How to Create a Digital Product That Your Readers Would Love to Pay For

Selling digital products is one of the most profitable ways of making money from your blog. As compared to freelancing and consultancy business, creating products like eBooks, video tutorials, email courses and webinars, initially requires more time. But once the product is ready to sell, it can generate a regular stream of passive income that requires almost no time from you.

However, many bloggers never create their own products because they’re not sure what their target audience wants. As a result, they miss out on huge money making opportunities.

In this post I’m going to tell you exactly how you can create a product that your blog readers and subscribers would love to buy. In fact, they’ll pay you anything for it.

Here’s what you need to do.

Step 1 – Zoom-in On Your Target Audience

Every successful product is actually a solution to one or more problems. But to identify the problem you’ll solve, you first need to identify the people who’re facing those problems.

In simple words, this is called knowing your customers.

Have you ever tried to identify who your ideal buyers actually are? What are their interests, their age group, their countries of origin, their languages, and above all, their motivation for visiting your blog?

In sales terms, we call this creating the right buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a sample profile of your ideal buyer, the one your product will target. A detailed buyer person would help you create a focused product that addresses a very particular audience. Hence increasing your chances of making sales.

For example, for an internet marketing and SEO blogger the ideal buyer persona can be an entrepreneur/small business owner/CMO, aged between 30-40 years, based in the US with a minimum annual income of $100,000 and willing to learn how SEO and higher search rankings can boost his sales numbers.

This is just one example, the ideal persona can vary according to the nature of your blog.

Step 2 – Identify the Questions That No One Is Answering

Once you have your ideal buyer in mind, you need to identify the biggest hurdles in his business, the problems that are giving him sleepless nights, which you can resolve.

There are a number of ways to find the key issues of your target audience, but here are some of the sources that I’ve personally found very useful.

Quora

Quora has discussions on almost every topic in the world. It has a vibrant member community that actively participates in different discussion. You can find relevant discussions by searching for the main keywords of your target industry.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a great tool to find out what topics are shared the most on social media. For example, if you search the term “content marketing” on BuzzSumo, it’ll show you the posts related to content marketing with the highest social shares. This gives you a very good idea of the topics your target audience is interested in.

Google Trends

Using Google trends you can see if the interest in different topics is on the rise or going down. Topics with an upward graph are more likely to attract buyers.

Reddit

Reddit is another super effective research tool. You’ll find discussions on almost every topic imaginable. Go through discussions or create your own question. You can learn a lot about your target audience using Reddit.

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups are full of highly intellectual and mature discussions on different business and professional topics. You can join relevant groups, post questions and ask people for their feedback on different topics.

Blog Comments

Lastly, if your blog is slightly old, you’d likely have reader comments on your posts. Go through those comments and try to find any trends. See if there’s any particular question that people are asking.

In every niche, you’ll come across certain complex issues/problems that nobody is willing to tackle. This is your opportunity to stand out and create something that your target audience is dying to know about.

Step 3 – Focus on One Problem, Go Deep and Build Something Epic

The secret to a wildly successful product is that it addresses only one problem in epic detail. Instead of listing a million problems without any clear solutions, great products address just one problem and absolutely blow the buyers away with highly actionable solutions.

For example, instead of creating an eBook named “How To Create a Successful Blog”, create something like “10 Steps To Get Your First 1000 Subscribers in 30 Days”

See the difference? Which one is more tempting?

The first one is a huge topic that cannot be covered in just one eBook. Moreover, it’s likely to be a vague product with no clear action items or immediate value.

The other product, however, is clearly targeted and likely to include actionable advice. It’s like holding your buyers hand and personally walking him through each step of the problem, and ultimately towards the solution. Instead of telling people what to do, show them how it’s done. Add lots of real life examples, research backed data, images and success stories.

In short, don’t create anything even remotely mediocre. Try building the most epic and comprehensive product ever created on your topic.

Step 4 – Create a Freebie To Pull Buyers

Once your product is ready, you need to attract the right buyers. The best way to do this is by offering a limited version of your paid product for free or by offering a high value freebie and that actually increases the buying intention in your subscribers.

For example, if you’re a freelance copywriter selling an eBook titled “How To Increase Your Website Conversions by 476% in 15 Days” you can offer a web copy audit checklist as a freebie. Your prospect will see the audit checklist, and realize that his website copy is not up to the mark.

Who will he ask for help? You, of course.

So this freebie is like a sample of your paid services and it builds the buying intention in your subscribers from the very beginning.

Here’s another example of a similar giveaway by a professional copywriter (his paid services are website copywriting and design)

This same formula can be replicated on other products.

• If your paid product is a webinar or a video course, your freebie can be a blueprint with all the high level information of the course.
• If you’re selling an eBook, you can provide its first chapter or a summary as the freebie.
• If your paid services are SEO and link building, you can provide a free website audit as a freebie.

In principle, your freebie should not just be aimed at building an email list. It should be crafted to pull potential buyers and subscribers who have a buying intention.

Step 5 – Mature Leads with an Auto-Responder Sequence

Getting the right subscribers on your list is a major achievement. But you need to nurture these subscribers in order to trigger sales from them.

For this, you need to have a smart series of automated emails, spread over 5-8 days, to be sent to your subscribers.

Here’s a typical email sequence I use.

The Welcome Email – This email is aimed at endorsing the subscriber’s decision to sign up for your list. Make him feel good about it and tell him what he’s going to receive in the next few days from you.

The Persuading Email – Share a story of a person similar to your subscriber, with the same problems (the one your product solves). Tell him how he found the right solution in your product.

The Sales Pitch – This email comes straight to the point. It carries an offer from you with all the benefits and advantages of your product/service.

The Warning Email – This email uses negative persuasion by telling the subscriber what he’ll miss by not buying your product. Tell him that your offer is going down in 36 hours. Offer a special discount at the end of the email.

The Final Call – This is the final email with an exclusive offer for the buyer. Thanking him for his time and telling him that he can still purchase your product before it goes down in the next12 hours.

You can configure an auto-responder by using the premium versions of MailChimp or AWeber. Or you could use SendinBlue, a free auto-responder service with a limit of up to 9000 email per month. It should be enough for you at the start.

Step 6 – Provide a Simplified Buying Experience

More than 50% of consumers leave the purchase half way through because of poor buying experience. So you’d need to use a reliable and user friendly ecommerce plugin to ensure that your buyers can purchase your product as easily as possible.

Here are the key points to consider while choosing an ecommerce plugin.

• It should involve minimum redirections during the payment process.
• Should offer integration with lots of payment gateways.
• Should be easy to configure.
• Should be secure.
• Should ensure product delivery for digital products.

The WordPress eStore plugin meets all these conditions. It is a comprehensive ecommerce plugin specially designed for digital selling. It is highly secure and supports all the major payment gateways and purchase options.

Wrapping It Up

Creating a highly desirable digital product may seem a little difficult at the start. But if you research well, and create a product around the key burning problems that are keeping your target customers restless, your product is destined to do well. But to attract the right buyers, you need a strategically designed freebie, a smart email series and a payment process works like a breeze. With this combination there’s no reason why your next product cannot be a huge success.