Selling Digital

Now that might all sound a little bit scary and maybe this has put you off so far. Don’t worry, selling a product through an ecommerce store can be extremely easy and simple, and a great way to make money quickly. One of the best examples of this is to sell a digital product through a store, like Woo Commerce, especially if you already have a blog.

So as I said earlier, I have a blog, where I talk about fitness. And this has been very popular. And because I put a lot of work into that blog, it has great engagement, where people read it every day. I added a Woo Commerce store to my website, which was as simple as installing a plugin on WordPress, a single, one-click installation.

Then I created my digital product, which is an eBook, a PDF that people could download for free. There was no overhead for me, no cost of goods sold. There’s no need for storage. There’s no need for logistics, for fulfillment. They simply download a PDF.

Of course, there are fresh concerns with this sort of products, such as digital rights management. Nothing to stop people sharing my product around. But I was convinced that I had enough people who really liked the channel that they’d buy it for real. And sure, if I lost the occasional customer because they found a way to download it, then that would just be part of the cost that I would absorb.

I created some buzz by creating a video advert through my YouTube channel. That got people really excited. And I started taking preorders. This was a plugin for Woo Commerce, which I bought for about 100 pounds, which is roughly $130 or $120 USD. And that way, I made loads of orders before I’d even created the product.

This is a great strategy, called qualifying the market. I knew that people are interested in the product because they put down that money. That they meant I could confidently spend a lot of time working on it to make it perfect, so I didn’t get any returns, and then sell it to that huge audience.

Then when the thing went live, I closed the discount for preorders and people started paying the higher rate. Now people find my website through my blog content on Google, or through YouTube. They read it and they enjoy it. They see the adverts around the site for the product. And they follow the link and buy it. I don’t have to lift a finger. I’ve already made the product. And everyone is very happy so far.

I will say, though, that it’s important to keep in mind that the most popular kind of product, even online, is still a physical product. The reason for this is that not everybody reads digital products. Let’s be honest, a lot of people don’t read at all, let alone on their phone. Think in your own family how many people you know who would actually read a digital product sent to them as a PDF, and it’s much smaller than the amount of people who would buy a nice cup.

So physical products still do sell a lot more than digital ones. But if you have the right audience you’ve built that audience, then that doesn’t really matter so much.

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