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How to Make a Full-Time Income by Selling Digital Goods - DailyBlogTips

How to Make a Full-Time Income by Selling Digital Goods

Posted: 20 Sep 2016 03:57 AM PDT

A few months ago I published an article titled How to make a full-time income by adding a storefront to your blog. It gives a general overview of monetizing your blog by adding a storefront.

Today, I'll explain how to start selling digital products specifically and make a full-time income through it.

The best thing about creating a digital product is that it is easier than creating physical ones. In fact, even if you're not a tech-savvy person, you could start creating and selling digital products like ebooks with ease.

After all, you don't necessarily need to have a massive following, in order to build a solid income if you're selling a product online.

In this post, I'll show you how to start making a full-time income by selling digital goods online in two ways- selling on marketplaces and selling on your own blog.

Sell on marketplaces

If you've ever sold a product online, you might have known that selling is a tedious task; especially finding potential buyers and putting your digital products before them. This is especially true if you're a newbie seller and not a well-known face in your niche.

For that reason, many sellers prefer selling on marketplaces to selling on their blog.

As thousands of potential buyers are there on marketplaces, the main benefit is that the product visibility will be high. Moreover, you can sell it to people who are not actually your blog readers.

For instance, if you're an ebook publisher, marketplaces like Amazon.com, Lulu.com and BarnesandNobles.com could be the right choice for you.

If you're a WordPress theme developer you may use marketplaces like Themeforest.net, MojoThemes.com and WPEden.com etc.

So the basic idea is to find the right marketplaces to sell your products.

How to sell?

If you're looking for an inspiration to get started as a digital publisher, let's take a look at the success story of a Kindle bestseller, Rachel Abbott and learn how she successfully leveraged marketplaces to sell her digital goods. Though this case study is about making a full-time income by selling ebooks, the same strategy is applicable to selling any digital goods on marketplaces whether it is a WordPress plugin, software, stock photos, etc.

Lesson #1: Always get the basics right

Create a product with a strong concept. Get a professional looking cover if you're releasing an ebook. For other digital products like themes, software or plugins, you may need to display screenshots and other graphics that easily grabs the attention of your potential customers.

Make people want to buy it by writing a great description while listing it on marketplaces.

Lesson #2: Create a marketing plan and stick to it

No matter how good your products are, none of your products sell themselves even if you're using a popular platform like Amazon. However, with the right marketing strategies, you could succeed in selling.

Rachel uses Twitter as her primary marketing channel. She used to engage with like-minded people on Twitter by using tools like Twitter Adder and Triberr. This helped her to spread the word out about her products, which in turn increase the visibility of her listings.

With that said, you shouldn't necessarily focus solely on Twitter for getting exposure especially if you're not a regular Twitter user.

For example, publishers like Joanna Penn used to use her blogs to increase exposure of her products listing. Instead of reaching out to like-minded people on Twitter, she used to conduct interviews with popular self-published authors. And because there is a good chance that those authors would tweet about the interview or offer a backlink to it as well as products listing, this is a nice strategy to build some exposure to products listings.

Instead of blindly following others technique, make sure to stick to your marketing plans. Though it is OK to make mistakes when you're selling a product for the first time, take those mistakes as lessons while creating your future marketing strategies.

Lesson #3: Get some great reviews quickly

One of the main reasons for the success of Rachel is that she got some great reviews quickly in the early days of her product release.

Identify potential blogs in your niche and ask them politely to review your product. While you couldn't expect everyone you outreach to write a review, this strategy can be very effective to get some reviews and increase exposure for your listing in the early days.

Needless to say, in order to bring in sales, you'll need to prepare yourself to work hard.

Turn your website into a digital store

One of the best things about creating a digital store is that you get the full control of what you're selling.

For instance, if you're selling products on marketplaces, you'll need to adhere to their guidelines and they'll take a significant profit share from what you make.

And if you carefully analyze the strategy of most of the best sellers out there, you'll identify that in order to make a full-time income, you may need to produce multiple products for low prices. It's because high priced products are harder to sell especially if you're new to the market, which in turn forces you to create many products.

On the other hand, if you're selling your digital goods on your own store, you don't necessarily need to sell them for a cheaper price. Because you've full control over what you do, all you need to do is to grow a loyal following base and start selling your products to them.

Let's take a look at how to make a full-time income by selling self-hosted digital goods.

How to sell?

While creating and selling an ebook is one of the easiest ways to get started with selling a digital good especially for a non-tech savvy person, your choices are not limited to selling ebooks as long as you can build a following and sell your products to them.

Create a digital store: If you're already running an established WordPress blog, all you need to do is to add a digital storefront on your blog. For this, simply install a free plugin Easy Digital Downloads on your blog.

Choose a theme: If your current theme doesn't support EDD plugin, you may need to install a new EDD supported theme. However, if you're really fond of your current theme, chances are you might not want to change the theme. If that's the case, try adding a new subdomain, install WordPress on it and an Easy Digital Downloads theme like Olam that lets you create a digital storefront with ease.

In fact, Olam is specifically built for creating a digital marketplace, so it's very likely that you'll find almost everything you need to build a digital storefront in it.

Build an email list: One of the biggest mistakes most publishers commits is that they undervalue the importance of building an email list. Try creating a landing page and start building an email list before you start creating your product. This will help you build a momentum about your products amongst your potential buyers.

Drive traffic to your landing page and start growing a massive follower base: There are many ways to build huge traffic to your blog as well as your landing page. If you're looking for some inspirations, read one of my articles that explain how to drive huge traffic overnight to your blog.

Start selling: Once you build a massive follower base, it's the time to start selling your products. List the products on your storefront and direct traffic from your email list.

Over to you

Have you ever sold digital goods? What would you prefer- selling products on marketplaces or selling it on your own blog?

Share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

About the author: Shahzad Saeed specializes in content marketing for startups and small businesses. He writes on marketing, CRO, ecommerce and design. You can hire him for your next writing project.

Original post: How to Make a Full-Time Income by Selling Digital Goods

ProBlogger: How to Pitch Yourself to Be a Podcast Guest

How to Pitch Yourself to Be a Podcast Guest

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 07:00 AM PDT

This is a guest contribution from Michelle Kulas of PodcastMotor.

If you've been blogging for any length of time, you may have had daydreams about achieving fame, fortune and glory through your blog. At the very least, you've probably been hopeful that you'd reach your target readers and maybe make some money by selling a product or service that you talk about in your blog.

While a blog is an excellent way to spread the word about your chosen topic, there is another medium that literally speaks to 57 million Americans: podcasting.

Over one-fifth of the American population over the age of 11 is listening to podcasts at least occasionally and about a quarter of Americans between the ages of 12 and 54 listens to at least one podcast per month, according to Convince & Convert. Think about how many more people you could reach if you were on a popular, relevant podcast.

How to Pitch Yourself to Be a Podcast Guest

Now, you don't necessarily have to drop everything to start your own podcast. You could do that, of course, but it will probably require more work, time, money and energy than you have to expend, particularly if the idea is on a whim.

Instead, why not pitch yourself as a guest to podcasts that already have an audience?

Great idea, right? Before you run out and start firing off emails, however, it's important that you know what you're doing. Popular podcasters receive pitches all the time; after all, who wouldn't want to be on a show if they had the chance to talk about themselves, their blog, or their product?

The idea is to pitch yourself in such a way that the podcaster seriously considers your request and, hopefully, says yes.

Take a look at these tips on boosting the odds in your favor.

Narrow Your Focus

Quick, name a popular podcast. Did you say This American Life, TED Radio Hour, The Way I Heard It With Mike Rowe or How I Built This? These are among the top-ranking podcasts, and for good reason. They're general enough to appeal to a wide variety of people, and done well enough to get people to share the episodes with their friends. Sounds perfect?

Stop. Unless you are already achieving extreme success, you are probably not going to have your pitch accepted by one of the biggest and most famous podcasts. Could it happen? Sure. You could also have the Publisher's Clearinghouse people stop by your house to drop off a check the size of a Volkswagen.

Focus on pitching to podcasts that are relevant to your topic.

Kai Davis, owner of Double Your Audience pointed out two advantages to narrowing your focus to smaller podcasts with a more defined niche.

First, you're more likely to get a "yes." If your pitch is one of a dozen, it will be looked at with much more consideration than if it is one of a thousand.

Secondly, you're more likely to appeal to the audience. A huge general audience might have a small percentage of people who are interested in what you have to say. A smaller audience of people who are following a specific topic that you happen to be knowledgeable about, however, will give you a larger percentage of active listeners.

These are the listeners who are much more likely to convert into readers (or, even better, buyers).

How to Pitch Yourself to Be a Podcast Guest

Find Specific Shows to Pitch To

How are you going to find the perfect podcasts to pitch to? There are a lot of ways that you can locate shows that are not super famous (but who are successful and interesting). First, you need to determine what type of podcast you want.

Think about the people you are trying to reach with your blog.

Let's say you're a florist and you write about flower arrangements on your blog. Who is your target reader/customer? Brides-to-be? Look for a podcast centering on wedding planning. Women who want beautiful flowers for their homes? Find a podcast that talks about interior designing. Men looking for the perfect Valentine's Day or Mother's Day arrangement? Consider a podcast that talks about marriage, family relations, or holidays. Make a list of possibilities.

Once you have your list, now it's time to search for podcasts that will appeal to the same people you're trying to reach. You have some tools at your disposal:

Just type "podcasts about weddings" into your favorite search engine and see what comes up.
Type in your topic and take a look at the titles that are good matches.
If you have an Android phone, Stitcher is one of the best options for finding and listening to podcasts.
This is a search engine that focuses on, you guessed it, podcasts.

Listen to several episodes of the most promising podcasts to see if they seem like a good fit for you. This gives you yet another way to find potential podcasters to contact, too: Many times, podcasts will feature the hosts of other podcasts. These interviewees might also have a podcast that would be worth pitching to.

Make Your Pitch

Do you know those irrelevant, poorly written spam comments that you occasionally (or frequently) get on your blog? The ones you delete?

A poorly written, off-the-cuff pitch is going to get the same reaction from the podcasters you write to, so you're going to want to take some time to come up with a good pitch and present it in a way that will pique the podcaster's interest.

Here's a framework we like that helps get predictable and high quality results:

Use the subject line to make your request clear. When the podcast host glances at the inbox, you want him or her to understand that you are making a podcast pitch and the gist of what it's about. A good subject line for the aforementioned florist pitching to a wedding podcast would be "Podcast Idea: The Perfect Flowers for a Wintertime Wedding." Be creative, but limit yourself to 10 word or so. You want the whole subject to show up on one line.
Introduce yourself. Be quick about it; this isn't the time to share your life story. Just give a couple sentences of background.
Explain why you would make a good guest. You want to show that you have listened to their podcast and that you've thought this through. Tell them what you can bring to the table and why you would appeal to their listeners.
Give a short list of topics that you would be able to cover. This will be expanded upon later, so you don't have to include everything. Just a handful of topics is fine.
Include your links. If you've been on a podcast before, mention that and include a list of relevant shows you've appeared on. Put in a link to your blog, your website and your social media.
Don't forget your contact information. The recipient will have your email address, of course, but also include your phone number and your Skype ID. This boosts your social proof with the podcast host.

Before you hit "send," be sure to proofread. You want to show the podcaster that you're serious, so don't be in such a hurry that you send it off with a misspelling, the wrong phone number or extra keystrokes.

How to Pitch Yourself to Be a Podcast Guest

All that's left to do is cross your fingers and hope you hear back! If you follow the framework above you'll get several hits. This can lead to a podcast tour, which allows you to string a number of podcast appearances together to promote a product, service or launch, explains Kai Davis in his book, Podcast Outreach.

Also, this can have the domino effect; once you're on your first podcasts you can stairstep your way to bigger, higher profile shows in the future.

Getting a guest appearance on a podcast is not likely to make your dreams of fame, fortune and glory come to fruition overnight (although it might!), but it can absolutely help bring new readers to your blog and help you promote your products and services.

So build some time into your schedule to pitch podcasters to help your blog and business grow.

Michelle Kulas is on the PodcastMotor team, a full service, concierge podcast editing and production service. They take all the hard work out of podcasting so you can focus on creating great content.

The post How to Pitch Yourself to Be a Podcast Guest appeared first on ProBlogger.