Start a business where you don’t need a physical location. Manufacture the product, package it, store it, and put it up for sale. In this article, we will explain how to sell digital products.
Being a freelancer can be a liberating career choice. The number of freelancers worldwide has dramatically increased in recent years, with more and more people choosing to work independently.
If you are reading this article with interest, chances are you are also a freelancer or someone who is serious about considering this career.
But, to create a secure income guarantee and truly appreciate the benefits of a freelance career, you need to combine your service clientele with your digital information products (e-books, training courses, guides, tools, etc.).
This can significantly reduce the pressure of constant worry caused by constantly having to find customers, which can be challenging to manage, especially in the beginning.
With so many possibilities of services available online that can help you, it is much easier today to create digital products. But this ease has also led to the emergence of many mediocre and substandard products on the web. You need to do things differently to ensure your product stands out from the crowd.
Here are 9 tips to help you create better digital products and sell them more effectively.
1) Outline the profile of your typical customer
In order to create a product, you must first identify the right target group of people who will be interested and will go to buy your product.
What are the needs of the target audience?
What solutions can you implement to get them to pay for your product immediately?
Start by creating your typical customer profile. Regular customers are examples of people who would, or could, buy your product. It includes your ideal buyer’s characteristics, including demographic details, income bracket, interests, career level, etc.
Try to be as specific as possible about your prospect. It will help you create a better product. For example, for a freelance writer, the ideal buyer would be the owner of a small business, aged 30-50, with an annual marketing budget of € 10-20,000 looking to generate potential new sales in the area using his website, his blog and his social media profiles.
2) Identify the ideal opportunity
Once you have your typical customer outlined, analyze their problems and needs. With your set of skills, he tries to figure out how you can solve and fill them. Analyze your typical customer and try to identify the different ways you can help this buyer achieve their goals.
Make a list of the different possibilities and then follow the one that falls into the category of skills where you feel the strongest and that has comparatively less competition.
3) Create a high-quality product to sell
The quality of your product is the key to determining whether your product will be a success or a failure. If you want to have a repeat customer and there is word of mouth, your product needs to be top-notch.
To do this, analyze your competitors, freelancers, and agencies that offer the exact solutions you could provide with your products.
Find their flaws and make sure your product doesn’t have them. A valuable product goes beyond the customer’s expectations with tangible and valuable solutions.
But in addition to the content of your info product, the packaging is equally important. It’s like a blog post header. If the headline is attractive, people will read the whole article. The same goes for packaging. To make good packaging, you can also use the services of other freelancers or web pages like Upwork, 99designs, etc.
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4) Price your product wisely
Pricing your digital product is another critical part of selling it. If you do it wrong, your sales can plummet and drop dramatically.
The price you charge can depend on several factors, including your brand image, the size of your mailing list, the level of engagement you have in your online community, your social media weight, your network, and, of course, your quality of your product. You also need to see what pricing strategies your competitors use (not always).
Generally speaking, there are two alternatives that you can follow when you want to determine the price of a product.
You can aim for a high selling price, so only a few people will buy it, or you can aim for a lower selling price to have higher sales volumes.
Another option is to create multiple sales packages with different prices, targeting different types of targets. In my experience, multiple packages work very well, but in each market, you have to test to find the most popular and profitable solution.
5) Create a memorable shopping experience
This is a point where many freelancers fail and don’t make an impact. An unsatisfactory shopping experience for the buyer can ruin all your hard work and can lead to customers abandoning the purchase.
To be more specific, the shopping experience refers to your landing page, the sales strategy you are using for your info product, the types of payments you accept, the checkout process, etc. All of these elements are important to the buying process.
To create landing pages, I suggest using OptimizePress.
Enrich your landing page, avoid the most common mistakes, and insert testimonials and product benefits.
As for the payment process and product sale, you can use services such as E-junkie, Gumtree, or Paypal.
6) Target the right marketing channels to sell digital products
If you develop your typical clientele, it will be easy for you to identify and focus on the right marketing channels for your product. For example, suppose your ideal clientele are entrepreneurs. In that case, high-level management professionals and corporate managers, LinkedIn publishing and groups, and websites like Quora are perfect to start promoting your digital product.
With a clear identification of your target customers, you will be able to identify their most used blogs and guest blogging in the right places. You will be able to approach them through them. Once you’ve launched your product, marketing should continue to be your top priority and take up most of your time.
Here are a few ways you should use to continue promoting your product and sell a digital product.
- Blogging – mention your info product regularly in all posts you post on your blog, and create links that lead back to the main sales page. Before launch, create anticipation by mentioning it on your posts and blog. After launch, remind people about your product by referencing it.
- Guest blogging – identify major blogs where your potential buyers can be found. Approach these blogs with quality posts and link to the product sales page within the author’s bio.
- Networking – use your contacts, the stability, and the strength of your contact group, to spread the word. Seek connection with the most influential people in your branch and ask them for recommendations. LinkedIn is perfect for this.
- Social Network – posting and being present, plus using Ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, can be effective depending on your target.
- Mailing List – There is nothing more effective than a healthy mailing list to help you sell more products. Without getting too boring, regularly send content that indirectly pushes your info product.
7) Start with a soft launch (with expiration)
Regarding product launches, never dive into the deepest waters immediately.
Prefer a soft launch, and share your product with a limited audience. You can even choose to launch a stripped-down version of your product initially. To speed things up, give your buyers a deadline, after which the product you found will be withdrawn from sale.
The goal here is to probe buyers’ responses to your product. The limited number of sales you will have will tell you a lot about your product’s weaknesses and potential areas for improvement.
8) Gather information and identify weaknesses
To benefit from your soft launch, ensure you have enough data collection tools. Use live chat services like Olark on your landing page to connect directly with your potential customers.
When a buyer makes a purchase, send them an email or call them to ask them why they chose your product. Similarly, ask those who landed on your landing page without buying the reasons that prompted them not to buy and what they would like to see in your product to change their decision.
Use polls like Survey Monkey to take quick polls and gather information. This can lead you to have great illuminations useful for large-scale product launches.
9) Large-scale launch (always with a deadline)
Once you have made the necessary changes to your product, launch it aggressively on a large scale. Announce it to all your subscribers across all your social media and marketing channels.
But, as you did with the soft launch, you define a deadline after which you will once again withdraw your product from the market. This is a fantastic way to accelerate sales and many have consolidated the concept that scarcity…. it is always needed, or almost.
When the deadline comes, collect the product, acquire information, identify areas that could be improved, make improvements here and there, and relaunch the product after a few months with added value.
Conclusions to sell digital products
A successful sale of digital information products requires adequate preparation, a quality product, aggressive marketing, and product improvements made ad hoc and at the right time.
There is no better way to propel your income than to combine these elements in the best possible way, thanks to them. You will enjoy the essence of making money online.
As a freelancer, not only will your product give you a monthly income, but it will allow you to build an image that will help you attract more and more customers willing to pay more, not only for your products but above all for your services from freelance.😉
#freelancer #bloggers #digitalproduct
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