This is a guest post by Srinivas Rao, who is the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast to help bloggers take their blog to the next level and is also a personal development blogger at The Skool of Life.
Many people seem to fret over the idea of creating their very first digital product because it seems like quite a daunting task. The reality however, if you are a blogger is that you’ve actually already done the same amount of work it takes to create a digital product by publishing blog posts. You can actually create your first digital product in as little as 48 hours. In my interview with Dave Navarro from the Launch Coach, he talked something that is known as the mini product. So let’s take a quick look at what it takes to create your first mini product.
Survey Your Audience: The very first thing you’ll want to do is survey your audience. One of the biggest mistakes people make is putting tons of effort into really big ebooks/digital products without understanding what their audience needs. If you understand what your audience needs, creating something that will actually sell becomes much easier. Once you survey your audience, identify one need that you could easily build a product around and start building that product.
Build Something Small: A few months back, I jokingly put out tweet saying “If I was going to write an ebook, I would call it Time Management for Bloggers With Short Attention Spans.” About 10 people replied to the tweet saying they would love something like that. It turned out I already had most of the content needed in my archives, so I sat down and hammered it out in two hours. The point of creating your very first product is to get just get comfortable with the idea of creating something that you’re going to sell. IF you start with something small you’re much more likely to actually launch. The last thing you want is to pour months into something to have it be a complete flop.
Baby Steps: Baby steps eventually result in giant leaps. If you spent 30 minutes a day for a week working on your min product you would have something done by the end of that week. Many people never get anywhere with launching a product because they don’t even take the first step. With baby steps, everything becomes much easier.
Sell it Cheap: Your very first digital product is not about turning you into a millionaire. It’s about proving to yourself that you can make money online and people will buy from you. Therefore I recommend putting something together that is in the 10-20 dollar price range.
Upload to E-Junkie: If you’ve never sold anything using E-junkie before, it’s actually quite simple. All you need to do is throw your digital product into a zip file and upload it and you’ll be set. Then just copy the code for the add to cart button and make it part of your sales page and you’ll be all set.
One Sale is a Success: If you approach this with the attitude that one sale is a success you’ll have a reason to celebrate. Everything starts with the very first sale and you’ve now sold something online and developed your very first income stream.
Thanks, Srinivas!
I've often thought about launching some sort of product, but the task always seemed so daunting. Especially as a newer blogger like with a small (but growing, thank goodness) audience, I feel like I'd have a product without a market. "One sale is a success" is great advice to get over the hump into actually writing.
Thanks again!
@Tim: My pleasure. I think that just going in with one sale is a success mindset is key because you don't set yourself up for a massive failure that causes you to completely give up which is the worst of all outcomes. This way even if you don't have a blowout success it's not some huge ordeal. We actually did far better than we expected with our first mini product.
Thanks, Srini! I'm going to keep the mini-product idea in mind for next time.
I read this article, this article very informative and interesting..
Thanks for sharing info :)
Thanks, Srini! I'm going to keep the mini-product idea in mind for next time.
@Tim: My pleasure. I think that just going in with one sale is a success mindset is key because you don't set yourself up for a massive failure that causes you to completely give up which is the worst of all outcomes. This way even if you don't have a blowout success it's not some huge ordeal. We actually did far better than we expected with our first mini product.
Thanks, Srinivas!
I've often thought about launching some sort of product, but the task always seemed so daunting. Especially as a newer blogger like with a small (but growing, thank goodness) audience, I feel like I'd have a product without a market. "One sale is a success" is great advice to get over the hump into actually writing.
Thanks again!