10 Jul What Makes a “Good” Digital Product?

Online courses are one of the fastest and easiest ways for the average person to begin creating passive income using the knowledge they already have.

In fact, online learning is a multi-billion dollar industry and there are courses on every topic imaginable…

From sewing to speed reading to horsemanship to doodling to guitar playing to sleep training to personal productivity to art therapy to yoga to nutrition to spiritual healing to gardening to study skills to screenwriting – there is a course for everything under the sun.

The key to having a successful online course is to select a topic that is in high demand, that solves a problem that people are willing to pay money for and then create a course that helps people get the results they are looking for.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of failed online courses that never take off.  

However, if you know the 3 key ingredients for a successful digital product, you can avoid wasting your time, energy and money creating a course that doesn’t sell.

The 3 Key Ingredients for a Successful Digital Product:

1. Solves a Specific Problem

2. Targets a Specific Ideal Client

3. Attracts a Willing-to-Pay Client

Let's look deeper into each of these elements…

1. Solves a Specific Problem

Here is an example:

“Authors who want to learn how to market their books” is NOT a specific problem.

That's because people generally don't want to learn more. What they really want is to get the results by doing something or having something.

So a better example would be: “Authors who are struggling to reach enough readers to sell their books to”.

And your solution to this specific problem? Giving them the ability to market their books successfully to the right audience, without blowing their budget, going into overwhelm or adding too many things to their to-do list.

2. Targets a Specific Ideal Client

So many people confuse “ideal client” and “target audience”.

Here’s the difference…

Your target audience would be:  

A business owner, aged 25-50, lives in the U.S., and in their spare time likes to travel and try new restaurants“… 

Think of your  ideal client as one person; you know exactly who they are, what they do and what they're struggling with.

(No, you don't need to know what their hobbies or favorite foods are—unless it's relevant to your offer, that is).

So coming back to the example above for authors, I would want to know: 

“What kind of books do they have?  How many books do they have? What is their age range?  What have they tried for marketing? & Why haven't they been able to reach more readers?”

Because, the way you position your offer to a fiction author would be totally different for a non fiction author.  Also, the way you communicate to a 25-year-old would be different to the way you communicate to a 50-year-old.

Trying to position one offer to a range of different people will make them confused and a confused mind never buys.  They will be wondering, “Is this offer for me?” and that is not good.

So what you want to do is focus on one ideal client and make it so clear that they start feeling like, “This is perfect for me”.

3. Attracts Willing-to-Pay Clients

Unfortunately, there are some problems in our lives that are not painful enough for us to spend money on and make them go away.

The good news is there are plenty of painful problems that people are willing to spend money on to fix.

So the problem you choose to solve for your ideal client needs to be one that they'll pay for.

The million dollar question therefore is:

“How do you know if they will pay to have that problem solved?”

Well, you can start off by asking them or taking a survey, but that does NOT guarantee sales.

You can do research and see if they are already paying for other alternatives to solve the problem, and if they are, that is a good sign.

Having sold online courses since 2005, I can tell you that the only way to truly validate an offer is to make the offer to your ideal audience and get sales.

SALES = VALIDATION

I'm a big fan of launching a digital product before I've created it, and then creating it once you have sales.

Another important consideration is to make sure the audience you are targeting has money to spend to solve this problem.

A good example of an audience who has money to spend would be:

“I help 6-figure business owners launch their very own podcast?”

A not so good example of an audience who may not have money to spend is:

“I help people who are unemployed find their dream job”.

Of course some people who might “temporarily” be unemployed will have savings they can pull from to invest, however, many people who are unemployed may be living off their savings or unemployment and may not feel comfortable spending money until they have some income coming in.

I hope this has given you some food for thought on what type of digital product you can create.

It’s risky to only have one or two streams of income, and creating your own digital product would bring in a new stream of income for you.  (Even if you don’t have an audience or an online business right now.)

• If you haven’t read my #1 bestselling book, Course Cash Cow, you can check it out here.

• If you would like to get on the waiting list when my new program, “Course Cash Cow” opens up, click here.

 One more thing…

Your idea for an online course/digital program doesn't have to be a unique, shiny, exciting idea that nobody else has done before.

It can be much simpler than that.