Are you searching for creative ways to generate new ideas for your digital products? If you answered yes—and, let’s face it, all existing brands and startups are looking for brilliant ideas to lead their product—then you’ve come to the right place.
In the past, creating your very own product may have seemed like an unattainable dream. There was ample work and fortune involved in building and marketing a product. But not anymore. In today’s world, anyone can create a digital product and earn money. One of the biggest perks of creating a digital product is that you create it once and sell it over and over again. These products are cost-efficient and can generate tons of money. Let’s take a look at a few stats related to popular digital products (podcasts, e-book, and more):
- As per Statista, 191 million e-books were sold in the United States in 2020.
- The e-book market was valued at USD 18.13 billion in 2020. It is expected to reach USD 23.12 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 4.9% (2021-2026).
- In 2020, an estimated 100 million people listened to a podcast each month, and it is expected to reach 125 million in 2022.
- As per industry reports, the global podcasting market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.5% between 2020 and 2027, reaching $60.5 billion.
- WordPress powers around 27% of all websites with a 76.4% share of the CMS market. The potential for selling WordPress related digital products is huge.
- Video is an engaging form of content with 8 billion video views per day on Facebook alone.
The above stats are enough to prove the huge potential of digital product creation. But like any other business of true value, you will not achieve overnight success. You’ll have to put in plenty of hard work first. And once you create a great digital product strategy, there’s no stopping you. So, here are my ten steps on how to build a digital product that sells:
How do you create a digital product?
Here are a few steps to create ideas for a new product:
1. Brainstorm, brainstorm and brainstorm:
‘’Brainstorming is the nexus of ideas.’’ – Asa Don Brown
Well, the first step is to brainstorm innovative product ideas for the right digital product. You may have many ideas for a new product, but only the most impressive one should go forward. Create a digital product that solves customer’s pain points. This can be done by researching the market and listening to customers. You can also conduct a brainstorming session among your teammates to generate more digital product business ideas in a short span. Once the brainstorming session is done, analyze the ideas and come up with a digital product that’s irresistible to the audience. Like Kevin Systorm once said,
’Great products sell themselves.’’
So, if you have a brilliant digital product idea, you will build a great reputation, word will spread, and you will see quite a nice payoff come your way.
2. Do in-depth customer research:
It’s vital to do in-depth research on customers and market before you launch your product. If you don’t understand your customer, it will be very difficult to sell the product. The research consists of three incredibly important questions:
- What are the potential customers’ biggest pain points?
- What will push people to seek out information in your niche?
- What changes do they anticipate to see?
Answering these questions will help you come up with opportunities that lie within a niche. This will also enable you to create more targeted marketing strategies and tailor the product specifically to their needs.
In the words of Mike Gospe – ‘’Whoever understands the customer best, wins.”
Below are a few research tips:
- Research on forums – Be it any niche, there will be forums around it. Forums are communities of people searching for information and solutions. You can find these forums through quick search on Google. You can also search for the niche on Facebook and select groups and pages.
- Ask questions – It’s a good idea to ask questions to customers for digital product creation. People like speaking about the problems they are facing, so listen carefully. There’s always something to learn from customers.
- Study other successful products – Analyze other successful products for product ideation. You can easily learn and benefit from them. Study these products, but NEVER copy them. Take inspiration from other ideas and spin it to make it unique.
In the end, the product must solve customers’ problems. If the product solves a problem, the customers will want to buy that product.
3. Prototype solves most of your problems:
With the help of a prototype, you can put your creativity in one place and organize all your ideas. In case you have missed something in digital product design or any improvement is needed in the product, a prototype will help you exclude or include changes accordingly.
Building a prototype will also give you a rough estimate of the cost of the business. The prototype will determine the productivity and performance of the developed item. Additionally, your product will be taken more seriously among the competitors.
