More and more people are making a meaningful income selling digital products online and
you may be asking yourself, how can I get in on that?
But it can be tough to come up with digital product ideas that actually make money.
In this video, I’m going to walk you through a three step process and teach you how to
choose a profitable idea for your digital product in 2020.
Let’s get into it.
Hello creators!
I’m Ben Toalson from Podia, where we empower creators like you to make a living doing what
you love.
In 2018 the e-learning market was 190 billion dollars and is expected to grow to 325 billion
dollars by 2025.
And that’s just one segment of digital products.
We’re going to help you get a piece of that big, big pie and share a three step process
for choosing a digital product that will actually make money.
Step one: come up with a list of potential ideas.
If you’re scratching your head about what might constitute a good product idea, here
are a few questions you can ask yourself to help build your list.
The answers to these questions can be turned into product ideas later on.
What are some of your hobbies or passions?
What are some things you took the time to learn simply because you enjoyed them?
This could be things like cooking or baking, writing fiction, arts and crafts.
They may not seem like good product opportunities on the surface, but many successful online
courses and ebooks have been created from the spark of passions and hobbies.
What is something you worked really hard to learn?
If you’ve spent years learning how to do something, chances are you have the knowledge
to help someone take an easier path for learning that same skill.
Based on where your potential customer is on their journey, you could identify the most
important things to learn and what they could ignore.
Maybe you’re an early adopter of new technology and you’re able to quickly learn the ins
and outs of a product that normally takes people awhile to figure out.
That’s another opportunity for you to turn your skills into a pdf guide or online membership
that people would gladly pay for because of the time it saves them.
Are you known in your workplace, school, or community as the go-to person for a particular
task or skill?
Do people often ask for your help with a specific problem?
“If your computer stops talking to the copy machine, talk to Janelle.
She knows how to get those two to work things out.“
"If you need your fence repaired, go talk to Kevin.
He can put up a fence before your morning coffee gets cold.”
Even skills that seem like they’re not a big deal can be opportunities to create your
first digital product.
What do people say you’re good at?
Sometimes we undervalue or underestimate the things we are really actually good at doing.
Ask your friends and family and you might be surprised by the answers.
Hopefully answering these questions gives you a good list of ideas.
In the next step, we’ll work to determine which of these ideas has the best potential
for being profitable.
Step two: Determine which ideas have the most earning potential.
For this step I want to introduce you to something called the passion/profit matrix.
One axis ranges from low passion to high passion.
The other axis ranges from low profit potential to high profit potential.
First we're going to rate your ideas on how passionate you are about them.
All products and businesses have their highs and lows.
How likely are you to stick with your idea when things get tough?
Would you still feel drawn to this idea without the promise of making a lot of money?
Now lets rate your ideas on their profit potential.
To determine this, we’re going to ask four questions.
Question number 1: How emotional do people get about this topic?
This part is going to take a little bit of research.
I suggest visiting online forums where your topic is discussed.
Reddit.com is a great site for finding real world questions and struggles around a variety
of topics.
Let’s use drywall repair as an example.
If we search home improvement, we find Reddit has a forum or subreddit about home improvement.
Here we can do a search for drywall and then put in quotes a phrase like “how do you”
“I’m having trouble” or “please help” to get a list of discussions that contain
those phrases and your keyword.
As you look through the discussions, take note of how people describe their problems.
The more fired up people get, the more likely it is that a digital product that solves their
problem would be profitable.
Question number 2: Are people already paying to solve this problem?
Are they buying books, taking classes, hiring tutors, or signing up for software to make
this problem go away?
If so, then there’s profit potential.
If not, it might just be a problem that people don’t think is worth paying to solve.
Question number 3: Does your product make money for people?
Another way to ask this question is, is your product a nice to have or a need to have?
Products that make people money, both directly or indirectly, have an easier time of finding
a market.
An online course teaching someone how to embroider designs into their clothes for fun may not
be as profitable as a course teaching someone how to start their own embroidery business.
Question number 4: Are there already digital products out there similar to your idea?
If the answer is yes, this is good news because that means people already find the solution
valuable.
In fact, you’d have more cause for concern if there wasn’t already a market.
Now this doesn’t mean you won’t face competition, but here you also have an opportunity to study
your competitor’s product and see if there’s a way for you to solve the same problem in
a different, more efficient, or more holistic way.
Once you’ve measured your idea’s passion and profit potential scores, mark their location
on the passion/profit matrix.
The ones with the highest passion and profit scores are going to be your best bets when
it comes to making a digital product.
Step three: Get specific.
Now we’re going zero in on who our product is for, what specific problem we’re going
to solve for them, and what digital medium we’re going to use to deliver our solution.
First we’ll focus on who our product is for.
Try to get specific about the person who could most benefit from your solution.
Is it parents of young children?
People who are retired?
College students?
Also, get specific about what this person is currently struggling with that your product
might address.
Parents who aren’t getting enough sleep.
Retired people who worry their money won’t last.
College students who are nervous about their first job interview.
Next, we’ll focus on the outcome our product will deliver.
What is the result your product will provide for your customer?
A good night’s sleep.
Peace of mind and a financial plan.
Confidence and phenomenal interview skills.
Finally, we’ll determine which medium might work best.
Is it for time-starved parents?
An audio guide they could listen to while they do other things might be best.
Is it for retirees?
Depending on their level of technical savvy, they might feel most comfortable with a pdf
guide.
Is it for college students?
A highly engaging video course might be best.
If you find yourself still struggling to figure out what kind of digital product you should
make, you can check out this article on our website with 72 real-life digital product
examples.
I’ll link to it in the description below.
Hopefully now you’ve got at least a few great product ideas that you can start working
on.
What are you going make?
Let me know below in the comments.
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Thank you for watching and I’ll see you next time.