It can be difficult to earn an income through blogging and throughout the Blog Life U conference, we learned about the importance of pursuing multiple income streams to diversify your income. You don’t want to have all your blogging eggs in one basket. We talked about working with brands, affiliate marketing and now Becky Mansfield from Your Modern Family discusses the importance of launching your own products… more specifically, how to build abundance through product launches – and it does not have to be as scary as you think!
Disclaimer: I received a free virtual ticket to the Blog Life University 2017 Conference as a member of the NC Blogger Network in return for sharing my conference notes and key takeaways. This post contains affiliate links as indicated by an asterisk. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me at no extra cost to you.
Becky says if your blog disappeared tomorrow, you would still have products you could sell to keep your income coming in? Selling products is also a passive method of income, once it’s created and available for sale, you don’t have to invest more time in it like you would for selling services. The product will sell itself and could bring in more income with less effort, doesn’t that sound great?
Becky says she launched her *Potty Train in a Weekend ebook and not only did it become a top 25 Amazon bestselling book in toilet training but it also enabled her to get speaking engagements and sponsored posts to further increase her income. She brings in a substantial income, and her ebook that costs less than $10, helped her get there!
Launching a Digital Product to Sell
So now how do we decide on what to sell? Before you think, you can’t do it or that you need a brick and mortar store or lots of space to house inventory, think again. Let’s see what you can do, and what digital products you can sell. Becky takes us through her typical launch sequence for a new digital product.
- Look at your most popular posts – What problem can you solve?
- Make sure your blog post doesn’t give the entire solution.
- Figure out what teaser information you can give away for free to get people on your email list.
- Offer a more comprehensive solution to a problem as your product to sell.
- Build anticipation for your email subscribers before product launches so everyone is itching to buy it (readers typically need to hear a message 7 times before they purchase).
Helpful Tips for Product Launches
Becky was very open and honest about answering audience questions. I think we were all blown away at this spunky mom of 4 who has had such amazing success from something so simple as providing potty training answers. What parent doesn’t need help with potty training?
And she doesn’t spend 100 hours a week blogging (she can write a blog post in 15 minutes!). She has a family to take care of so blogs part-time hours but earns a full-time income. So I jotted down her helpful tips even though they didn’t relate to product launches.
- Keep blogging simple. While she writes blog posts in 15 minutes, she admits that photography is not her strong suit. So she avoids food sponsored posts or craft posts that require lots of images.
- She writes her ebooks in Word, saves them as a pdf and then uploads to ejunkie or Shopify to sell.
- She uses Asana to manage her tasks and especially for keeping post and image files together and due dates for sponsored posts.
- She also uses Asana to color code her editorial calendar
- Your e-book can simply be a compilation of blog posts on one topic. She says even though the content is available for free on her site (and she discloses in the e-book that it is), customers still purchase the e-book compilation because they appreciate the convenience of having the info all in one place and if her site ever went down, they still have the information.
Developing a digital product, like an e-book, can be a lucrative way to add income to your blogging efforts. It can be as simple as a compilation of your blog’s best posts on one topic or as complex as you like. The point is to start thinking about what products you can offer your audience that will be a helpful and inexpensive resource for them. Market it in different ways to your blog subscribers and see results for years to come.
Learn More About Product Launches
Ready to learn more about product launches? If you’re ready to –
Then you’re ready to become a *Launch Pro! Launch Pro will give you a STEP-BY-STEP process on how to build a relationship with your audience to ensure they don’t just buy from you once, but keep coming back for more. And by creating an audience targeted to what you’re pitching, you can drop the sales act and just write valuable content (and get PAID for it). Learn more at *Launch Pro and get ready to start diversifying your income.
Are you ready to try and develop a product? What kind of e-book can you write and sell? Let’s collaborate and discuss in the comments!
Reese Evans says
Thank you Tanya for sharing this. I read it and learn few new things from your article. Your thoughts and representing styles are really praiseworthy. Great work.