Digital product sales funnel for operations

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I talk a lot about all things digital products on this channel but I realize that there are people who are all the time just jumping into the world of selling digital products for the very first time and who might need a very foundational overview for beginners so that's exactly what we're doing today I'm going over how to sell digital products online from square one and the top five most important steps you'll need to take to get your digital products business off the ground now before we dive in I have something for you that I know is going to be super helpful as you're just getting started on your digital products journey and that is my free 45 minute long digital product Powerhouse master class I wanted something where I could go a little bit deeper than just a short YouTube video and really take a deep dive into the nitty-gritty of digital products to help you have a really comprehensive understanding of what you'll need to get started and how to level up and grow as you go this is an on demand training class you can click the link in the description box below after you finish watching this video and learn everything you need to know including information about different file types softwares and tools that you can use in your digital creation process lots of different ideas for different types of digital products you could sell online and so much more it's completely free to you and I know it'll set you up really well from the very beginning so don't forget to click the link below to jump over and watch that when you're done here all right enough talk let's dive in okay so step number one when you're wanting to start selling digital products online is that you need to decide on your product type within the world of digital products there's a wide range of different categories you can sell products in so let's talk about a few of the main ones a huge digital product category that is really in demand is printables this category or includes any type of digital product that's meant to be printed out and actually used physically or tangibly so this could include a lot of different things everything from printable planners ebooks guides checklists worksheets you could sell printable posters or party decor and maybe even something like a cookbook more and more people are loving being able to purchase and just instantly download and print out something that they can use right then so for this reason printables are becoming more and more popular as well as templates so our second sort of category here are templates that can be used by the buyer within a software like canva or template buyers of digital products a lot of times just don't want to start from scratch maybe it's something that they could create on their own but they're wanting to purchase a template to save time to save effort to be able to just plug and play whatever they need so this could be a template for something like a wedding or an event or a party invitation if you're selling to business owners this could look like templates for slide deck presentations or a business logo you could also sell templates for social media posts you could sell Instagram post or story time templates so in this category you are digitally creating the template within whatever software you decide and then your buyer is actually purchasing the access to that template and they're going to go in change around the fonts the colors the wording whatever you make available for them to change and then either use it digitally if it's something like a slide deck presentation or print it out if it's something that's meant to be printed like a wedding imitation all right in addition to printables and templates you could also sell video or audio files most of the time this is going to be some sort of educational resource that you're selling so some something like a course or a mini course a mini podcast a master class something that you're actually providing some training on and then selling that as a digital file or a digital product and fourthly here you can sell tools or resources for others who are actually creating digitally as well you could be creating graphic elements or backgrounds or patterns to sell or some more advanced things like creating unique fonts that you would sell or tools like procreate brushes some of these get pretty advanced in terms of knowing how to actually create these but I did want to throw them in there in case you're interested in learning how to create those those are also digital products that you can sell now if you're like I love all of these ideas I really have no clue how to narrow it down and pick one specific thing to focus on I've got you covered friend I think it's probably hard for all of us in the very beginning to figure out what the best type of digital product and the best fit for our unique businesses so I have a couple questions that I'd encourage you to ask yourself if you're trying to decide what type is best for you number one is there a topic or a niche that you're already very interested in number two think of your target or ideal customer and who you're trying to serve and think about out of all of these different options for digital products what would best serve them and what would be most appealing to them to provide the most help for things that they're looking for and thirdly what kind of profit margin are you looking for when we're selling digital products there's a wide range of different price points and profit margins depending on the type of product you're offering so you might want to do a little bit of research if you've narrowed it down to let's say two or three and you're not really sure which is the right one do a little bit of research online Etsy is a great place to this kind of research to look up list ings that are similar to the type of products that you're thinking of offering and get an idea of what sort of ballpark range most of the price points within that Niche are and you can figure out what type of profit margin you might have around that price point by thinking of the things that you're going to have to have as costs maybe tools or softwares that you're using so your profit is going to be the amount that you're able to keep from that sale price once you remove costs for any materials supplies tools software or labor that you might have to pay for now one crucial tip here before we move on to step two is that is is so important especially in the very beginning to get some quick traction and momentum in your shop to get specific and focus in on either one product type or one Target customer the last thing we want here is to have a product shop that is full of just random things that makes no sense when somebody lands on your shop page this just causes confusion and it doesn't position you as the expert in your field you want to be seen as the specialist in whatever you're offering because that's going to instill instant trust and credibility with your buyer so if you pick one specific specific type of digital products let's say you're going to be a template shop or you focus on one specific Target customer like you're going to provide digital products for homeschool moms either one of those routes is going to give you enough specific focus and Niche Focus to position yourself as the expert build trust and credibility from the very beginning and be able to not spread yourself so thin that you're not doing anything well if you focus in on one of those you can always Branch out later but that's going to get you quicker momentum in the very beginning okay let's move on to step number two here which is to determine your file properties this is specifically referring to what file type and the sizing that you'll need to offer so let's talk about file types first this can get really complicated and start to sound really technical but don't get intimidated don't get scared off stay with me here because we're going to make it as simple as possible when you're offering digital products online there are some very common file types that are the most popular ones that you're most likely going to be offering your digital product as you can also think of file type as the extension that's on on the file so when you open a digital file you'll see the name of the file and at the end of that name you'll see a DOT something so it might say jpg or PDF this is telling you what type of file this is so you'll need to know as the seller what type of file is appropriate for the kindli of digital product you're selling now when we talk about these top file types we're thinking of specifically two categories here raster and Vector raster file types are pixel-based which means the actual design of the file is made up of those little tiny Square of color that you can see when you zoom in really close a vector file on the other hand is not made up of pixels but is made on a point based system so it makes it a little bit different the main difference that I want you to remember here is that raster files or the pixel-based files usually can't be scaled very large without losing quality when those type of files are scaled larger let's say you were trying to scale a raster photo for something huge like a billboard it would definitely lose quality and it would appear grainy and pixelated but Vector files which are on that point based system can be scaled large without losing any quality so the two most common types of raster files that we see sold with digital products online would be jpg and PNG these are both fairly small file size types so they can be uploaded quickly jpg generally is the smallest and easiest and quickest to use but because it is the smallest file size it's also going to be the lowest quality jpg or JPEG files are really great for actual photographic images because they do really well with complex coloring whereas PNG files are more commonly used for more simple things like lines shapes icons and they do really well for files that need to be layered on top of another file inside of a graphic design because they can support a transparent background so if you need to download something with a clear background you don't want it to have a white background or any other color you want it to be clear so you can actually take that image and put it on top of something maybe like a mockup image you're going to want to download that as a transparent PNG file now let's talk about the two most common Vector files this would be PDF and SVG PDF files are a larger size and provide better quality but they are still really versatile which is nice because they can be opened by most operating systems PDFs are most commonly used for multi-page documents so if you're creating something like an ebook or a workbook you would probably be downloading that as a PDF file now SVG is our other file type that can support transparency just like the PNG SVG can do that as well and svgs are commonly used for animated elements as well as projects for cutting machines like Cricut and silhouette now in addition to these four top file types for digital products I'm throwing in an extra fifth one here because you may be interested in selling something like we talked about a video or audio file as an educational resource so in this case if you're wanting to offer let's say a video course or mini course or Master Class you would be downloading that video either as an mp4 or a doov file okay so that's about the file types now let's quickly talk about sizing when you're creating a digital product it's most likely going to be sized in pixels or inches so like we talked about before those pixels are the little squares of color that make up our raster file types so let's say you're using a tool like canva you would go on to create your project and you have the option to create whatever size you want either in pixels inches centimeters there's several different options but we're focusing primarily right now on pixels and inches pixels are mainly going to be what you're going to use if you're creating something that's meant for digital use so like I said before I could create a set of templates that are meant to be used for Instagram posts I know that the square Instagram post size is 1080 by 1080 pixels so if I wanted to start creating that project in canva I could go on and just enter as a custom size 1080 by 1080 pixels now the nice thing about canva is that if it's something that's commonly created like an Instagram post they have preset sizes so that makes it even easier you don't even have to think about what size you might need you can just search for Instagram post but if it's something that CA doesn't have as a preset size you can definitely create your own custom size and choose if you want pixels or inches now that's for a digital use product something that's not meant to be printed out ever right an Instagram post is never going to be printed out whereas maybe I'm offering a template for a printable greeting card which is meant to be printed out and that case I'd most likely be creating my project with inches so I want to do a little bit of research maybe on a platform like Etsy of some similar products and see what most of them are being sold as or maybe it's a bundle of several different sizes that I might want to sell for my greeting card I could offer a 4x6 option and a 5x7 option but it's a great idea to go ahead and do some research ahead of time so that you know what the most common sizes are for the specific type of digital product you're thinking of selling now I know thinking about all this techy stuff like file types and sizing even aspect ratio can be really overwhelming and that's why I created a digital product starter guide that I want to give to you as a free gift just to help you as you get started on this journey because I know how frustrated I was when I started learning about all of this it can be really confusing so I have a free downloadable starter guide Linked In the description box below that you can grab after you're done watching this video download that it's going to give you everything you need to know about digital products as well as a whole sizing and aspect ratios chart so specifically if you're thinking of offering printable products you'll need to know what sizes fit underneath different aspect ratios and how to offer those as bundles to your customer now once you've decided what type of digital product you want to sell and now you've got a good idea of the sizing and file type that you'll need to offer we're going to move on to step number three which is figuring out what tool or software you'll need to use to create it there are a ton of different options out there when it comes to the actual design tool you're going to be using to create your digital products some are free some are paid but like I said before my absolute favorite out of all the options is canva because you can do it for free and then you can upgrade to canva Pro which is a monthly fee but it's still very affordable for everything you get and I find it to be the most beginner friendly out of all the options I've tried it doesn't have much of a learning curve and you can get used to it pretty easily and quickly so I definitely recommend canva I've got a link below if you're interested in trying out canva Pro free for 30 days you can grab that but in addition to canva you could also consider some other softwares the Adobe suite is sort of seen as the industry standard and the most professional out of the options so you got Adobe Illustrator which is most commonly used for creating Vector files things like Graphics icons patterns svgs and then you've got Adobe Photoshop which is the raster side of that so if you're working with actual photographic images you would want to go with that and thirdly we've got Adobe in design which is mostly used for creating documents and digital products like maybe a digital planner now those all do cost a little bit so you'll have to have a little bit of a budget to use those but there's also some free open-source options which means it's free for everyone it's webbased so one of these is inkscape which is sort of seen as the free counterpart to Adobe Illustrator so you would use inkscape for Vector files then there's a free tool called which is sort of seen as the free counterpart to photoshop we've got tools like Affinity designer you could use the iPad app procreate and then of course if you're thinking something more along the lines of educational resources or courses those are going to be in video form so you're going to need to think about some editing software to edit your videos this could be anything from the free iMovie just something paid and more robust like Final Cut Pro so before you can really decide which is the best fit for you you'll need to consider number one your budget can you at this point in your journey afford to pay for something or do you need to really be using something that's free and then also the needs for the type of file that you're wanting to create then you'll want to just do a little bit of research to compare and contrast the ones that you're thinking of to narrow it down and figure out which of those tools offers the capability to create the type of file that you need and works with your budget all right so after you decide which tool you're going to be using we're going to move on to step number four which is figuring out where to Source your graphic elements from so when I say graphic elements I'm meaning anything that you're using in your graphic designs from icons to shapes to actual photos maybe patterns or textures or backgrounds there are all different types of graphic elements so you'll need to think about what types of designs you're wanting to create and where you're going to get access to those elements you need now if you're using a tool like canva for instance you'll already have access to cana's whole library of Graphics photos videos everything they have within their platform that you can use when you have a canva plan there are other tools that may not have a library like this so you're going to have to Source your elements that you need somewhere else on a third party website and then upload those into your creation tool or software some of my favorite websites that provide these that you can look at are creative Market creative Fabrica Lev visuals Adobe stock and unsplash now this is basically where you are licensing these assets so you're going to pay to purchase the assets that you need with the license that you need that gives you the rights to use it in the intended way so most of the time there's going to be some sort of variation of a personal license and a commercial license offered sometimes even something larger like an extended commercial now they maybe call different things it's up to you to do your research depending on the platform you're looking at purchasing these from they may have different names but essentially you want to make sure you're purchasing and Licensing these elements with the correct license which is at least a commercial license that gives you rights to use these in designs to sell you want to definitely read through these licenses to make sure you know what you're allowed to do with these assets before you use them so let's say for instance you're looking on Creative market for a bundle of tree Graphics you're going to choose the license you want purchase the bundle and then download it and then you're going to bring it over and you'll be able to upload it then into let's say a program like Adobe Illustrator if that's what you're working with some of these websites allow you to do just a onetime purchase like for instance I could just purchase that one bundle of trees or if I'm finding that I'm purchasing a lot of these from the same website over and over again some of them offer memberships where I can just pay a monthly fee and have access to a lot of different things on the website as opposed to paying for each thing individually again another reason why I love canva is because canva includes a library of millions of assets that you can use on both the free and paid plan so if you're on the paid canva Pro Plan you're going to have access to more of those assets which is their Pro content but even on the free plan there's so much that you can use there within their Library so you're not having to Source things and bring it in although you can there is an upload feature on Cana if you're interested in that but if you don't want to do that you really never have to go outside of canva to Source anything else so it's up to you to really think through what types of icons shapes photos all those different types of elements you might need to be using in your designs and where you're going to get those from all right now it's time to move on to step number five which is to decide on your sales Channel this is also called a sales platform and this is basically just wherever you're going to set up shop and actually get your listings published and out into the world for sale so the two main options here are you can either sell on your own website with a tool like Shopify Wix Squarespace there are a lot of different e-commerce options for building your own website and shop or you could sell as part of a Marketplace platform like Etsy Amazon or creative Market the main difference here is that with your own website it's just that it's your own website you can fully customize it you can make it how you want it but it's not part of a larger platform that's going to organically send traffic your way like a Marketplace so if you're part of a Marketplace like Etsy or Amazon you don't get quite as much customization all the shops pretty much look generally the same but the benefit here is that you're going to be able to have traffic discover you more quickly because there are people just already on Etsy and Amazon searching for things and the only results they're going to get when they're on that Marketplace website searching are the results from the shops that are part of that marketplace now you are going to have to pay one way or another to be able to have your own website or be part of a Marketplace most likely you're either going to be paying transaction fees so with a platform like Etsy you're going to have to be paying certain transaction fees each time you make a sale which is different than maybe using a tool like Shopify where you're not paying transaction fees per sale but you're paying a flat monthly rate to use that service so you'll just have to look at all of these different elements of both the pros and cons and see what is the best fit for your business and I'd recommend just choosing one and starting with it my recommendation if you're just starting out would be to choose a Marketplace like Etsy because I feel like marketplaces are going to give you the best chance for the quickest traction to get discovered and found easier but then once you've gotten some sales under your belt you can always expand out later to a second platform and have sales coming in from both like I mentioned my favorite Marketplace to sell digital products on is Etsy and my favorite option for having your own digital products website is Shopify I do have my affiliate link for Shopify below if you're interested in trying it out you can try it totally for free and then you can get your first month for just $1 so again you'll just want to consider your budget that's available as well as your needs for your business and your long-term goals to decide which of these routes would be best for you to go in the beginning and one thing you definitely don't want to forget as part of this step once you've got your listings published you've got your shop set up is to Market Market Market you need to be proactive in getting the word out about your shop whether that's on a social media platform or by building an email list or maybe even doing something fun like a blog or a podcast or YouTube channel anything you can do to get the word out into the world about your shop and let people know you have amazing offers for sale is going to help you reach your goals so much faster so those are the top five steps to get started with your digital product business don't forget to click the links in the description box below for my free 45 minute deep dive digital Products master class as well as my free digital product starter guide it's going to give you all the information you need to know including that sizing and aspect ratios chart and I can't wait to see where you go with your digital products business happy [Music] selling I'm