How to Make a Full-Time Income by Selling Digital Goods

A few months ago I published an article titled How to make a full-time income by adding a storefront to your blog. It gives a general overview of monetizing your blog by adding a storefront.

Today, I’ll explain how to start selling digital products specifically and make a full-time income through it.

The best thing about creating a digital product is that it is easier than creating physical ones. In fact, even if you’re not a tech-savvy person, you could start creating and selling digital products like ebooks with ease.

After all, you don’t necessarily need to have a massive following, in order to build a solid income if you’re selling a product online.

In this post, I’ll show you how to start making a full-time income by selling digital goods online in two ways- selling on marketplaces and selling on your own blog.

Sell on marketplaces

If you’ve ever sold a product online, you might have known that selling is a tedious task; especially finding potential buyers and putting your digital products before them. This is especially true if you’re a newbie seller and not a well-known face in your niche.

For that reason, many sellers prefer selling on marketplaces to selling on their blog.

As thousands of potential buyers are there on marketplaces, the main benefit is that the product visibility will be high. Moreover, you can sell it to people who are not actually your blog readers.

For instance, if you’re an ebook publisher, marketplaces like Amazon.com, Lulu.com and BarnesandNobles.com could be the right choice for you.

If you’re a WordPress theme developer you may use marketplaces like Themeforest.net, MojoThemes.com and WPEden.com etc.

So the basic idea is to find the right marketplaces to sell your products.

How to sell?

If you’re looking for an inspiration to get started as a digital publisher, let’s take a look at the success story of a Kindle bestseller, Rachel Abbott and learn how she successfully leveraged marketplaces to sell her digital goods. Though this case study is about making a full-time income by selling ebooks, the same strategy is applicable to selling any digital goods on marketplaces whether it is a WordPress plugin, software, stock photos, etc.

Lesson #1: Always get the basics right

Create a product with a strong concept. Get a professional looking cover if you’re releasing an ebook. For other digital products like themes, software or plugins, you may need to display screenshots and other graphics that easily grabs the attention of your potential customers.

Make people want to buy it by writing a great description while listing it on marketplaces.

Lesson #2: Create a marketing plan and stick to it

No matter how good your products are, none of your products sell themselves even if you’re using a popular platform like Amazon. However, with the right marketing strategies, you could succeed in selling.

Rachel uses Twitter as her primary marketing channel. She used to engage with like-minded people on Twitter by using tools like Twitter Adder and Triberr. This helped her to spread the word out about her products, which in turn increase the visibility of her listings.

With that said, you shouldn’t necessarily focus solely on Twitter for getting exposure especially if you’re not a regular Twitter user.

For example, publishers like Joanna Penn used to use her blogs to increase exposure of her products listing. Instead of reaching out to like-minded people on Twitter, she used to conduct interviews with popular self-published authors. And because there is a good chance that those authors would tweet about the interview or offer a backlink to it as well as products listing, this is a nice strategy to build some exposure to products listings.

Instead of blindly following others technique, make sure to stick to your marketing plans. Though it is OK to make mistakes when you’re selling a product for the first time, take those mistakes as lessons while creating your future marketing strategies.

Lesson #3: Get some great reviews quickly

One of the main reasons for the success of Rachel is that she got some great reviews quickly in the early days of her product release.

Identify potential blogs in your niche and ask them politely to review your product. While you couldn’t expect everyone you outreach to write a review, this strategy can be very effective to get some reviews and increase exposure for your listing in the early days.

Needless to say, in order to bring in sales, you’ll need to prepare yourself to work hard.

Turn your website into a digital store

One of the best things about creating a digital store is that you get the full control of what you’re selling.

For instance, if you’re selling products on marketplaces, you’ll need to adhere to their guidelines and they’ll take a significant profit share from what you make.

And if you carefully analyze the strategy of most of the best sellers out there, you’ll identify that in order to make a full-time income, you may need to produce multiple products for low prices. It’s because high priced products are harder to sell especially if you’re new to the market, which in turn forces you to create many products.

On the other hand, if you’re selling your digital goods on your own store, you don’t necessarily need to sell them for a cheaper price. Because you’ve full control over what you do, all you need to do is to grow a loyal following base and start selling your products to them.

Let’s take a look at how to make a full-time income by selling self-hosted digital goods.

How to sell?

While creating and selling an ebook is one of the easiest ways to get started with selling a digital good especially for a non-tech savvy person, your choices are not limited to selling ebooks as long as you can build a following and sell your products to them.

Create a digital store: If you’re already running an established WordPress blog, all you need to do is to add a digital storefront on your blog. For this, simply install a free plugin Easy Digital Downloads on your blog.

Choose a theme: If your current theme doesn’t support EDD plugin, you may need to install a new EDD supported theme. However, if you’re really fond of your current theme, chances are you might not want to change the theme. If that’s the case, try adding a new subdomain, install WordPress on it and an Easy Digital Downloads theme like Olam that lets you create a digital storefront with ease.

In fact, Olam is specifically built for creating a digital marketplace, so it’s very likely that you’ll find almost everything you need to build a digital storefront in it.

Build an email list: One of the biggest mistakes most publishers commits is that they undervalue the importance of building an email list. Try creating a landing page and start building an email list before you start creating your product. This will help you build a momentum about your products amongst your potential buyers.

Drive traffic to your landing page and start growing a massive follower base: There are many ways to build huge traffic to your blog as well as your landing page. If you’re looking for some inspirations, read one of my articles that explain how to drive huge traffic overnight to your blog.

Start selling: Once you build a massive follower base, it’s the time to start selling your products. List the products on your storefront and direct traffic from your email list.

Over to you

Have you ever sold digital goods? What would you prefer- selling products on marketplaces or selling it on your own blog?

Share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

About the author: Shahzad Saeed specializes in content marketing for startups and small businesses. He writes on marketing, CRO, ecommerce and design. You can hire him for your next writing project.

Original post: How to Make a Full-Time Income by Selling Digital Goods

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5 Examples of Visual Elements Your Email Marketing Needs

Designing emails isn’t just about coding and making sure they look good on different devices. Emails have to capture attention, build interest, and motivate readers to click through to your website or perform another action.

Sound like a tough job to accomplish with a single message? It sure is! But these 5 examples prove that it’s possible if you use the right visual elements.

1. Beautiful photography

Your emails don’t have to be very complex to capture your readers’ attention. Sometimes all it takes is a beautiful image in the header section that connects well with other key elements – the subject line, preheader, main offer, and the call to action.

A brand called United By Blue does this exceptionally well. As you can see in the message below, their season sale is just a few hours away, just as is the sunrise in the photo they used. If the readers don’t want to miss this special occasion, they better set an alarm and start working on their wishlist straight away.

Another important aspect about this photo is the fact that it ties well with the products the brand offers. It mainly sells clothing and accessories for outdoor activities like camping. Using relevant imagery such as the one presented can have a big effect on how well emails will be able to convince customers to shop on a site.

2. Animated video

You’ve probably all read Jon’s blog post on adding videos to your email campaigns. It’s true that embedding video into your messages is risky. In most cases it just won’t work, as it’s not widely supported by different email clients.

But when it does work, it can make your jaw drop. That’s what Litmus wanted to prove in the email invitation for their Email Design Conference in 2014.

As you can see in the image below, and can read more about in this article, there’s a hidden video background in the message (which runs more smoothly than presented in this GIF). Without making the subscribers click on any links they’ve managed to show:

• what the email is about
• what the conference is like
• what more one can do with email design

You can imagine this campaign generated quite a buzz and proved that the Litmus Team knows about coding and email design. And all it took is a cleverly animated video.

3. Animated GIFs

If you don’t want to add video to an email, you can try using GIFs instead and show some simple animations.

The GIF format is very popular and it’s widely supported by various email clients. In the past few years it’s become a common practice to use them to capture readers’ attention or show your product in action. This is exactly what GetResponse did when it launched one of its new features and wanted to quickly show it to their subscribers.

In this short animated GIF, you can see how easy it is to edit your pop-up form by simply dragging and dropping individual elements onto your workspace. Just as with the previous example, they managed to show the key benefits of their new solution without making their users click on any links or buttons.

4. Call-to-action buttons

Calls-to-action buttons, almost by definition, should be visible. But what if you could make it almost jump off the page? Sometimes there’s a way.

The Cards Against Humanity game is known for its particular, often inappropriate, sense of humor. Their whole communication style suggests they don’t care about the traditional standards or best practices written by the experts. And that’s probably why their email asking for $5 donations with a large CTA worked so well.

As you can learn from the message below, their premise was simple: they’re closing down the store for the Black Friday holiday, and if you give them $5, they’ll give you nothing in return. As crazy as this idea sounds, the Cards Against Humanity Team got $71,145 from this campaign, keeping all the money to themselves.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should make your call-to-action buttons the same size as theirs. It does mean you should play around with the copy, button placement, and design to find the best way to catch your own subscribers’ attention.

5. User-generated content

Let’s be honest. Most stock photos don’t look real. Some of them have been used by different brands so often that users no longer pay attention to them. That’s why if you want to your users to react to your emails, ads, or landing pages, you’ll want to use unique photographs.

Finding the right images, especially ones that haven’t been over-used, may sound difficult at first. But it doesn’t have to be, especially if you use content created by your customers and fans.

Many brands, such as Me Undies, are great at sourcing new content from their users. They run online contests, promote using hashtags to show how customers use their products, and ask them for reviews. And guess what? You can do that too, and use the resulting user-generated content in your email marketing campaigns.

The great thing about this content is that it shows your products are used by real customers. Consequentially, other viewers can more easily imagine themselves using them. On top of that, these photos also tend to be more trusted than the ones created by Marketing Team.

The same goes for reviews, tweets, or emails. They can work just as well in your email marketing campaigns or in your ads, or as a part of your website. One word of caution though: be sure that you’re allowed to use them. If you’re unsure whether you have the right to do so, this article provides a good overview of when it’s appropriate to use social media content provided by your fans for your own campaigns.

A word of advice

There are a number of ways to make your emails stand out and attract your audiences’ attention. Before you get into optimizing your use of photos and videos, make sure that your emails are delivered well so that they reach your subscribers’ inbox.

At the same time, you should look at the elements that are seen before the message gets opened, i.e. the “From” name, address, subject line, and the preheader. All of these elements have to build trust and remind your audience about the value you’ve delivered to them in the past.

Once you get to coding your email, don’t just trust your gut feeling. Get scientific and if you’re not sure whether you’re using the right header image, just run a test. You’ll learn a lot from your subscribers, including what they like best in your emails.

What successes have you had using visual elements in your email marketing?

 

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If Trumps Wins, Hillary and Bill Clinton Go To Jail!

Weekly Marketing Skinny • September 17, 2016

In the marketing spotlight this week:

♨ Facebook Live is coming to desktops;
♨ a few Periscope updates for iOS 10;
♨ customer service/support via Twitter;
♨ Instagram stories get tweaks;
♨ YouTube Creator Studio app got better;
♨ more/better advertising opportunities;
♨ Facebook Messenger bots now let you pay;
♨ Twitter's live streaming apps;
♨ nice Outlook.com updates;
♨ sell your old smartphone in a cinch;
♨ ...and more!

The post Weekly Marketing Skinny • September 17, 2016 appeared first on TrafficGenerationCafe.com. Don't miss Ana's free Bite-Size Traffic Hacks email series - short actionable traffic tips to double your traffic in no time.

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Video Marketing How-To: A Year of Videos

Hello and welcome to a special episode of Video Marketing How-To! It’s been just over a year since I started putting these things together, so today I want to look at whether this video series was actually successful, or if my mom is the only person who really watches these How-Tos!

First off is the big question – is anyone actually watching all these videos? Thankfully, the answer is yes! By analyzing the last nine videos I published, I can see big spikes on the days they launched, and sadly, diminishing returns in the days after. So the content is popular, but our promotion strategy needs some work. The most popular video was Filming Outside the Studio – which, coincidentally, was also the most fun one to film!

Next, I took a look at a few individual videos to see how well things are going. Here we can see that our drop-off rate is around 50% by the end of the videos. That’s actually pretty good, but I’d like to strive for 60% or higher. It looks like 60% drop-off happens around a minute and ten seconds into the videos, so from now on I will strive to keep these around that long.

Then, I took a look at whether the blog posts themselves are performing well. As we can see from Google Analytics, Filming Outside the Studio yet again topped the list, and had a really high average time-on-site as well. Getting the Most From Your Video Production Agency also ranked pretty highly, so these are excellent topics to explore for future posts. One thing that is important to note is that Performing a YouTube Channel Audit is still in the top five, and that was the first video I published. That’s content with longevity!

Now, the big lessons I take away from this are, you fantastic viewers are looking for more actionable tips and shorter videos. So, with that, I invite you to tune in next month for a quick explanation on how I create fancy transparent overlays. See you then!

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The Perfect List of Marketing Technology for Small Businesses [Infographic]

You’re busy doing this, that, and the other thing. And the truth is, you know there’s probably marketing technology out there that could make your job (and life!) way more efficient. But the process of finding the right marketing tech is not efficient.

We know efficiency is key for your small business and we’ve got you covered.

Whether you’re looking for support with content and social media, website publishing and management, digital advertising, creation or design of graphics or videos, collaboration and project management, marketing program automation and email, contact management, or analytics, we’ve created a shortlist on the best technologies for these purposes in a small business.

Wanna share this infographic? Go for it! Just right click, save the image, and share away!

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How to Use Masterminds to Connect with Your Audience – with Alex Barker

How to Use Masterminds to Connect Your Audience – with Alex Barker

Episode: 277
Who: Alex Barker
Blog / Website: 66 Day Experiment

Are you getting the most out of your mastermind groups?

Are you interested in building mastermind groups to help grow your business?

In this episode, I’m talking to Alex Barker from the 66 Day Experiment, a blog, website and podcast dedicated to helping you make lasting change in your life. On his podcast, he experiments in 66-day increments with things like reading a book a day, facing daily rejection, and creating a business.

Alex is a big action taker: he built three businesses in three years, paid off his house in less than three years and helped over 50 people grow their businesses! One of the things Alex does is to set people up in mastermind groups. So I brought him on to talk about how to use mastermind groups to connect your audience.

Alex’s Story

Alex is a pharmacist by trade, and he’s really into research. The idea for the 66 Day Experiment came from a study from University College, London that he read. The study said that it actually takes people 66 days to form a habit, not 21 like we always read on the internet.

So Alex decided to try it out and see if this theory could work in practice, and he decided to record the process. He started in 2015 with his first experiment, reading a book a day.

There’s some backstory here, though: Alex started listening to podcasts because he had an awful, two-hour commute every day. And as he was listening to all these podcasts, he got excited about the idea of passive income.

His first website, pharmacytechnicianresume.com, was designed to bring in Google ad revenue, but it failed pretty quickly. Why? Alex says the project failed because he lacked deep, personal reflection. He got all wrapped up in the emotion of passive income rather than thinking long and hard about what he really wanted to do.

It didn’t resonate, and it didn’t play to his strengths. Even though he learned from that experience, he knew within a few months that pharmacytechnicianresume.com was not the right path for him.

The Leadership Dojo podcast

Alex’s next project was a podcast called the Leadership Dojo. This was a step in the right direction, but he still didn’t really know what he was doing. He still hadn’t done that reflection. After about six months, he realized that he was setting himself up to become a leadership consultant and speaker, but he didn’t have any real leadership experience. The project was making some money, but it wasn’t going to be his long-term business.

But hang on a second. I think what we all really want to know is HOW Alex paid off his house in less than three years!

Well, after the Leadership Dojo, he realized that he needed to accept that he was a pharmacist. He transitioned into a business model where he could talk about pharmacy. He created an authority site, and then he started creating content for other sites.

Finding Success

This process led to his first major business, which is essentially a media company. At first, their income came from selling content. Now it’s mostly sponsorship-based, although they do some content creation, too.

Nowadays, Alex has a team to do most of the work. He’s really focused just on training and creating content that’s interesting to him. For example, he still does a pharmacy-based podcast. Sponsorships for that podcast have been his “cash cow” for the past few years. That income, combined with a Dave Ramsey course, helped him to get out of debt. In fact, he’s now just six months away from paying off his student loans!

Virtual Assistant Providers

Alex’s team is made up of virtual assistants and ghostwriters from all over the world. He finds them in a bunch of different places, including hiremymom.com (yes, really!). He also makes use of Virtual Staff Finder and Upwork.

The key to getting really good writers cheaply on Upwork, Alex says, is to target people who are new to the site and want to get 5-star ratings. Promise that if the work is good you’ll give them the rating and bring them back for additional work. It’s a win-win, really, because you get great writers for cheap and they get a lot more work through the site!

And now we come full circle, to the 66 Day Experiment. I want to know: did Alex really read a book every day for 66 days?! Well, not quite. He says it was more like 55 over 66 days. That’s still a lot of books! How did he do it?

He made use of time blocking in the morning and the evening, and he also brushed up on his speed reading skills. By the way, he says that speed reading is something that anyone can learn to do.

Let’s Talk Mastermind

Alex says that mastermind groups and coaching have been the keys to his success over the past three to four years. He both participates in and facilitates mastermind groups.

Mastermind Groups help you grow as an entrepreneur.

Mastermind is great because it allows you to speak about your obstacles and get outside perspectives that are really crucial to your growth as an entrepreneur. In fact, it was a mastermind meeting that helped him to create his current business.

He was in the hot seat, and someone said to him: “We know you don’t like the idea of a pharmacy business, but is there a business you could create in the world of pharmacy that you would love?” That question was world-changing for Alex. It really shifted his perspective.

So what made Alex decide to start hosting mastermind groups? Essentially, he wanted to test whether mastermind hosting was a viable business model.

Lots of people have tried and failed to set up similar businesses. Alex says that the majority of mastermind groups fail because there is no designated leader, because no one takes responsibility for making things work.

Another problem is that participants don’t make a commitment to success. Unspoken expectations won’t work; there has to be an explicit agreement. So that’s how his business works: people are willing to pay someone to take on that leadership role.

Alex’s “Trademark” Mastermind Structure

In terms of structuring his mastermind groups, Alex tries to pair people who are at similar stages in their entrepreneurial journeys. He aims for a maximum of four to six people per group.

Mastermind Group at work

In a weekly meeting set up, he likes to start with ten minutes of “wins,” where everyone gets to share accomplishments, share tools that they have learned, or share goals that they have achieved.

After that, he sets up a hot seat exercise. The person in the hot seat comes in knowing exactly what they want to talk about or the problem that they want to resolve.

For the first half of the hot seat period, the rest of the group is only allowed to ask questions. They’re not giving advice or trying to solve the problem at this point. They’re just gathering lots of information.

They’re trying to get to the heart of the problem, and they’re trying to open the hot seater’s mind for what comes next.

Then, for the rest of the time, the person in the hot seat takes themselves out of the conversation. They stay in the room, but they don’t say anything.

They mute themselves while the rest of the group discusses the problem and talks through possible solutions. Alex uses this strategy because it’s harder for them to get defensive. There’s enormous value in just listening when you’re in the hot seat and hearing everyone out.

Alex keeps track of group members’ progress using Excel. He tracks goals set and goals accomplished, and he sends the results to members at regular intervals.

This really helps to motivate people to keep going, because they can clearly see how far they’ve come. The spreadsheet also opens up the possibility for additional one-on-one coaching opportunities, since Alex calls individual group members to talk about the results.

How to Build a Mastermind Group for Your Business

So how do you go about creating an audience for your mastermind group?

Alex says that the best thing to do is just to get on the phone with people. Talk to them, learn about their problems, ask lots of questions. Find out where they’re at and find out what they need.

Part of what you’re doing in that phone call is finding out if they’ll really benefit from mastermind. Alex says that lots of people benefit more from one-on-one coaching than from a mastermind group, at least at first. He gave a math analogy:

Let’s say that on your own, working solo, 1+1=2.

In a mastermind group, where you’ve got lots of other voices in the room, but you might get some conflicting advice, 1+1=10.

In one-on-one coaching, where you can really dig deep into your problems and challenges, 1+1=50.

Great! But how does Alex find people to call?

When people visit his website, they’ll see a short video explaining what he’s about and they’ll be asked to fill in a short survey.

There are a couple of things that Alex looks for in the survey answers when he’s deciding who to call. Some people are lazy in how they fill out the survey, which doesn’t bode well for their commitment to a mastermind group.

Some answers are just uninspiring, or it seems like the person is only interested in making money.

Alex tries to only work with people whose stories and goals get him excited. He wants to hear about your life’s mission when you fill in that survey.

So what’s in the survey? Alex starts off with demographic information, and then asks for some paragraph-style answers. He asks questions like:

• What are you struggling with?
• What are your short-term goals?
• What’s holding you back?
• What have you already tried?
• How would mastermind help you?

Alex says that mastermind groups might work better for some types of business than for others. But if you want to give it a try, it’s best to build mastermind into your sales funnel. So you start off with an email list, and maybe a free ebook or a free email course.

Then you offer a slightly higher priced item like an ebook or a course. Once a client has completed a course, they’re in a good position to be candidates for mastermind.

Mastermind is ideal for people who are really self-directed but just need a little accountability. It works really well for goal-oriented people.

The great thing about mastermind is that your audience isn’t just connecting with you, they’re connecting with each other. And that is a beautiful thing.

Where Do I Sign Up?

If you want to know more about what Alex is doing, all the info is on http://ift.tt/1M1aZC0.

Especially for our podcast audience, Alex is offering a two hour coaching session for motivated, action-taking individuals. This is a huge opportunity!! Email Alex directly at alexmichaelbarker@gmail.com if you want to take advantage of that.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Leadership Dojo – Alex’s podcast
• 66 Day Experiment – Alex’s blog
• Virtual Assistant Providers:
  • Hire my mom
  • Virtual Staff Finder
  • Upwork

Infographic

How to Use Masterminds to Connect with Your Audience – with Alex Barker

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