Selling Digital Products- The Best Way To Monetize Your Knowledge
I love creating and selling digital products of all formats! The startup costs are negligible compared to stocking and shipping physical items.
The process is perfectly scalable. Do the work once, and sell thousands of times! And unlike affiliate revenue, you have complete control over the process. If you want to update or improve the item, you can make changes instantly.
But what if you don’t have time to write a whole eBook or film a whole course? Good news! None of your beginning customers have the time to use that either.
They’ll need that when they’re further down the road. And they’ll trust you for having set them on that path. But they need to hop on the path to begin with. And that’s when a short, open-and-go, usable resource is necessary.
Here are 50+ examples of digital product formats you can create in a week or less!
If you’re good with tech or design:
1. Spreadsheet
You can create a spreadsheet to organize anything involving large amounts of information. Bloggers sell spreadsheets to store and sort:
- Family-friendly recipes
- Personal libraries
- Social media content
2. Calculator
If you’re even better with Google sheets or excel, make a functioning calculator. Build the calculations into hidden columns, so customers just punch in their numbers and see the possible results.
- Weight loss
- Household budgeting
- Business income and expenses
3. Calendar
A digital/printable planner. Or a structure for things that need done periodically.
- Home maintenance
- Christmas prep
- Product launch plan
4. Checklists
Create a step-by-step plan for a project. Break down a huge goal into manageable tasks.
- Spring cleaning
- Organizing a homeschool room
- Set up the tech for an email list
5. Graphic templates
Let’s really think outside the box for digital product formats. If you love creating in Canva or Picmonkey, use your design skilsl for profitable templates.
- Birthday invitations
- Storage label cards
- Pinterest pin templates
6. Stock photos
Business owners are always looking for the right stock photos for their aesthetic. This is a great area to keep up with trends. Seasonal photos, and photos in popular branded colorways.
- Desk flat lays
- Women at work
- Spring brights
7. Presets
Adobe Lightroom fans know, fiddling with your color & light settings can take an eternity. Thankfully, the app lets you save your settings to use again and again as presets. With using your own branded presets, every photo you post is an advertisement for your product (the presets themselves).
- Indoor macro photography (for products or food)
- Warm glow skin tones
- Outdoor portraits
Is writing more your thing?
8. Fill-in-the blank templates
Make templates for common topics. Customers will happily pay money to save time writing.
- About me page
- Services page
- Sales pages
9. Workbook
Walk them through the entire process. Workbooks are great for deep, mental transformations. It’s like a back and forth between your guidance, and the customer’s own written responses.
- Deal with your debt
- Get ready to homeschool
- Make a morning routine
10. Social captions
Keeping up with social media posting is hard work. Prewritten captions are another digital product format designed to make your customer’s lives easier.
- Questions that get engagement
- Quotes that get shared
- Special captions for sales or surveys
11. Swipe copy
How does this differ from fill-in-the-blank templates above? Swipe copy is completely finished work. You can make this even easier by packaging work you’ve already done.
- Top 3 converting sales pages (annotated with explanations)
- A year of emails (that you actually sent already, fo’ free)
- Facebook ads
12. Slide deck
Haven’t we all suffered through a zillion boring PowerPoint presentations? Make cool slides for your readers to plug their content into.
- Quarterly reports
- School assignments
- Slides for masterclasses (see #15)
13. Email series
An email series is one of my favorite digital product formats. They are paying you, AND being trained to open your emails. Hallelujah!
- Healthy meal planning
- Event planning
- Start a blog
14. Challenge
Write up some daily activities to build new habits. Then drip them out one-by-one via an email sequence.
- HIIT exercise
- Prayer routine
- Content creation
The AV bonus round:
15. Masterclass
A masterclass is usually one video, at least one hour long, and a handout. Viewers expect to dig deep on a single topic.
- Using your DSLR for kid’s photos
- Making a budget that works for you
- Setting up an optin page
16. Video series
A series of videos is perfect for building instant connection with your audience. This can be as easy as uploading a few unlisted videos to YouTube. Then deliver each daily video via email automation.
- How to start gardening
- Planning a family vacation
- Creating an email series in MailerLite (how meta!)
17. Exclusive podcasts
Do you wonder if podcasting is right for you? Test the waters and make money at the same time. And for established podcasters, I guarantee your regular listeners would love more of your content. They already know it’s valuable!
- Pep talks
- Interviews with prominent members of your field
- Coaching sessions with member of your audience
