Digital products are hard to sell — don’t be sucked in
After many years of learning what it takes to create and sell an online service offer, as well as some modest success with some self-publishing at the same time, I’ve drawn a few conclusions for the next stages in my planned ‘digital asset portfolio’.
A digital what, now?
These digital assets, be they products or services, I’m betting on them providing income over the years to supplement and eventually take over my freelance and agency work. I’ve decided on my first asset to build and launch this year and this post will explain how I got there.
The low barriers to entry for digital products are a great leveller, that’s a given, but when you have a list of dozens of projects you could tackle, which do you go for?
It could be a course, a book, a simple bootstrapped SaaS, a Shopify dropshipping or Fulfilled by Amazon operation, or even an affiliate site in a niche. Each of those looks attractive at first glance, but the deeper you dig the more pitfalls you see.
I’ve started to see this in the same way that stock or currency trading strategies need developing. Because, in my eagerness to extract income from these ‘smart’ jobs, I’ve of course been reading about those too. With trading strategies you just have to pick one and test it thoroughly. You can’t be flighty or you’ll never get enough data to know if it works. And whatever it is, it’ll need to give you an edge over the competition.
Defining your edge
This year I had planned to create a project per month (PPM) to do just that. Lots of tests; hope for one to stick. But on deeper reflection I managed to weed out all of the weaker ideas before even trying them. How’s that for lean. Here they are, for the most part:
- Courses: too resource intensive for my situation. I’d want to do it well and that would require much time and cost researching gear and techniques. Shelved for later.
- Books: too risky a venture given the usual odds of book 1 making any significant money. And that’s with a few months’ work at least. Lots of sobering reading available on /r/selfpublish. Definitely doable, but again not something to make a return on in under a year. Shelved for later.
- SaaS: this I have actually done, albeit one that is in major need of continued market validation and content marketing. I’d like to test a simpler service, like a directory, alongside trying to raise the sails for the larger project I’ve been building (probably for way too long now).
- Ecommerce: not for me. My ideal lifestyle business does not involve going to the post office. Nor dealing with returns or stock issues.
- Affiliate sites: this has appealed to me since around 2005 when I first heard of it. I always thought it would die out next year but I still constantly hear of folks making very livable sums from their sites. It takes just as much work as any of the above. And it’s ongoing work too, as search rankings and affiliate schemes change over time, all while new entrants join the markets to compete. So it’s not easy. But it appeals.
And on that last point I have another trading comparison: you have to pick a trading strategy that suits your lifestyle. In trading, if you can’t be at the screen all day to daytrade every few minutes then switch to longer timeframes and check in every morning or even every week. Neither way is universally right.
The same goes for startups. If you can’t bring yourself to record video, or audio content every day/week, or if it just isn’t in your character to want to trade in physical goods. If you just want to sit and write and add value to the internet, helping people to find things they need, for example, then you can start to narrow down where you have an edge over the competition. The fact you want to do one of the above is a great starting point, as 99% of people won’t. You can further press your edge by skilling up in the specific work processes and subject expertise. If you can publish faster and add more value than the competition, you’re in a good place.
In my case I can build static or dynamic sites in a few hours. Secure them, make them run fast, run them cheaply to extend my runway. I can write. I have the time and practice behind me to produce writing that adds value. That should be enough of an edge. All that’s left to do is execute on the strategy. Execution. That heavy, dark word.
What do you do with an edge?
This trading vs startup concept I keep mentioning is actually the subject of my half-written book on doing business like a trader. It has working titles such as ‘Startup like a Trader’, ‘Chaos Startup’, ‘Market Chaos — in startups and trading’ and so on. I can’t see me being able to execute on its creation and launch as well as I’d like to right now, so the book has been shelved. I really thought I was onto something, with a month of early mornings to write and release it and start to build the book repository out, but the odds of it going anywhere with my current level of time and energy to market anything were low. Given the energy levels books need, deserve, for their marketing, that is.
That was my leading PPM. Until… exploring and being more drawn towards affiliate sites and simple SaaS, or combinations thereof, an idea formed for an industry that has 100s of 1000s of new buyers entering with strong intent every year. Before I go ahead and spill the beans, I should say that the vast quantity of existing businesses operating in this market has not escaped me. Competition is fierce. But it’s a big pie. And my pie will not be outdated or corporate (as the worst pies often are, right?). It’ll be homemade, visually pleasing and quick to eat/load.
I’ve settled on building a site that offers an image-driven way to sort and filter a directory of services. Services in the wedding industry. The site is built, at least to a testable standard, living at Weditate.com. To plan your wedding in peace, use Weditate. Or some such line. My job now is to offer accounts to testers and work through any issues arising, gauging interest levels. The business model isn’t yet worked out, having swung from pay per referral, to a low flat fee, to front page ads, but I’ll get there.
How’s that going to work, then?
I’ll spare you the details, but the important thing with this project is that I’m not emotionally invested in it. That’s very liberating. I’ve set out clear targets for test accounts, conversions to paying, timescales for various milestones and so on. If it doesn’t hit them and flounders, I’m happy to kill it and move on. Saving the codebase for the next project, of course.
The most painful bit will be in generating SEO content, cold-calling services, reaching out to groups I’m new to. All that ongoing work that goes against the point of starting a ‘passive’ income site. You do tend to think after years of reading the online-business literature that there is no such thing as passive income. Everything requires at least some work up front. But some things definitely do take less effort than others to start and run. And some things are better suited to some people than to others.
For me right now it’s about finding the intersection of skillset + low effort + active market, and then executing on any ideas generated. Clinically. With little to no emotional attachment. Exactly like a good trader should act, in fact. As I said, I have a whole book of parallels drawn like that. But I’ll spare you those.
For now.
Hope that gave you some food for thought. Spread it if it did. Or if it didn’t and you just want to have at it in some forum somewhere.
