2020 might be the year of digital products. Many people were ordered to stay at home and use technology in most of their daily life, changing how they consumed content.
This behavior shift affected business owners and made them rethink how they could deliver value to customers while maintaining coronavirus restrictions. One of the solutions was to sell digital information products, as they could provide helpful information to the consumers and drive revenue growth in return.
In this article, you’ll learn the basic concept of digital information products and find a step-by-step guide to sell your own.
What Is an Information Product
Information products refer to products that deliver helpful information to consumers. They can be tips, strategies, and successful stories.
CDs, DVDs, and printed books are physical information products. Another type of information product is sent digitally, such as eBooks in PDF format or videos on a password-protected website.
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Digital information products are popular and profitable. The eBooks segment, for example, is projected to gain over $15,635 million in 2021. Also, they’re cheap and easy to create since many creation platforms are available for free.
One of the challenges of creating digital products is storage. They may need extensive space as they’re stored online, especially when you create an online course website with large size files like videos.
Consider investing in a more extensive hosting service for larger storage, like VPS hosting Hostinger, as shared hosting plans might not be enough. As you progress further and further into this venture, you may find that you can make a considerable income in doing this. If that becomes the case, then the cost of hosting may become a tax-deductible business expense. There are ways to take advantage of free tax filing, but given the complicated nature of self-starting a business, you might be better off seeking the help of an expert.
How to Sell Information Products Online
Here’s how you can create a digital information product, find the market, and promote it.
1. Create a Digital Information Product
The first step in the creation process is to decide what products to sell.
Here are some ideas of information products:
- Online courses, webinars, or video series
- Podcasts or audiobooks
- Membership sites
- Reports
- Recipes
- Workbooks
- Coaching and consulting
A key takeaway when choosing an information product is to match it with your niche.
For example, the best product for language learning may be online courses with workbooks, as the customers need several sessions and exercises to master a language. Meanwhile, eBook recipes may be enough for the food niche.
Second, look for suitable software and equipment for the product because different information products need specific tools.
For eBooks creation, platforms like Canva and Microsoft Office can be your options. They offer free and customizable templates for various designs, including reports and planners.
To make video or audio information products, you may need filming equipment for better quality, such as a smartphone, video recorder, microphone, and good lighting.
If your products are in audio format, try to use Audacity, free audio editing software, to add music background and merge audio files. Podcast hosting services, like SoundCloud and Anchor, also provide in-app podcast recording.
For video creation, a slide presentation may be enough to deliver ideas. However, if you want to produce professional-looking videos, consider installing video editing software. Mac users can use iMovie for free, and Windows users can install free editors, like OpenShot or Lightworks.
2. Find a Market for Digital Information Products
If you already have a niche and an audience, your followers can be your potential market.
For example, a productivity YouTuber, Matt D’Avella, created courses on personal development and YouTube creation. He now promotes his products on his social platforms to encourage his audience to buy.
However, if you don’t have a niche or an audience yet, and you’re not sure what to sell, a great start is with your interests and expertise.
For instance, you like taking photos with your phone, and people compliment the results. This can be a sign that encourages you to create information products about smartphone photography.
You can also research current trends to make sure the potential products have a demand.
Tools like Google Trends are helpful to learn what people are looking for. Type specific keywords or topics into the search bar, and the tool will provide relevant information about them, including a graph that represents search interest and related queries.
If the numbers on the data are high, you may expect a large market size.
3. Market and Sell Digital Information Products
There are several places to sell your digital information products.
The first option is creating a website. It’s customizable, so you can build it however you want, from the theme to the checkout process. To make a website, use CMS platforms like WordPress or a website builder.
An alternative is to join available marketplaces. General marketplaces, such as Amazon and Etsy, can be an option. But, to target the right audience, consider selling to specific platforms based on your products. For example, Udemy for online courses and Spotify for podcasts.
Social media, like Facebook and Instagram, also offer a marketplace platform. One of the benefits of setting up an online store on social media is easier maintenance. It’s because your feed can also be your product showcase consisting of the product photos and descriptions.
After choosing a platform to sell the products, the next step is to plan the marketing strategies.
Some marketing techniques to attract customers are:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Helps increase visibility on search engines, so people can find you when typing the name of your store or any relevant keywords into the search bar. To apply SEO, try to include relevant keywords naturally in your product descriptions and images.
- Free trials or limited access. A great way to showcase the product value. For a successful free trial, make signup simple to reduce barriers. Then, limit the period to no more than 14 days to create a sense of urgency.
- Paid ads. Work to spread brand awareness and gain traffic instantly. Using this strategy, decide on a platform to use the paid ads based on where you host your online store. Next, set criteria, like age and location, to target specific buyers.Visit here: 7starhd
Conclusion
Digital information products are information delivered digitally to educate consumers. Some examples include online courses, eBooks, and audiobooks.
There are some primary steps to selling a digital information product.
First, decide what product you want to sell and start creating it using suitable software and equipment. Next, search for the right market for your product. Start by researching your interests and the demand.
Finally, sell your product via the most effective platform, like a website or a marketplace, and use marketing strategies to attract customers.
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