchange of energy.
#1 How to come up with an idea for your digital product
Ask yourself: What’s your niche? Where are you an expert? What skills do you have that you can teach? Also, embrace your personal experiences and special skills. Think about what makes you unique and play that up. Your quirks are what’s going to make you stand out.
It’s tempting to want to emulate others with success that you admire – but ultimately you will need to be known for your unique skills, talents, and experience.
Next, think about your ideal customer:
- Who is your ideal potential customer for your product?
- What are their questions and issues?
- Why are they your students and/or visit your website?
- How will you help them reach their goals?
Focus on one main outcome. It will sell better, will be easier to create, and often will be more helpful to your audience.
#2 Don’t just trust your intuition – validate your product idea
Before you put your heart and soul into creating your product, make sure your audience wants it. You can’t just guess here. You need to know deep within yourself that this is what your audience wants and needs.
I recommend interviewing your existing or potential customers. Set up a meeting for a coffee or a call and ask them about their struggles, what they need help with and what they are scared of. Listen more than you talk. Let them have the space to think and share with you some amazing insights.
I promise that those talks will be eye-opening and will help you immensely to come up with a great product idea that your audience wants to buy!
Create a survey
Create a survey with SurveyMonkey and put it on your website and promote it in your newsletter and on social media. In your survey, ask your audience a few questions (maximum 5), for example:
- What’s the biggest challenge you have right now related to yoga (or your topic)?
- What’s your biggest fear?
- Where do you feel you need help?
- What would you like to learn more about?
- Anything else you would like to share with me?
You don’t want to ask them directly what they want. People don’t know what they want, they don’t know the solution to their problem, they just know their problem.
Like Henry Ford said: “If I would have asked people what they want, they would have said a faster horse”. He went off and invented the automobile.
#3 Fine-tune your idea
When you have your validation results, the next step is to fine-tune your idea.
Keep track of all the responses and what topics came up again and again. Write down all possible product ideas and check them against your survey results – do any of your ideas help your audience with their most common struggles?
#4 Decide on a format
Your digital product can be for example an eBook, videos, audio guides, live online trainings, or email newsletters. There are many options and you need to decide on the best format for your content.
You can deliver your product via email, through a platform like Teachable (that’s what I use and recommend), or on your website in a closed member area.
#5 Set the price for your product
There’s no science to coming up with the perfect price for a product. It’s not as easy as saying, okay I’m offering x pages in my eBook, so it should cost this amount. Coming up with a price that works for you is very different for everybody and depends on many different factors. But here are some points to help you:
Define what you are going to offer. How big is your product going to be? What’s the format? An online course with different modules and lessons can have a higher price than a simple pdf ebook.
Determine where your product fits into your overall business and what results you want to achieve. If you want to earn 1000$ a month, you need to sell a 100$ product 10 times, a 10$ product 100 times (which is much harder unless you already have a huge audience).
Identify the value for your customers. Is it going to be transformative and change their life? Make them money? You can ask for a higher price if your product promises a transformation.
When considering your pricing, it’s also important to look at social proof. Have you collected testimonials, customer reviews, and case studies from people who have gotten results while working with you?
But most importantly, listen to your intuition and trust your gut. I want you to feel confident with your price and to know in your heart you are getting paid what you are worth.
#6 Create your actual digital product
Start with creating an outline and title each lesson or module. Break your product down into however many modules you need. This doesn’t have to be final yet, it’s just giving you a starting point. And then write down everything you could include in each section – all your potential ideas. You can mind map, or make a list, or free-write – whatever works for you.
Next, organize your list. Break it all down into modules and lessons that are easy to digest and in an order that makes sense. You want each lesson to build on the last, from foundational to complicated. Try to develop a flow that will be simple to follow and complete for your students.
Move things around until you feel good about your course content and know what you are going to teach in each module.
How you actually create your product depends on the format you chose. It can be audio-only, videos, a slide deck presentation, text, or any other format.
The easiest way to start is a simple pdf document. You can use Canva (*affiliate link) to style it and give it a professional and sleek look that people are happy to pay for.
And that’s it, you have your first digital product, woohoo!
