Girl Means Business

249: Creating Extra Income with Digital Products

• Kendra Swalls • Episode 247

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Digital products are one of the best (and easiest) ways to add additional income to your current business. In this episode I am breaking down the steps to creating your first digital product along with a few ideas for various industries including photographers, make-up artists, graphic designers and more!


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Speaker 1:

Hey there and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast, the show where we're all about helping you feel confident, both as a mom and a business owner. I'm your host, kendra Swalls, mom of two, former teacher and full-time photographer, and business coach. Each week, we'll discuss the challenges, success and secrets that make you say I can do this, because you absolutely can. So pop in those earbuds, grab your favorite snack and let's get ready, because this girl means business. Hey guys, welcome back to the girl means business podcast. This week, we're talking about something that is really, really fun, because it's an idea for adding more income to your business, and we all want more income, right? We all want to be adding more money into our business. So we're going to be talking about digital products, and if you are someone who is a service-based provider, I don't want you to turn this off, because I'm going to be giving some very specific examples of different digital products that different niches and industries service-based industries can implement into their business. So I promise you it will be well worth the listen. Okay, let's start with what exactly is a digital product anyway? So a digital product is exactly what it sounds like. It's anything that you are creating that is not a tangible item. So if you are selling actual products physical products jewelry, skincare, clothing those are all physical products. Digital products are going to be anything that can be downloaded, essentially online. So courses, templates, guides, ebooks all of those things are digital products.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it comes to adding digital products to your business, I want you to think about why. Why would we want to add digital products to our business? Well, there's a couple of really good reasons. One it is an easy way and I'm going to put easy in an asterisk there, because it's not as easy as like just put online and people will come. But it is an easy way to create passive income in your business. So, if you are a service-based provider, if you are someone who offers, you know, hair and makeup services, but you want to add some you know passive income into your business and for the slow seasons or maybe just to fill in some gaps, creating a digital product that you can then sell behind the scenes or, you know, on your website or in other places, is a great way to add an additional income stream to your business. They can also work as lead magnets.

Speaker 1:

Now, a lot of times I talk about lead magnets as being a freebie, something you offer free of charge in exchange for someone's email address. But nowadays, while the free is still really good, there is also a lot of people who are doing low cost items as lead magnets. So you may have seen some of these advertised things like download this mini course for $7 or $19 or attend this workshop and it's only $5. Those are low ticket digital items. Essentially, that can also serve as lead magnets. One of the great benefits of using a digital product, a paid digital product as a lead magnet is that it sort of pre-qualifies your audience. So if you were to think about like, you have two buckets. So one bucket are your freebies. These are people who have come into your email list because they downloaded something for free. The other bucket are the ones who have come into your email list because they have purchased something of low ticket item from you. You're going to probably have a better quality of lead in that second bucket because they're telling you I'm already willing to hand over my money to put in my credit card information to purchase something from you, whereas the other ones, while they still may turn out to be good leads, they're more like I'm just here for the free thing. So those low ticket digital products and I'm not saying all your digital products have to be low ticket, but they, those can also serve as really good lead magnets. So not only is it a good passive income, it can also help generate more leads for your business.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's talk about how to create and sell digital products. There's a couple of different steps here and I'm going to break them down for you. So the first one is determine what the need is and who you're creating the product for. So let me give you an example. If you are a makeup artist and you're like okay, I want to add a, like a digital product into my business as passive income, then you could say I know that when clients come to me, they a lot of times will ask if they, if I can, like tell them how I created the you know eyeshadow that I did for them, or like walk me through the steps, because they want to know how can I recreate what you've done at home. So by creating a mini course that teaches them not only about how to do their makeup, but, like what products they should be using, what brushes they should be using, why you you know use a certain product first versus last. All those things. You are going to be teaching them something that they can use in their everyday life.

Speaker 1:

Now, one little caveat here I want to give it because I know I'm going to hear people ask this question at some point is well, but Kendra, if I want them to come to me and pay me to do their makeup, why would I teach them how to do it on their own? Because they're not going to come to you every single day and you are the expert, you are the professional. So even if you teach them how to do it on their own when they have a special occasion, they're still going to want to come to you because they're like, yeah, I can do it on my own, but it doesn't look nearly as good as it does when the professional does it, and so or maybe they don't want to invest in all the fancy you know the more expensive makeup and brushes and all the things or maybe you use airbrush makeup and they can't purchase that on their own at home. So you're teaching them an alternative to use at home, but when they come up to like a formal event or special occasion, they come to you for that extra thing. So by creating these digital products, you're not eliminating the need for your client to come to you, you are just giving.

Speaker 1:

The next thing I want to say about the step one is determining the need is you need to determine which segment of your audience the digital product is for. So let me explain. I'll use the makeup artist example again. The course you're creating on teaching how to how the course you're creating where you are teaching someone how to apply their makeup at home, is a course or digital product for your actual clients. Now, if you're a makeup artist and you recognize that a lot of other makeup artists are following you or they come to you with questions, then maybe you also can create a digital product for other makeup artists. It could be that people know that you are really great at marketing your services, so you create a digital product teaching other makeup. Really great at marketing your services, so you create digital product teaching other makeup artists how to market their services. Or you are really, really known for being like the person to go to for wedding hair and makeup, so you could teach other people how to get into the wedding industry. So you need to decide which segment is it for. Is it for your potential client or is it for other people in your industry, and we'll talk about that a little bit more when we get into some of the examples.

Speaker 1:

Now, number two is to decide on a format. So you've decided I want to create a digital product for my clients or for other people in my industry. Now you need to decide what is that digital product look like? Is it a course? Is it a template? Is it files they can download? Is it a whole like suite of things that they can use templates and trainings and all the things? So what is the format that you plan to put this into? If you're not sure, go on to Pinterest or go on to Etsy and just start looking at what other people have already created, and you can use that to get ideas. But you can also use it to see well, there's not a ton of people doing this and I really think that I could create something that was really good at doing this. So not only look for what other people are already creating, but look for gaps in that area that you could then fill in with something that you feel like you're really good at.

Speaker 1:

Once you have the idea and the format, the next one is to create the product. So that means, if you're going to create a course, you need to record or create video content. If you're doing templates, you need to create the templates, create the files, all the things. This is the part a lot of people get hung up on because they're like, well, I want to do this, but that seems like it's a lot of work, or what if it doesn't look like? I don't want to have to hire a professional videographer and a team of people to come in and make this video for me. I want to alleviate some of that because, guys, I have downloaded a bunch of digital products that were clearly not at like this super, super high level. They were videos that were tutorials and walkthroughs that you could tell were done on a, an iPhone camera, and they weren't bad, they were good. Or they were just done with the person sitting at their desk talking to their computer screen. Or they were videos like loom videos, where they were showing like they have a little head in the corner and they were showing like a walkthrough of how to use a you know a program online.

Speaker 1:

So it doesn't have to be this like super high end, polished thing. It can be something really, really simple. I know a lot of us are used to looking at, like the Amy Porterfields and the Marie Forleo's and the Jenna Kutcher's, who do have a little bit more to invest into creating these high end kind of polished products. I don't want you to compare what you're creating to that. I want you to just create something that you know your audience will want and again, I mean, don't make it like dark and grainy and, you know, bad audio and all that kind of stuff and make it, you know, presentable. But it doesn't need to be this super polished thing. So I want you to kind of move past that idea. Don't let that be the barrier that stops you from doing this.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so once you have your product, the next step is to choose your platform. So a lot of people obviously will go to like an Etsy and they will like upload their products to Etsy, and that's a great. If you have a digital templates or files or you've created like a digital planner or something like you know those kinds of things, etsy is a great place for that. If you're creating web, not websites, if you're creating um courses or mini courses, then you there are places out there where you can upload your courses too, but I would say, out of everything, before you go and put your products on Etsy or any of these online course platforms, put it on your website. Make it as simple as possible. It just needs to live on your website. That way, when you get to step five, which is marketing your product, you can just point people back to your website. It's as simple as that. And if you want to use Etsy or an online course platform or any of those other things, you totally can. But number four first and foremost, have it on your website.

Speaker 1:

Now, hold on. I'm going to back up one second, one step, because if you are creating a digital course that requires more than just like one video that they download, um, you will probably need some kind of course hosting platform just to make it simple and easy. So, kajabi, thinkific, teachable those are all places you can upload course content to. I'm not going to get into all of those platforms, but if you are wanting to create a digital course, then I would definitely look into some of those platforms, because you'll still want to sell it on your website, but the content for the course will live on the course website, if that makes sense. An example of that is my inbox insider marketing course, email marketing course. It lives inside of Thinkific. So when you purchase that course on my website, you're purchasing it on my website, but you are going to then create a login for Thinkific and that's where the content for the course lives. So the content for the course is kind of behind that Thinkific, like paywall there. So that's how that works. If you're just doing templates and files, things that you can send them a download for, then you're not going to need the course platform.

Speaker 1:

And then, of course, number five, step number five is you need to market your product or your digital product. So this is where I think a lot of people and I'm going to speak from experience here, cause I've done this will create a digital product. They'll put it on their website, they'll put it on Etsy, they'll, you know, put it on whatever site they're selling it on. And then they just kind of sit back and go okay, let's, let's just wait and see if anybody notices it. If you really want to create passive income and digital product income, you still have to be marketing it. You still have to let people know that it exists, that it's out there in the world. So you need to be talking about it. You need to have a little pop-up that comes onto your website that tells people you have this thing or you know. Make sure you have like a little banner across the top of your website and make it easy for people to find it. Put it on the sidebar of your blog, like on multiple places on your website. Make it known that you have this digital product or this digital thing they can download.

Speaker 1:

And then, same thing on social media talk about it. Make a point that once a week, you're going to share about your digital product, whether it's in a story, whether it's post, you create a reel, you do a live, whatever you want to do you're. One way to do this that's really, really helpful on Instagram is you have your pinned post at the top of your Instagram feed and use those pinned posts. You can go to my Girl Means Business account and see how I've done it. You can also go to my photographer account so the Focus Photographer Lab and you can see how I've done pinned posts there and you can see how I've done pin posts there. I use those pin posts as a way to advertise the top three things I want people to pay attention to. So on both of them, I mentioned this podcast. On both of them I mentioned my free resources and on both of them, I talk about my paid offers.

Speaker 1:

And so what you can do is, if you have a digital product that you are trying to actively promote, create a post about that digital product, whether are trying to actively promote. Create a post about that digital product, whether it's a static image or a carousel, where you walk through what the digital product is and how they can get it, and then pin that to the top of your Instagram page so that when someone finds you and they're scrolling through your content, they're consuming your content. That's one of the first things they're guaranteed to see. Also, put it like in your link and bio. Put it everywhere. Talk about it often. Put it everywhere because just because I'm saying this is passive income doesn't mean you don't actually have to put in the work to get people in there. It just means that it is something that kind of lives in the background of your primary business. I would also say this is a great place to, or a great time to, put your stuff on Pinterest.

Speaker 1:

I am kind of diving into Pinterest this year a little bit more, and I'm seeing a lot of the benefits of pinned content on Pinterest because the shelf life is a lot longer. So when you put up a post on Instagram or Facebook, if it's not a pinned post, obviously it's just a post on your feed or in your stories. It's going to only live for about 24 hours. What that means is, after about 24 hours, that post is probably not going to get seen by your audience and so and especially stories cause they literally disappear after 24 hours. But pinned content on Pinterest has a much longer shelf life.

Speaker 1:

So if you are the makeup artist who has created that course, that mini course on how to get like the you know flawless look, the airbrush makeup look, without an airbrush makeup app, you know, applicator, then you can create different pens that talk about it and put them on Pinterest. So when someone is on Pinterest searching for makeup tutorials, they might come across your course and purchase it. You can also, if you are doing content on YouTube or wherever, you can also then link to your um your courses on there. So just make sure you're putting them in as many places as possible, because you never know where someone's going to find it or come across it. You have to get into that mindset of your, your audience. If it's a, if your digital product is a tutorial of some kind, then you want to be putting it anywhere that someone is going to be searching for those tutorials, because I promise you, especially if it's a low ticket item, people will pay for that information. Okay, so those are the five steps on how to actually get your digital product up and running out in the world.

Speaker 1:

So now let's talk about some different ideas of digital products that you can create, based on different industries. So I'm going to start with photographer. So if you are a photographer and let's say, you're creating products for your actual clients, so you're a family photographer, you are working with families with young children, then you can create a couple of really cool products for your, your audience. You can create album templates. So one thing that I do every year is I create a what I call a family yearbook. So all year I just dump all of my photos from the year into a folder on my computer and then every January or sometimes July, because I forget I will go back through those photos and I will create an album with all of our photos from the year and I love it. Like we have about 12 of them on our shelf Now. I started it when I was pregnant with my first daughter, and my girls and I my husband and I like we love to just pull them off randomly and like, go through, like whatever we did that year. And so you could.

Speaker 1:

If your audience is someone who might be interested in that, you could create album templates that they can then like throw their photos into and upload to Shutterfly or wherever they're printing their albums. You could create a mini course on how to take better photos with their iPhone. You can create a little tutorial on how to organize their camera roll on their phone. You could even teach them how to start using a digital camera and like the basics of like how to take good photos. They're still going to come hire you for those professional photos because obviously, even as a mom, I know how to take photos with a digital camera. I will take all the photos of my kids and my husband, but if I want to be in the photos with them, I'm still going to hire a photographer. So, again, you're not mitigating your purpose. You are just setting yourself up as the expert while still teaching them something.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you want to create content for other people in your industry, you can do things like Lightroom presets Um, I stock photos. I, I have stock photos on Adobe stock and that generates passive income. It's technically a digital product that I sell. You can teach you know courses to other photographers on lighting or posing, marketing, all the things. If you are a hair and makeup artist so we've talked about one already kind of the you know, teaching people how to do their own makeup you could then create templates for other hair and makeup artists. So if you are kind of you know really good at Canva and you're like, I use a lot of really great, I'm great at social media, then teach other people how to be really good at social media.

Speaker 1:

Um, if again, another one for your clients. If you are someone who, like, really focuses on hair and you're like, oh, all these people come in to have their hair done and their hair is dry and split ends and like, you can create a little course or a tutorial or a template or a download on, like, how to make sure that you, your hair is healthy and thick and full and shiny and all the things. Okay, let's say you're a florist, then this is a really good. In fact, I know a florist that in my area who does a lot of these things and I think they're awesome. She has done a mini course on how to like learn how to create floral arrangements on your own. So, again, it doesn't mean that these people aren't going to go hire her when they want, you know, to send flowers to somebody. But if someone is like I really love, like these classes that you do where you can come into the store and you can, you know, do the floor arrangements, but I, you know, have moved far away or I don't have time to come to the classes, then they can, you know, download the course and they can watch it on their own and they can learn how to create flower arrangements at home using whatever flowers they buy at the grocery store.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you can even create a training or a course or a guide on how to grow flowers at home. Like what? Maybe you live, like I live, in Texas. So if you are based in Texas and you're like, okay, here's the flowers, or even like, maybe you're really good at gardening, here's the plants and the flowers and the vegetables and the fruits and things you can grow here in Texas, in our area, and here's like kind of a little guide on how to do that. Um, you could even put out like fun floral decor ideas for each season. So do a little video training or a um PDF guide on fun ways to use florals in your like decorating for spring or summer or fall or winter holidays.

Speaker 1:

Okay, if you're a wedding planner or you're in the wedding industry, you can create digital planner worksheets or even like a digital wedding planner book that they can download and print out. You could do a budget calculator. So I have. I've actually purchased these, not necessarily for weddings, but a digital like a spreadsheet, like a Google spreadsheet that someone has created and already set up all the calculations for. And I've actually purchased this year after year because they put out a new one at the beginning of every single year. So I recently downloaded like the 2024 family budget spreadsheet and I don't know I was maybe $15 and I will pay $15 every single year to have this spreadsheet. It has everything already lined out. It already has all the categories. It's like a not only a budgeting, but then you can go in and you can kind of put in your information each month of what you spent and it will calculate you know how much you spent on meals or how much you spent on groceries. It does all of that for me, and so that is a great tool, digital products that I will purchase again and again. And so if you are someone who your clients or your audience would appreciate something like that, it doesn't have to be financial but some kind of like pre-done organizational tool, that's a great digital product to sell.

Speaker 1:

And then, if you're a graphic designer, a web designer, website templates, graphic templates going into Canva Canva templates always sell really. Graphic templates going into Canva Canva templates always sell really, really well. I love going on to like Etsy and looking for, you know, like branded digital templates. So there's several that are. If you're a photographer, you can go in and they'll show you like how to create the carousel post or they'll have them already done for you, where all of your images kind of make one big sort of slide show but they're all like overlapped and they kind of, you know, fit together. Um, I, you know you can go download those they're. They're not expensive. So they're $6, $12, $15, maybe 20, $24 at the most, and it might seem like the price point is low. But when you think about passive income, this is not your primary income. So if you're a graphic designer and you're working with one-on-one clients to design their website for them, but then on the backside you're also selling these templates that are just kind of trickling in here and there, every little bit counts and you never you don't realize how quickly that adds up.

Speaker 1:

When I think about, for mine, the stock photos I will take when, like, we just went on vacation to big bed and my goal while I was there was not only to get pictures of the location and my family and my friends that were with us, but I was purposely going. Ooh, I'm looking for really cool ideas for stock photos. So you know, pictures of like the cactus growing or pictures of like the river rocks and the water flowing over the river rocks things that I know I can upload to my stock site and that will make money, and I probably get maybe three or four notifications a week that I've sold a stock image and it may be 99 cents here, $2 here, $4 there, depending on the level of what they want the stock photo for, the level of usage rights, and after a while that all adds up. So, even if I'm only making a little bit here and there over the course of a couple months or a year, it adds to my bottom line. So digital products are a great way to add additional income to what you're already doing in your business.

Speaker 1:

I hope that this has given you some ideas. I hope it's got the wheels spinning in your brain trying to think about like what kind of digital products can I create? And all you need to do is start with one. Start with one simple basic digital product that you know your audience or other people in your industry will want and utilize. Once you have created the first one, see how you know marketing it, seeing how it goes A lot of times the second one the idea will come off of something you've already created and the more you do it, the easier it gets. So if you're listening to this and you're like this sounds amazing, I really want to add this or product, but I don't even know where to begin creating something, just start jotting down ideas. I promise you is so much easier than you might think.

Speaker 1:

There are people out there creating digital products who have far less experience and far less knowledge than you do. So if they can do it, you can do it. It's just a matter of taking that first step and going all in. It does not have to be perfect, it just has to be done. All right, I hope that gets you excited about creating digital products for your business. Thank you so much for being here and I will see you back here next week. Same time, same place. Thanks again for tuning into this week's episode. Don't forget to leave a review and follow us on socials at Girl Means Business. See you next week.

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