You've probably heard lots of great reason why selling digital products, memberships and subscriptions is a great idea. You create your product once and can sell it as many times as you want without worrying about warehousing, stock levels or delivery. You can sell everything from emagazine subscriptions to garden shed patterns and video games. And digital delivery services make the distribution and payment side of selling digital products really easy.
However, if you're going to make money from your product you need to get your distribution and marketing strategy right. We walk you through three avenues for making money from digital products.
1. Sell digital products through your blog, website or online shop
If you already have a blog or website then you can sell direct to customers and keep the vast majority of your profits. This is in contrast to selling through ecommerce services like Amazon and iTunes that take an uncomfortably large percentage of what you earn and make it very difficult for your to build a relationship with your customers.
Choose which sales approach works for you
High volume sellers, solopreneurs and small businesses all use digital delivery providers to sell direct. Some have large shops with shopping cart functionality. Others have personal blogs with a nifty Buy Now button at the bottom advertising a paid course or product. Choose which approach works best for you.
Create an online shop to sell your digital products
Online shops work well if you you are selling lots of digital product that don't rely on a back story to sell. So, if you are selling patterns for children's clothes then people will probably buy if they can see a pretty image and some basic facts. If you sell lots of ebooks then cover images and short book blurbs might do the job (which is what customers would see in a physical bookshop).
To set up a shop, you'll need Add to Cart functionality (provided by most digital delivery companies) so your audience can buy a few of your digital products. Even if your customer only adds one digital product to their cart you can always encourage them to buy something else during the checkout process with one-click upsells by saying something like: 'You might also like this great product. And you can buy it now for 30% off!'.
Use your blog to sell digital products
If you're selling only a few digital products, particularly those that rely on marketing yourself as an authority, then you'll want to add a Buy Now button to certain content pages on your website.
So, you'll have some persuasive free content that gets your audience excited about a subject and then you hit them with the call to action: Hey you! Sign up to my course/buy this great digital product for a bargain price and learn loads more.
Build your audience
By selling direct to your audience from your website and blog you build your audience – because you know who they are. Customer information is valuable (which is why so many online companies want it) so make sure that you benefit from this information rather than someone else.
Just think how much easier it will be to sell your second digital product if you have an engaged audience that you reach through your newsletter and social media. Existing customers are much easier to sell to than new customers, plus they might act as cheerleaders for your new digital product. Existing customers can also help you improve your digital products, through useful feedback. If you don't know who they are, you'll never get this information.
Selling your digital products securely
There's plenty of digital delivery services competing for your custom, but make sure you choose one that offers secure and automated delivery. There's not much point creating a great product only for it to be ripped off in two seconds. Look for services that offer secure time-limited download links, video streaming (safer than downloads), PDF stamping for ebooks and license keys if you sell software or video games.
2. Sell digital products through social media
You can sell digital products, membership and subscriptions through social media by using a link that takes customers straight to a checkout rather than to a page on your website or blog. Selling through social media has a few distinct advantages: instead of trying to get customers to come to your content you go out and find them. You keep the buying process as easy as possible for the customer. You don't even need a website.
Social media is incredibly popular
More than one billion people are active on Facebook alone, meaning that you have a huge audience potentially within your grasp. By selling to them on their home turf you'll prevent that big drop in traffic that happens when you try and entice people to your content and then on to your checkout.
Social media offers a good user experience (mostly)
With 67 percent of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a mobile-friendly website than they are from a website not optimized for devices other than desktop, this is particularly useful if your website is a work in progress. Or you don't have one.
Social media means you can reach people quickly
Social media selling can be particularly effective if you want to reach people quickly because you’re advertising a sale or promotion.
Kirsten Oliphant used Twitter to reach people with her offer: buy now, last chance! And to underline the urgency of her message, she sends people straight to a payment page using the link.
A word of caution
The bump in the road here is obvious: can you get people to buy your stuff in 140 characters or less? Or slightly more if you’re using a channel like Facebook.
To make a buying decision new customers usually need to know what benefits your product offers, who you are (if you’ve set yourself up as an expert), whether the product is any good, and so on.
Realistically, you’re much more likely to convert people with some understand of your company or who have already bought your product before. So you may be able to fast forward the sales process with existing customers given their existing interest and knowledge, but you’ll probably have a harder job converting cold leads.
It also seems likely that social selling will work best for certain types of products. While a crochet enthusiast might see a picture of a Christmas baby dress pattern and think ‘I want that now!’ it seems less likely that someone will spend $150 on a video game without knowing a bit more about it.
3. Get other people to sell your products for you
Getting other people to sell your digital products for you can feel like a bit of a dream. You know: the one where you’re on a far-away beach with a margarita and a smartphone that you use to run your business empire.
However, by setting up an affiliate scheme you can realise your dream. Well, we can't vouch for the beach. Or the margarita. But it's a start. Affiliate schemes are when you ask people to promote and sell your product in exchange for a cut of the profits. It's entirely possible for you to invest only minimally in your own content while professional marketeers do the leg work for you.
You shouldn't need to sign up with yet another service to get started with an affiliate scheme. Most digital delivery delivery services will have one built in.
How an affiliate relationship works
You agree to pay affiliates a percent of sales, so the more products they help you sell the more money they earn. This relationship gives affiliates an incentive to enthusiastically promote your product.
You can also choose whether to let affiliates have a Buy button on their site or to funnel potential customers to your own. The former means that might sell more; the latter means you keep control of the selling process.
You can even reward successful affiliates with a boost in their commission rates, if they achieve a certain sales goal. Which is a pretty good way to say thank you.
Increase market share and create a passive income stream
Seller Daniel Gold, founder of productivity website DEG Consulting, started an affiliate scheme and was very pleased with the results. Not only did it allow him to create a passive income revenue stream but he also quickly increased his market share. He says:
Being able to have an affiliate scheme has enabled me to do three things:
1) leverage other people who are passionate about my products and services to their followers while at the same time earning a passive revenue stream for themselves
2) increase my market share in the productivity space as a result of my affiliates
3) create a passive income revenue stream for myself. It’s worked out lucratively!
Setting up an affiliate scheme
It's usually best to choose a third party to manage your affiliate (i.e. your digital delivery provider) so you put your relationship on a professional footing and allow someone else to keep track of all the transaction data.
In terms of knowing who to approach to act as your affiliates, try reaching out to well regarded bloggers or personalities in the same line of business. It's easier if they have some experience of being an affiliate (you can find this out by a quick browse of their content). Although newbie affiliates could also work, provided you're very clear with them about what's involved.
Be wary of randomly approaching as many people as possible to act as your affiliates. If you start inviting just anyone to promote your product then you could easily devalue your brand, not to mention give yourself some headaches in terms of trying to manage them.
Get selling!
You can sell your digital products, memberships or subscriptions through your website, social media or by setting up an affiliate scheme, or by using a combination of all three. All you need is an easy to use digital delivery provider and a marketing strategy. And your digital delivery provider should help you with the latter as well. Features such as one click upsells, discounts, pay what you want pricing and a responsive checkout should all help you increase your revenue. So make sure you put them in your marketing plan, as well as more obvious marketing avenues such as guest posting or social media adverts.
Good luck!
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