How to create a new revenue stream for your business

Having digital products presents an opportunity for every business owner to create an additional revenue stream. This can add rapid monetary growth to a business and help them reach a new audience. We know this sounds like a lot of work to someone who doesn't understand digital products yet. No worries! We will teach you how to sell your digital product in your sleep.

Step 1: What is a digital product? - In your day-to-day life, you are using many digital products. It's the music you listen to, the videos you watch, the books you read on your kindle, and the online courses or workshops you take. Think files like PDFs, templates, MP3s, Plug-ins, etc. Digital products are smart to sell because your inventory will never run out, and start-up costs are extremely low.

Step 2: Survey your existing audience - If you have an existing audience, bonus points! It would be best if you surveyed them to get a good feel of what would help them right now. For example, you could post a multiple-choice poll on your social media platforms and see which service you offer is the most sought after. Whichever gets the most votes, start there… Just remember, this doesn't mean you can't explore other digital products down the road!

Step 3: Decide on a product - Now it's time for you to choose a product and sketch out the idea for it. This isn't the stage for creating the product, but you need to have an outline idea. Again, the product you're making must help your target audience solve a problem they're struggling with. You need someone to purchase your product, follow through with any required steps or learning modules and achieve a result that makes their life or business better. This is the goal.

Step 4: Pre-sell first - Having a pre-sale of your product is a necessary step to take. This allows you to make sure that there's a substantial market for what you're selling. Usually, a big discount is included with a pre-sale to entice buyers into a "what do I have to lose" mindset so they feel ok with spending the money on a product that may not give them much in return. This will give you some initial revenue, but it will ensure the product is viable and provide a list of early-bird customers who can provide feedback and testimonials. These customers will be your game changers! Here's a few benefits of pre-selling your product, according to ELearningIndustry.com:

• "It saves your time, money, and resources;
• Your course idea can self-fund itself;
• Instant feedback from the target audience;
• You can have a customer list beforehand;
• It creates excitement and a sense of FOMO; and,
• Encourages you to create and launch on time."

Step 5: Create the product - Now it's time for the product to be created. This might be an essential step for you to outsource or work with a partner on. The format you'll use to make the product will depend on what you're creating, but you can easily create a PDF document with your content or training videos if you can't think of where to start.

Step 6: Set up delivery and automation - Once the product has been created and you're happy with it, you'll now need a way to deliver it to your audience. This could be a downloadable file, or it could be a membership platform. There are pros and cons to both options. For example, a membership business model allows recurring monthly income; however, you have to make sure you provide enough value each month to cover the membership fee. With a downloadable file, you aren't getting the guaranteed monthly payments from your members, but you also don't have to worry about providing new content every month. This also goes hand in hand with the saying "create once, sell many times".

Step 7: Feedback and testimonials - Once your initial batch of pre-sale customers has gone through your product, you'll want to focus hard on collecting feedback and testimonials. You can use any feedback to improve the product or make any essential changes. The testimonials will be important social proof that you should use on their sales page and in their marketing messages to ensure other potential customers that what you're selling is legit and worth their investment.

Step 8: Enhance your sales page and launch - It's time to finalize the sales page and launch the product. The sales page should be updated with the launch price, and any new testimonials should be added in and update the content based on feedback from your initial customers. Using a launch window with a discounted price could be a good way to help you get some early sales while you are still building your credibility!

Sources:
Ann, Marry. "Tips on How to Pre-Sell a Course." ELearning Industry, 12 May 2021, elearningindustry.com/advertise/elearning-marketing-resources/blog/how-pre-sell-online-course-and-make-money-before-launch-it.