Creating Digital Products
Do a little research into the success stories of the greatest online marketers and you will find that each one of them has their own digital products.
It might be an ebook, software, videos, or complete courses online. Once these products are created they can be sold over and over again on autopilot making them one of the best investments you could ever make for your business.
Creating and selling your own products is one of the most profitable things you can do online. But that’s only if you’re not totally killing your business with three of the most common mistakes.
Are you making these mistakes too? Find out below…
Mistake 1: Not doing market research.
A lot of product creators skip this step, and then they wonder why no one is buying. Sometimes their product idea is so bad that they can’t even give the product away.
Listen, if you want a profitable business, then do your market research. Find out what people in your niche are ALREADY buying, and then create something similar but better. This is the ticket to creating in-demand products. This is the ticket to big profits! So don’t mistake of skipping this important step.
Find a need and fill it.
Next up…
Mistake 2: Only selling a couple products.
The easiest sale you’ll ever make is to sell another product to an existing customer. You can do this in multiple ways, including:
• As an order-form upsell.
• Recommending a related product on the thank-you page.
• Sending product recommendations to your customer mailing list.
• Including offer links in your products.
And so on.
Here’s the key: you need to offer a variety of products and services at a variety of price points, and all of these offers should be related to one another.
Next…
Mistake 3: Not creating premium products.
Sometimes people crank out new products like crazy, but they’re all low-end products. I’m talking products that sell for $10 or $20.
Guess what?
It takes a whole lot of sales to create a decent income with cheap products. And since it’s just as easy to sell a high-ticket product to a customer, you should have at least one high-end product in your sales funnel… and preferably more.
Just consider this…
You have to make 10,000 sales of a $10 product to crack $100,000.
Or you can make this same $100,000 by selling just 500 products worth $200.
Why hustle so hard when you don’t have to? Sell high-ticket products, and you’ll find yourself pulling in big profits a lot more easily with fewer customers.
Those are three of the most common product-creation mistakes that can totally ruin your business.
If you’re in the business of selling digital products such as books, videos or even apps, then you know just how hard it is to create all these products yourself.
Is it possible?
You bet. As long as you don’t mind growing your business at a snail’s pace. If watching your competitors overtake you and swipe your market share doesn’t bother you, then you can try to do everything yourself.
However, here’s a better idea: hire professional freelancers to help you out. These freelancers can create products for you, create content, and even help you market your business. Best of all, freelancers can often do this work better and more quickly than you can.
But there’s a catch…
A good freelancer can help you grow your business… while a bad freelancer can waste your time, waste your money and cause you a lot of headaches. That simple fact often turns business owners off from hiring freelancers.
But don’t let it stop you, because you’re about to discover how to find and H.I.R.E. an awesome freelancer by following these simple steps:
Hunt Far and Wide
Investigate Candidates
Recruit the Best Candidates
Encourage Your Freelancer
Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps…
Step 1: Hunt Far and Wide
The first step in finding a great freelancer is to hunt in multiple places. In other words, cast a wide net to find as many potential freelancers as possible. This includes:
• Searching Google.
• Asking your colleagues for recommendations.
• Asking on business-related forums and Facebook groups.
• Mentioning your need for a freelancer to your contacts (email list, blog, social media, etc).
• Posting a project on freelance sites such as elance.com and upwork.com.
• Looking locally, such as posting a want-ad on CraigsList.org or even in the local newspaper.
For this step, just create as big of a list of potential candidates as possible. You’ll whittle down that list in the next step…
Step 2: Investigate Candidates
For this step, you’re going to whittle down your big list of potential freelancers to create a small list of the best-qualified candidates. In other words, you’ll do your due diligence. This includes taking the following steps…
• Checking the freelancer’s portfolio to assess the quality of their work.
• Asking for and following up on references.
• Checking the person’s ratings and feedback on freelancing sites (where applicable).
• Using Google to research the freelancer.
Once you’ve investigated each candidate thoroughly, then you’ll also want to check out their prices. You may find their prices online, or in some cases you may need to fill out a form about your project in order to get a quote.
Just be sure not to make any decisions based on price alone, as sometimes the “cheap” freelancer can cost you a lot of money in the long run. In other words, you often get exactly what you pay for.
Now that you have a short list of the best potential freelancers for your project, move onto the next step…
Step 3: Recruit the Best Candidates
With luck, you have more than one good freelancer on your short list. Now what you want to do is hire the top candidates for a small job.
Here’s the thing…
Just because a freelancer totally rocks when working with others doesn’t mean this freelancer will work out well for you. Your colleagues may have had great experiences with this person, but perhaps the two of you won’t communicate well. Maybe you’ll have a personality clash. Perhaps you’ll just have fundamental disagreements about how to perform the work.
These are things you won’t really know until you work with the person. If you jump right in with a new freelancer on a big project, you may end up wasting time and money on someone who isn’t really going to work out that well for your needs.
The solution? Hire your freelancer for a smaller job first. For example:
• If you need to hire someone to write a 80,000 word book, hire them to write a 10,000 word report first.
• If you want someone to do a 20-module video training series, hire them to do one module.
Once you see how well you work with your top candidates and the quality of the work they provide, then you can hire on the best freelancer to do your big job.
At this point, it’s a good idea to sign an agreement with your freelancer. This agreement will cover the scope of the work, delivery deadlines, payment information and other relevant details.
You’ll also want to sit down and chat about expectations with your freelancer. Your freelancer isn’t a mind-reader, so let him or her know what you expect.
For example, if you expect your freelancer to update you on the project every three days, let them know about these expectations.
Final step…
Step 4: Encourage Your Freelancer
At this point you’ll have a really awesome freelancer working for you. Now your job is to encourage this freelancer and provide a good working environment. In turn, you’ll get high-quality work and a good working relationship.
Here are tips for creating a great work environment…
• Provide thorough briefs. The more details you can provide to your freelancer about your project, the more likely it is that you’ll get great results. So be thorough and exact about what you want on a project.
• Respect your freelancer’s process. In other words, don’t micromanage your freelancer. He or she is an independent contractor, not an employee. If he or she produces great results, then don’t interfere with your freelancer’s process for getting those results.
• Offer kind words. Obviously, your freelancer took the job because he wants the money. However, you can motivate your freelancer by offering kind words. If your freelancer does a great job, let him know. There’s never any reason to hold back on offering praise for a job well done.
• Give unexpected bonuses. If your freelancer does an exceptionally good job or comes in ahead of deadline, you might offer a bonus. This could come in the form of an extra cash bonus, or you might show your appreciation by giving your freelancer a gift certificate to a favorite restaurant.
Now let’s wrap things up…
Conclusion
So there you have it… that’s how you find and H.I.R.E. a great freelancer. This is so important, because finding a great freelancer is one of the keys to growing your business. This is especially true if you’re building a digital-product business, where you sell products such as ebooks, software, apps, videos and so on. A freelancer can create these digital products for you, which frees up your time to work on your marketing plan.
Want to learn even more about Creating Digital Products?
Click Here to Download our guide “Creating Digital Products Made So Easy” for free.
