Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Creating digital products is one thing, but developing digital products that sell well and generate lots of money is another thing entirely.
So let’s talk about how you can create a digital product that’s guaranteed to make you nothing less than a million naira every month.
Contents
Table of contents
What is a Digital Product?
We talked extensively about product development here. But now digital has been added to it, so it may now be a bit confusing. So let’s do some demystification, shall we?
A digital product is first, a product, but the type that is not tangible. Another name for it is a virtual or online product.
Digital products are virtual products and services that are exchanged for money online.
Why Create a Digital Product?
There are several reasons why creating digital products is the way to go. Well, it may be a bit tough on you initially if you are new to tech. But there are several resources and materials to guide newcomers online.
That said, here are some of the reasons why you should create and sell digital products
- No rent or shipping hassle
Digital products begin and end online. You are not meeting neither is anyone meeting you. That means you don’t have to bother about getting a physical office or stress your head out on logistics.
The whole process is easy and convenient for you, the seller and the buyer.
- Low investment with potential high ROI
Most businesses require a huge chunk of capital to set up, but you can’t always say the same for creating digital products. This makes the investment risk level on digital products relatively low (depending on the product type).
Similarly, the potential return on investment is high too. What’s even more interesting is that this whole thing can be automated such that it becomes a fulltime passive income for you.
- More profitable than digital products
The fact that the cost of production is low makes creating digital products more profitable than physical products. Sometimes, all you need to create a digital product is your time and internet data.
- Serve an industry or niche at scale
One of the best ways to create and market digital products is to focus a specific, defined section of the society. For instance, rather than creating an ebook on digital marketing, you can create one that focuses on SaaS marketers’ email marketing.
Usually, the implication of this is a smaller market to cater to. And that translates lower profits.
However, with digital products, you are not limited to a geographical location so your market is as wide as your imagination can carry.
Profitable Digital Product Ideas To Create in 2022
Ebooks
The smartphone has the potential almost anything its user wants it to be per time. From being the lamp unto their feet to being their music and video player, the possibilities are almost limitless. And one of those things the smartphone can serve as is a digital library where users can conveniently read books without going through the hassle of using a physical library.
This creates a large market for Ebooks which you should tap into. A significant emphasis on LARGE!
There several genres and areas of interest to explore when creating an Ebook. Fiction vs nonfiction; research reports vs DIY (Do it Yourself); historical vs contemporary; the options are countless.
Oh, you don’t how to write? (or so you think). Not a problem at all.
First of all, no harm in giving it a shot and showing it to an authority to proofread and edit. However, if you still don’t want to do this, there is always a way to go about it.
Guess what? There are people called ghostwriters. These guys specialize in helping people create contents for a fee. That is, they write for you and you pay them, but you claim ownership of the work and can do with it whatever you deem fit. Fair right?
It’s just like what they do in the music industry where songwriters write songs and sell to artists. After which they no longer can lay claim to the piece.
Ebook is a very lucrative and profitable digital product to look at.
But how do you ensure you make your target monthly 1 million from selling ebooks? Well, that’s still ahead.
Video
Guess what the future of content is? That’s right – video. And you know what? The future is here already.
Video is another digital product you can monetize and make a high profit from.
Whether it is educational or promotional; informative or educative, video is always going to sell, and it all boils down to the quality and marketing strategy.
Some of the most popular social media influencers today are video content creators. First, they create entertaining videos to grow their followership, and from then, they can create promotional videos for brands who pay good money.
Another avenue to make money from videos is through Youtube. Create a Youtube channel and continuously dish out relevant videos to your target audience. And the more views you get, the more money you can make from Youtube ads.
You can also create short videos and sell them to people who need them through a platform like FastSpring. The options are uncountable.
There you have another digital product that can make you loads of money. And you may not even need to buy a camera; if you have a smartphone with a quality camera, then you have no excuse not to start shooting those videos now. You may need to take a short course on Videography, video editing and the likes, so your end product is always great.
Workshops and Masterclasses
What do you know? No, seriously, what do you know?
Until you think deeply about that question, your answer may be nothing. But trust me, you know a lot, and you can turn those skills into a digital product in the form of Workshops and Masterclasses.
Think of all the things you’ve ever done and what you currently do; is there someone out there who wouldn’t mind paying to learn from this your wealth of experience? That’s your target audience.
Now, this may not be something you jump into. First, you need to have people who know and consider you to be an expert or authority in what you do. Some of them probably already admire you and want to be like you. That’s your hungry market like Akin Alabi talked about in his book Small Business, Big Money. Go get them!
Stock Photos
At the beginning of this post is a stock photo with credit to the photographer. Do you know what that means? It means I’ve either paid the photographer to use this photo or I didn’t so I’m giving the photographer some publicity with the credit. Either way, the photographer wins. And there you have an example of how making through stock photos.
If you have an eye for colour, light and framing, you can make some great deal of money selling your photos online as there is a massive market for it.
Online Courses
If you feel like you have more than enough information for a masterclass, then you should consider hosting an online course. Yes, you can, you just have to set out some time to plan, organize and create the content.
There are several local and international online platforms to host your course when you are done.
The hardest part of this is researching and creating the content (product). Next to that is marketing it. Once you get right in all of these, then sit back and watch your money pile up.
Apps and Mobile Games
Are you a developer? Can you create excellent games or beneficial mobile apps? Then go ahead and do just that.
There are two ways to go about monetizing a mobile app. One is to set a price for a feature or the entire game and get credit alerts when people sign up.
The second approach is to make the app available for free, but allow ads in the app to generate revenue.
Oh, there is a final one. Make the app available for free with ads and an option to sign up for a fee to access premium service where there are no ads.
Now, you have a product idea. But it’s not just going to start making you that million naira monthly overnight. There is a process that you have to take the idea through to arrive at that stable monthly income.
7 Steps to Creating Digital Products
Validate your idea
Many people go on to launch their digital product ignoring this critical first step. But they often regret it.
Imagine spending all your money, time and energy building a product no one wants at the end of the day. Makes no sense, right? Yeah, that explains why you need to start by validating your idea.
“But I know what I’m doing. I feel like people are going to love it”. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but this is not about what you feel or think. Except you are building the product for yourself and not for a market, you need to move away from what you think and focus on what your target market thinks.
Ebook is one of the most productive digital product. However, there are several ebooks out there that only the author and their friends have read. Why is that? Simple – they didn’t validate the idea before going on to launch. They focused on feelings and assumptions instead of facts.
So, how do you validate a digital product idea?
It’s about doing your homework. Always research your market before anything else.
There are many tools online to help you validate your idea. One of them is Google Trends. And ideally, this is the first place to begin your product idea validation.
As the name implies, Google Trends is the go-to tool to find out the trending terms, keywords or topics people (in your target market) are searching for.
Let’s go back to the ebook digital product idea. Let’s say if you’ve decided to write a self-help ebook. From Google Trends, you can find trending topics by timeframe and location. That way, you can tell what topic would interest your target market.
This also links back to the idea of solving a problem with your product. And you can only know what problems to solve by first looking at your target customers’ FAQs (frequently asked questions). Google Trends is the best place to find this.
The next stop is another Google tool. Well, Google is called a tech giant for a reason.
This one is Google Keyword Planner which is part of Google Adwords. This gives you a much detailed data on your product idea. With Google Keyword Planner, you can further dig into such information as search volume and competition.
So, this is how it works. Yes, you should create a product based on what people are searching for. But the more the search volume, the higher the competition. In other words, others are solving that problem already, and that may not be good for your business.
You want to find a balance – like a middle ground. Focus on terms with relatively high volume and not so much competition. The result of this is that you would end up creating a product that specifically targets a well-defined niche.
After this, up next is talking to people to get unbiased feedback. Most of the times, though, the feedback you’d get from friends and family may not be unbiased. Where does that lead you? Well, back online.
Go to social media communities and online forums where ideas like yours are discussed and get their honest opinion. Try not to give too much information about your product idea, so someone else doesn’t steal it.
Build your audience with free content
Another name for this is content marketing. It’s a way of establishing yourself as an authority in a niche or industry. With it, would trust you on everything concerning that topic or industry.
It’s like what Aproko Doctor does with health-related topics on Twitter. If he decides to write a book today on health, you can bet that it would be a best seller.
You can do the same too. Let people consider a go-to person on the digital product you intend to build. You do this by giving free content (tips, advice, resources and so on). The day you’d finally announce your digital product, you have your audience waiting to receive it.
Create a waiting list
People like anticipation. You know the effect suspense has on you when you see a movie? How it keeps you glued to the TV till you see the last scene? That is the same effect product anticipation has on an average person.
Another benefit of having a waiting list is that it’s also a way of validating your product idea. The way your target market anticipate your product would give you an idea of what to expect when it’s finally released.
Your website (or landing page), email and social media are three great tools you should combine to create your waiting list.
There are several ways you can go about this. One – you can create a landing page where you’d make an irresistible for free. It could be a free ebook, a template, blueprint and any other information you know your target market wouldn’t say no to.
And you would have them drop their email address so that this gift can be sent to them. They provide the email address to get the gift. That’s it. You now have their email address and can send them emails on your digital product ahead of its launch.
Must Read: How to Grow Your Small Business with Email Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide
The second way to go about this is to announce on all your online channels (social media, websites etc.) that you are working on your digital product. Then direct people to signup to your newsletter if they want to be the first to know when the product is ready.
In the two approaches, what’s constant is that you will keep waiting list updated on your product development till its eventual launch.
Create your product
Is it an ebook or online course? Whatever digital product you’ve decided to develop, this is the point where you do the product creation proper.
Put all the things you found to work as you create this digital product that will you fortune.
By the way, who said the creation has to be done by you? If it’s an ebook, for instance, who said it has to be written by you?
There are ghostwriters out there who would gladly write a masterpiece of an ebook for you for a fee. All you have to do is give them specific instructions and guide.
The same applies to other types of digital products such as webinars, app development, courses, etc. Do the part you can and outsource where necessary.
Get feedback and improve your product
The best way to get ideas to develop a highly profitable digital product is not by conducting the best research. The best way is through feedback; feedback from your customers.
The product is for them and more than anyone else, they know how it serves them.
Succeeding with your digital product will depend on how well your product can evolve with your audience.
Think about the different mobile applications on your phone. How many times have you had to update your WhatsApp to the latest version? Several times yeah?
Most of the updates are often a result of feedback from users. They are indications that those app developers are listening. You should too.
Have the right monetization tools on your website (or any other platform you use)
We are talking about a digital product, so the means of receiving payments will be digital as well.
Depending on the type of digital product and how you decide to monetize it, you can use many monetization tools. And in some cases, you won’t even have to bother because the platform where your digital product is hosted would help you handle payments.
Flutterwave and Paystack are two popular payment solutions you can integrate into your website (if that’s what you’re using) to collect funds. They are fast, efficient and widely trusted. Yeah, trust is crucial for online payment in Nigeria as experience has made many Nigerians toss trust to the bin.
For situations where you’d need to send account details to customers, try to open a corporate account. Nobody wants to see your first name standing next to your surname in the name of business account. It’s a turnoff for some people and can negatively affect their buying decision.
Strategic partnership
You need all the help you can get; hence partnership is vital. Think of the more people you’d be able to reach when you partner with someone who has a larger audience than you.
Bring influencers, bloggers and other brands on board. Get them to join in pushing your product in a partnership deal that would benefit them as well.
Of course, the first question in any partnership is “what’s in it for me?” So, make sure to have an answer to that first before proposing.
Conclusion
There are several platforms out there where you can sell your digital products. And when the product is all set, you can read this to see how to promote a new product.
Indeed, digital products sell well and generate lots of money. However, it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Some work has to be put in place, especially in developing the product and marketing.
Also, it is almost unrealistic to expect to make millions every month from one stock photo, for instance. Hence, create varieties of products and put them all out there to increase your chances of making reasonable money.
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