The 4 key pillars of a successful digital product business
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One of the big reasons why so many people struggle when it comes to digital products is because they are missing 1 or more of the 4 key pillars of success. In order to have a successful digital product based business you need all 4 pillars. Take any 1 of those away and your business is likely to fail. But what are these 4 key pillars?
According to recent research, bloggers who monetize via digital products earn over 10X what bloggers who monetize via ads earn.
But why is that? Why are digital product RPMs so much higher than ad RPMs?
It’s actually quite logical when you think about it…
People are only going to pay to advertise their products if they will earn more from product sales than they spend advertising those products.
Which means the ‘income per pageview’ is being split between the website which displays the ads and the company paying for the ads – and usually the company paying for the ads is earning a lot more than the website which displays the ads!
Or, to put it another way, if you run ads on your site, someone else is earning more from your pageviews than you are!
Selling your own products cuts out the middle man.
The 4 key pillars of success
But the thing about digital products is, while there are people out there absolutely killing it (some digital product sellers who completed the Blogging Income Survey were earning RPMs in excess of $500!), a lot of people struggle to make any real money from digital products.
One of the big reasons why so many people struggle when it comes to digital products is because they are missing 1 or more of the 4 key pillars of success.
In order to have a successful digital product based business you need all 4 pillars. Take any 1 of those away and your business is likely to fail.
But get these 4 key pillars in place and you have the recipe for a very successful digital product business.
So what are these 4 key pillars of success?
1. The right traffic
You can do everything else right: you can have the most amazing product, the best sales page and the fanciest sales funnel on the planet – but if you have no traffic, no one will ever know!
But the great thing about digital product based businesses is that you need a lot less traffic than ad based businesses.
What matters much more, is the QUALITY of the traffic.
In other words, you don’t need to attract everyone and his dog, just the kind of people who would be most interested in buying your paid products.
2. Email marketing
But traffic on its own is not enough.
You need to have a way of converting your traffic into subscribers… and ultimately customers.
And the way to do that is email marketing.
If you want to build a successful digital product based business, email marketing is vital.
Email marketing will help you do market research, validate your ideas, nurture cold traffic into warm leads and make the sale. It will also help you onboard your new customers, give your customers a 5* experience and get glowing testimonials.
If you have ever tried to sell a digital product on your website or via social media and been unsuccessful… lack of email marketing, or perhaps I should say lack of GOOD email marketing, is almost certainly why you were unsuccessful.
3. Products your audience will actually buy
Of course a digital product business will most definitely not work without the products themselves…
But just creating a product does not guarantee success!
Hands down the biggest reason why most digital product businesses fail is because they failed to do adequate market research.
You can do the best marketing in the world and you can have the biggest audience in the world. But if you create a product that no one wants, you will fail.
Market research at its core is simply about listening to your audience and finding out what they most need… and then creating that.
The problem is that many online business owners just create what they want to create… and then wonder why it doesn’t sell!
Or else they assume they know what their audience wants… but they fail to actually ask, so they get it wrong… and so they create something their audience does not want… and so their product fails to sell.
4. Customer advocacy
But creating a product your audience WANTS is only half the equation, you also need to create a product that delivers RESULTS.
Because your customer relationship doesn’t end with the sale. That’s just the beginning!
If you create a product that delivers what it promised and exceeds expectations, two good things will happen…
- Your customers will buy your higher priced products and progress up your product ladder.
- Your customers will become advocates for your products…
In other words, your customers will sell your product for you via word of mouth marketing, by becoming affiliates for your products, by sharing their success on social media, by giving you testimonials and case studies to put on your sales page and your website, by writing reviews of your product and generally creating a huge buzz and excitement around you and your product.
In fact, if you get this right, it becomes a virtuous circle!
That’s a lot of moving parts!
As you can see, running a successful digital product business involves a lot of moving parts…
- Email marketing
- Digital product specific SEO
- Nurturing new leads
- Market research
- Picking the right topic and format for your digital product – something your audience will actually want to buy!
- Lead magnets
- Product creation
- Launch strategies
- Sales pages
- Tripwires
- Building sales funnels
- Getting testimonials
- Word of mouth marketing
- Launching your own affiliate program
- Building authority
- Running flash sales and Black Friday sales
- Running beta launches
- And more…
If that list is making you feel slightly dizzy and somewhat overwhelmed, I hear you! And that is why I have turned all of this into a step-by-step roadmap…
The Digital Product Success Academy
The idea is that you let me worry about all of the moving parts, and you just focus on following the next step on the roadmap, knowing I’ve got everything planned and happening at exactly the right time.
DPSA is for you, if you want to…
👉 Earn more from the traffic you already have: Digital product RPMs are considerably better than RPMs from ads, affiliates and sponsored posts.
👉 Stop worrying about whether you’ll be wiped out in the next Google algorithm update: Because you don’t need those crazy-high pageviews, selling digital products makes you A LOT less dependent on Google.
👉 Mitigate against cookiepocalypse: Truth be told, no one really knows what will happen when Google finally gets rid of 3rd party cookies – but if the doom-mongers are to be believed it could have a significant negative effect on ad revenues.
👉 Be ahead of the curve: Google has said it plans to phase out cookies for 100% of Chrome users in Q1 2025. If cookiepocalyse is bad, guess what every blogger will be doing at the beginning of 2025? Get ahead of the curve by starting NOW!
👉 Have a less precarious business: If you get the majority of your traffic from Google and the majority of your income from ads, you don’t need me to tell you that is a very precarious place to be… Diversifying into digital products reduces risk and increases income – so it’s a win-win!
👉 Have a lot of fun along the way: Join a community of like-minded bloggers and online business owners who are all working towards the same goal!
If this resonates with you and you’re ready to take your blogging business to the next level, click here to find out more!
- 10 reasons why you should start selling digital products
- How to build a successful digital product business: The 7 essential ingredients that will take you to $100K and beyond!
- 10 easy ways to boost your digital product sales
- 10 reasons why your digital product isn’t selling (and how to fix them!)
- How selling digital products will boost your SEO
Don’t miss a thing!
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