Explore the power of productizing your expertise through digital products. They enable you to clone yourself and create a passive income stream. Doing them right isn't easy, but we'll show you the way.
Why to productize
The simple reason to productize yourself is that you can't provide your 1:1 services to an infinite number of people. That's where digital products come in - they allow you to clone yourself. When you create a digital product, it can be purchased by an infinite number of people, and the individual purchases don't cost you anything. To use a fancier term, there is zero marginal cost of reproduction. It gives you incredible leverage and makes no difference whether your digital product is purchased by 5 people or 5 million. The only difference will be in your bank account.
Digital products allow you to scale your expertise and offer it worldwide. You no longer have to focus on providing a valuable service to an individual client. Instead, you can focus on creating the best product possible to attract people who find it valuable enough to pay for.
Creating digital products also allows you to reach clients who would otherwise not be able to afford to hire you. If the minimum number of your 1:1 sessions is five and you charge $70/hour, paying $350 could be too much for some, but purchasing your $50 digital product is much more affordable.
When to productize
You can start thinking about productizing yourself when you can regularly reach at least thousands of people who see you as an authority figure in your industry. You can do it even if your audience is in the hundreds, but it has to be extraordinarily loyal to purchase enough of your digital products to make their creation worth your time. The problem with the small audience is that your payday is over after they're done with their one-time purchases. Unless you can reach new people, you won't make much. A huge audience size doesn't guarantee anything, either. What's important is that your audience respects and trusts you and is willing to give you money.
💡 Keep in mind
When selling digital products, it's very important to keep reaching new people. Sure, your core audience can be "worked on" and gradually convinced to buy your digital product, but you'll eventually run out of people to convince.
Don't waste your time
If you're not sure whether you will be able to sell something, you probably won't. The digital products space is very competitive. If you'd like to get an indicator of your audience's potential interest, simply ask them - you can even give them an idea of what digital products you're thinking about. What you want is overwhelming excitement and support. Anything short of it means it's not for you yet.
We're only discouraging you because high-quality digital products take a lot of time and effort to make. You certainly shouldn't do it if you're unsure whether you will sell any. You can spend your time much better by building your personal brand, so the next time you ask your audience, you'll get that overwhelming excitement you're looking for.
💡 Keep in mind
Sometimes it's only about you. If you're a well-known figure, you will sell anything, regardless of the quality. There may be plenty of better resources for free online, and your sales can still go through the roof. The less famous you are, the more the substance of your digital products matters.
When trust is not required
With digital products, your brand and reputation are everything. If people don't know you and don't trust you, you will have a very hard time selling. People don't trust people they don't know.
While all this is true, it mostly applies to knowledge-based creators. Reputation doesn't matter in cases where the quality of the digital product doesn't rely on you believing in the creator's expertise, and you can evaluate the quality yourself. A perfect example is creative assets for image editing software - think of them like an advanced version of Instagram filters. Photographers put together a pre-defined set of image edits that you can apply to yours and easily demonstrate in a video how they work. You don't have to trust the photographer - you only have to trust your eyes and like what you see. So all a photographer has to do is create a great video demonstrating his presets, get a lot of views, and sales are guaranteed.
With knowledge-based digital products, you can only evaluate their quality based on some free demo. While that certainly helps, you will presumably purchase a digital product to learn something, which means you're not fully familiar with the industry or a topic yet, which in turn means you don't know how to evaluate it correctly. That's why you rely on the creator's reputation.
Visual appeal
Your trustworthiness will be largely judged by the appearance and quality of your content - especially video. People use the mental shortcut that good quality content equals a trustworthy person and bad quality content equals an untrustworthy person. It's not always true, and the authenticity and informational value of the content certainly play a big role, too, but people will generally have a problem justifying paying a lot of money for something that doesn't look good.
Pricing
The best way to price your digital products is to look at what the competition charges. Some courses are severely overpriced, and their creators rely on a naive audience rather than providing value. The rates you'll find depend greatly on a given industry and country. We'd advise being reasonable and starting lower rather than higher. If it's going to do well, you can increase the price anytime.
Where to sell your digital products?
It's likely every digital product will be hosted and sold via different platforms. It's also likely you offer plenty of stuff for free and have other things you want to show your potential customers, too. The problem is your social media profiles have only one line for a link. The easy solution is to use Flowlance, a free link-in-bio Creator Store, where you can sell all your digital products, offer lead magnets in exchange for the customer's email to build your email list, or offer freebies. You can also list all your social media profiles, websites, or other links. You can sell many of your digital products directly on Flowlance or simply include a link to any 3rd party platform like Etsy for products or services sold elsewhere.
Your digital products will be nicely listed based on their type on your own creator store, which is optimized for high conversions. If you work with clients on a more personalized basis, you can also sell your 1:1 sessions and session bundles thanks to a fully integrated session management in Flowlance.
Remember
👉 Productizing helps scale your expertise, reaching infinite buyers with zero reproduction cost.
👉 You can start if you have an audience of thousands or an exceptionally loyal smaller audience.
👉 When you test the waters and see your audience isn’t overwhelmingly excited, focus on growing your brand instead.
👉 Reputation matters most for knowledge-based products. With creative assets, all you need is a good demonstration.
👉 High-quality visuals increase perceived trustworthiness and justify premium pricing.
👉 Using link-in-bio tool like Flowlance allows you to offer and sell everything from a single place - your own creator store.
Homework
1️⃣ Brainstorm product ideas and list 3-5 potential digital products you could create based on your expertise, such as courses, templates, or eBooks.
2️⃣ Research competitors and analyze similar products in your industry. Note their pricing, format, and what makes them successful.
3️⃣ Survey your audience by creating a poll or ask them directly about the types of digital products they'd find most valuable.
4️⃣ If you're going for it, set up your Flowlance Creator Store for free to prepare a central hub for your digital products, sessions, lead magnets, and freebies.
👏 Spectacular progress!
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Launch Digital Products
Sell e-books, guides, templates, and videos with ease. Build your audience, collect emails, and turn your knowledge into profit - all in just a few clicks.
Offer 1:1 Sessions
Turn your expertise into personalized coaching. Manage scheduling, payments, and client interactions with a simple, integrated system that works for you.
Offer Coaching Bundles
Package your 1:1 sessions into bundles and offer them at a great value. Make it easy for clients to book multiple sessions, while you earn more.
Build Memberships
Create exclusive content for your community and offer recurring subscriptions. Engage your members & grow your revenue—no tech skills needed.
Create Lead Magnets
Attract new customers with irresistible lead magnets like free guides, checklists, and templates. Grow your email list and convert visitors into loyal customers fast.
Build Custom Products
Design and sell custom digital products tailored to your audience. Whether it’s unique services or personalized offerings, Flowlance makes it easy to bring your ideas to life.
