A digital product business at its core has 3 main ingredients…
Ingredients:
A digital product.
A way to tell people about it.
A way to collect online payments.
And, there are two “costs” involved with starting your digital product business…
Money & time.
The more money you have to invest in your business the faster you’ll be able to develop it and the less time you’ll have to wait to see results.
If you have less money to invest, you’ll have to spend more of your time to develop the business and your results will be slower than if you had more money to jumpstart the process.
However, you can start at nearly any budget and below I will outline three plans that show you how to start with what you have.
The $0 Plan
This plan is good for people who…
– Are still trying out the idea of a digital product business and want to just “dip their toe in the water”.
– Are on a tight budget.
– Want to start something now, but plan to use future cash from a tax refund, investments, inheritance, or other source to fund the growth of their business.
– Want to validate their product idea before they invest money.
Ingredient #1 – Create your digital product using Google Docs.
Start by creating your product content in a Google Doc. (Google Docs is a free way to create a text document online) Price: 0
Format the document how you want it with titles, table of contents, section headings, page numbers, and anything else you want to add. Price: 0
You can then export the document as a PDF and you’ve now got a digital product file you can easily deliver to customers. Price: 0
Ingredient #2 – Talk to people about your topic & digital product on social media.
Choose a name for your new business and set up your preferred social media accounts using your new business name as the @ username. Price: 0
Start posting content on a consistent basis, even if it’s just once a week. This will help you build up an audience of people who will be interested in your digital product, over time. Price: 0
Once you’re ready to start promoting your digital product, you can make posts about it on your social media accounts. Price: 0
Ingredient #3 – Collect payments via Paypal.
Create a Paypal account. Price: 0
Create a buy button using your Paypal account and direct people who are interested in purchasing your digital product to that buy button. Price: 0
Note: It’s free to create a Paypal account, however Paypal will charge you a transaction fee for every sale you make. It’s important to note that the fee comes out of the proceeds from the sale and not your personal funds. If you don’t make any sales they won’t charge you a fee.
The $100 plan.
Do everything in the $0 plan first. (Create your digital product, create your social media accounts, collect payments via Paypal)
Now, set up your own website where you can post your content & an email list where you can distribute your content to subscribers that have opted in to your list.
Having a social media presence only is like renting space for your business in a mini-mall with several other businesses.
It’s a great place to start, however, having your own website is like graduating to having your own building where you are the only one in it and everyone there is buying from you.
And having an email list is a great way to stay in touch with your audience, plus it also serves as a backup plan for if one day, for whatever reason, your social media accounts get terminated and you’re no longer able to communicate with your social media followers.
1 – Create your website
Buy a domain name for your business (this is the .com address people will use to get to your website). Price: $12/year
The price on domain names can vary depending on where you are buying them from. Sometimes you can find them for under $10 and other times depending on the popularity of the name, they may go for several thousand. I like to purchase my domain names from Google Domains which will currently lets you register a domain name for $12/year.
Sign up for a “shared” hosting account (this is where your website will live): Price: $10.99/mo (via A2Hosting)
Note: You can get a hosting account for even cheaper if you pay for multiple months or years in advance. For example with A2Hosting you can get it for as low as 2.99/mo when you pay for 3 years in advance.
Setup a self-hosted WordPress site (using a free theme). Price: 0
Start posting blog content on a consistent schedule. Price: 0
2 – Set up your email list.
Next, sign up for an autoresponder like Aweber (an autoresponder is a service that acts as your email database and lets you communicate with everyone on your email list all at once without having to send an individual email to each person). Price: 19.99/mo.
Note: Aweber also has a free plan where you can have up to 500 subscribers and up to 3,000 sends per month which means you can email all 500 subscribers up to 6 times each month at no cost.
Add an opt-in form to your website to let your blog readers join your email list (you create this form in the autoresponder program). Price: 0
Send out an email broadcast to your list whenever you have new blog content, have things you want to say, or want to promote your digital product. Price: 0
If you buy the domain name ($12), sign up for 3 months of hosting ($10.99 x 3) and sign up for 3 months of an autoresponder service ($19.99 x3), that comes out to $104.94. So just a few bucks over the $100 budget.
This is enough time to get you going and to see if you enjoy the process of developing a digital product business.
The $500 plan.
Do everything in the $100 plan first (buy your domain name, create your website & start building an email list). This leaves you $400 to work with.
You can then use those funds to get more viewers for your content which will lead to more people signing up for your email list and more people seeing & buying your digital product(s).
More specifically, I would use those funds to advertise your blog content on Facebook™.
You can start with as little as $10 per day in advertising spend which gets you about 40 days worth of promotion.
Use that to get more eyeballs on your content, to grow your email list, and to get more sales of your digital product.
Once you start making sales, it’s very important to focus on building a solid foundation for your business. A well-built business can pay its own bills without needing you to keep investing personal cash to keep it going.
A poorly built business might provide an occasional windfall, but you’ll have to keep infusing cash into the business between times to keep it going.
What you want to do is re-invest your revenue back into your business, continue promoting your content, getting more eyeballs, and more sales of your digital product. If you do it right, you can end up with a business that can sustain itself without additional investment from your personal funds.
Final Thoughts
If you have a higher budget, what should you use it on?
The three plans above are just a starting point but a good one to get your online presence started and to start building an audience of people who may be interested in purchasing your digital product.
From there, I would use any additional budget you may have to advertise (get more eyeballs to) your content & your digital product until you reach a point that the business can sustain itself.
Want to learn more or need help getting started?
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-Eddys Velasquez