One of the best ways to bring in passive income is by selling digital products. Why? Once you’ve figured out what products you can create — and they’re tailored to your target audience, which we’ll discuss in a minute — you can sell them over and over again.

But how much can you really make by launching your own digital product shop? That’s what I talk about in the video above and the blog below: how my digital product shop is able to generate $20,000 in just one month.

I know what digital products my target audience wants

To start running a successful digital product shop, you have to know your target audience. Like, really know them. 

• Where do they live?
• What do they do for work and how much money do they make?
• What’s their education level?
• What are their values, hobbies, and interests?
• What’s their pain point?
• How do you provide a solution to that pain point?
• How does that solution translate into a digital product?
• What kind of digital products do they prefer? (Full courses instead of checklists, PDF road maps instead of video tutorials, etc.)

You should be able to answer all those questions about your target audience with little to no hesitation. And once you can answer those questions, you can figure out what type of digital products they’d want to buy.

After you’ve narrowed down your target audience, you can hone your idea for your digital product. Take the information you’ve gathered and specify your offer. Make it as straightforward and easy as possible — and make it high-quality. That’s a better and more lucrative strategy than churning out a bunch of low-quality digital products that no one will buy.

For example, over at The Contract Shop®, it’s super clear what we offer our customers: rock solid and legit contracts that you can customize for your services or business. There’s no mystery about what someone’s getting when they purchase, and it solves an obvious problem.

A “high-quality” product doesn’t need to be a timesuck or expensive, BTW. The fastest way to boost your digital product shop’s income is to create Minimal Viable Products, or MVPs. They’re bare-bones products that are efficient and uncomplicated, yet still solve your customers’ pain points. They validate the core idea of your product to ensure it’ll sell.

Another tip for boosting income and testing the waters with your new digital product idea? Pre-selling! Preselling brings in cash upfront to help you further develop your product. You’ll also get valuable feedback from early customers so you can tweak your product.

I drive traffic to my digital product shop

Imagine spending all your time creating a kickass digital product shop, only for it to go live and then…nothing happens. It’s a nightmare. But don’t worry! There are ways to nudge your audience over your way. You just have to do the work to drive traffic to your shop.

Increasing traffic to your digital product shop is an almost surefire way to rake in more sales. The more eyes you get on your website, the more chances you have of selling your products. 

How do I do that, exactly? By building a strong brand and having a strong online presence. That means focusing on:

• Valuable, consistent content
• Engagement with my target audience
• Connecting with others in your space

Sharing consistent and valuable content — whether that’s on your blog, on YouTube, on Instagram and Pinterest, or all of those platforms — open up more pathways for customers to find your digital product shop online. Plus, you can show off your skills and knowledge, building trust with your audience.

Simply sharing content isn’t enough, though. You have to engage with your audience. Keep the conversations going on social media by hosting polls, Q&As, or livestreams! Ask and answer questions in your blog comments. Reply to people who reply to your email newsletter. 

Finally, connecting with other people in your space like small biz owners, partners, influencers, and affiliates is so helpful, because they can help drive traffic to your site! Having other people drive traffic to your products increases your brand reach and boosts your sales.

I’ve built up trust with my customers

Great content and engagement with your audience helps build your trustworthiness factor for sure. But there’s another way to build trust with your customers directly from your digital product shop.

The moments after your customer purchases something from your digital product shop are crucial! Don’t just deliver the product they bought and vanish from their memory. You have an opportunity here to show how trustworthy and valuable you are. (And why they should recommend your shop to all their friends.)

Think about what happens when you buy a product online. You’re expecting the company to send you an order confirmation email, a delivery email, or some combination of the two. That means you’re most likely going to open that email no matter what. We biz owners wish we had that kind of open rate for our regular email newsletters!

Since customers are expecting your email, you should make the most of it. Give them all the deets they’ll be looking for about their order, but then kick it up a notch. Share a helpful resource. Include links to your blog or social. Ask them for feedback.

This is a simple but effective way to nurture your relationship with a new customer and build trust. I dive deeper into this whole strategy in this video, so be sure to give that a watch!

H2: You can hit your passive income goals too

Let me be clear. Following the tips in this blog doesn’t mean you’ll make $$$$ right out of the gate. I’ve been in the D-Commerce® game for over six years now. To make it to where I am today, there’s been trial-and-error, imposter syndrome, and second guessing myself. 

But that’s part of what makes the success so sweet! I’ve learned a lot and my confidence has skyrocketed. It’s taken a lot of hard work to pinpoint what works for me and my shop. So I know that you can just as easily do this for your own business.

The first step in hitting your monthly income goal? Creating that first digital download product. Of course, that can be one of the hardest parts. Want my help figuring out what to make? Download my Ultimate Product Creation Guide and get started!