[Journal] Selling Digital Products

C

cziffra

New member
Jun 24, 2006
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Somalia
Some of you may remember me from my failed membership site. I have had some success with selling digital products since then. I'm not making a lot yet, but the earnings are increasing. It's also far less work than the membership site. This journal will cover what I'm doing with digital products.

What I'm Doing

Here is how I'm approaching this:

  • Many low-priced products: Ideally, I will have several hundred products by the end of next year.
  • Freemium model: Each product has a basic version for free. This is to attract traffic and links.
  • Multiple sites: I'm creating smaller sites where each site is based around a certain area of this niche.
I'm creating all the content myself for now (I want to expand beyond this niche once I have the money to hire people to create content). The products I'm creating don't take very long to put together. I can create a product in anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.

Where I Am Now

  • Three products across two different sites
  • Multiple sales of each product per month
  • Just launched a new site, but still have to create additional content/products before promoting it. It will have between 20-25 products when finished.
  • Using e-junkie for existing products, but have switched to getdpd.com for all new products.
Revenue

I'm going to reveal actual revenue and the number of sales for each month. Here are my numbers for September and October:

September Revenue: $32.94
September Sales: 9 items/orders

October Revenue: $113.72
October Sales: 34 items sold, 31 orders

The increase in October is mostly due to a seasonal product selling more copies. I also had an increase in traffic to both sites.

Customer service requests have been fairly limited. I've had only two requests and both were related to problems downloading the product.
 


Brief Update:

I ended up with 22 products on the site I mentioned in my first post. I will probably do more in the future, but this is enough for now. It's a seasonal site and I don't have much longer before that time of year passes by. It doesn't make much sense to expand it when I may not have launched early enough to make anything from it this year.

I have done a few things to promote the new site. I put up 22 videos on YouTube (one for each piece of free content). I also put links on a few of my sites in this niche. Traffic is trickling in, but is very low at this point.

I'm still making a lot of sales of my seasonal product. Other products only sell a few copies per month at this point. That's OK, though. My model is to have a lot of products with each one selling at least 3-5 times per month on average. The products contain evergreen content, so this is mainly a numbers game. Every new product that sells at that level adds a little bit to my income.
 
Cool follow up. Subscribed.

If you want to play the numbers game, why not start with your pricing?

$3 per sale seems fairly low for anything. Is this product something you'd only buy on an impulse because it's cheap? Or are people getting valueable information and their problems solved. If its the latter then I'm sure you can charge more if you focus on the pitch and making the purchase really easy.

Have you considered bundling products to raise your average order? Without knowing a lot about your product, that seems like a worthwhile test. Try it as an upsell at checkout. Hit your list with a limited time offer.

Is your product something you could submit to a niche daily deals website? Beyond your own sites, what marketplaces will "stock" your product?

Is there a way to setup your bidness so you can flip any one of your smaller websites to grow capital and focus on the best sites without blowing up your whole spot and outting everything?

Just some thoughts. I look forward to your next update.
 
good stuff. subbed.

I tend to be more attracted to the 1 or 2 very expensive products approach, instead of 100 products that each cost less than a cup of starbucks. But I can see the advantages of both.

GL!
 
I hope you have a funnel to higher priced products and are just using your front end products as loss leaders or lead generators.
 
Have you thought about retargeting your exisiting visitors and getting them on an email list?
 
Dont take this the wrong way but it sounds like, at the prices you are charging you might as well sell affiliate products. The whole point as far as I can tell with selling your own stuff is to keep 100% of the money and much more than you would as an affiliate. I dont know your niche but it looks like your missing out on this.
 
theemu said:
Dont take this the wrong way but it sounds like, at the prices you are charging you might as well sell affiliate products. The whole point as far as I can tell with selling your own stuff is to keep 100% of the money and much more than you would as an affiliate. I dont know your niche but it looks like your missing out on this.
Click to expand...

I agree it seems like a ton of work to net income of affiliate sales. But to each his own, it could be rewarding for you in the long run

:pimp:
 
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