Sell Digital Products - 5 Steps to Create a Digital Product People Will Love
An important step in creating a digital product is to make sure that it will sell. Digital products are easy to produce with very low overhead, but it doesn't make sense to put forth the effort without a guaranteed return. You can never be 100% sure, but here are some ways you can make a very educated guess.
1. Conduct Market Research for Your Digital Product
Use the Internet to conduct market research. There are plenty of opportunities online to get a thorough understanding of your market. Try to get a sense of the overall size of your market. An easy way to do this is to identify a key demographic and then make an estimate according to population.
For example, your target market may be men in the 40-55 age range in mid-sized cities the American Midwest. There are plenty of census and demographic resources online where you can find this data. You can further refine your search by adding other key demographics. You'll end up with an idea of how many potential buyers there are.
2. Look at Similar Digital Products that are Selling
You can research similar products online. Try to determine whether these products are selling or not. Good resources for doing this include ClickBank and Amazon. You can't get specific data on volume sold on these sites, but you can get an idea by looking at the reviews.
Simply searching for similar digital products and browsing can glean quite a bit of information. In addition to finding reviews, you might see mentions in forums or on social media. You can get an idea of popularity by looking at how much a product is talked about, as well as a general idea of how people feel about it. For example, you might come across a social media comment where a buyer is saying they wish the product had gone into more detail on a specific topic, and you can then cover this topic.
3. Conduct a Market Survey
Before the treasure trove of market information that is the Internet, businesses conducted market surveys. This, too, is made easier by the Internet. You can conduct surveys online with current customers, your target market, or social media followers. Ask specific questions about what types of products they'd like to see, as well as problems they’re facing. If you can address and solve a problem, you're virtually assured sales.
4. Do Keyword Research for Your Digital Product
You can use a tool like the Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to research search terms and discover search volume. Pick a few keywords that describe your product and do a search. Are people searching for this keyword?
Google Trends is another good research tool. It shows you which keywords are trending and their search volume over time in graph form. You might discover that your chosen keywords are on an upward trend, which means there's rising demand.
5. Launch a Minimum Viable Product as Your First Digital Product
Before you launch the full product, you can create a minimum viable product (MVP) and see how it performs. Take one problem and solve it, or one topic from your bigger product. If your MVP sells well or draws a great deal of interest, you know that you're ready for the full product.
And if you're looking for a platform to sell your digital product, I recommend Podia. It's one of my favorites because you can sell digital downloads, online courses and even monthly memberships all on one platform.