In today’s video, I’m talking about how to productize the things that you’re great at–take your options, your proprietary systems and your agency, your freelancer company–taking those entities and turning them into digital products so you can get paid passively. Let’s go!
By definition, “productize” is taking a service and turning it into some type of product or taking a concept and turning that into a product. And so, in this video, I wanna show you how to take the things you already learned, the things you already know how to do, and the way you execute, gift wrapping and turning that into a product that you can sell as passive income.
As you all know, I run a branding, web design and development agency called 5Four Digital. Now in that agency, we have a knowledge base of a ton of SOPs, or standard operating procedures we use to run the business.
I suggest you do check out my knowledge base video right here when you can, as well as learning about standard operating procedures a bit, so you can start to systematize your business, so you can then take those pieces and components and turn them into products.
So what I mean by that is, there is a guy–the homie, Jesse Showalter, he has a Youtube channel as well–and he also sells digital products. Now after we did an interview about a year ago, I told him how he could take things that he does in his design agency and turn them into products.
So Jesse took that and he ran with it, and he took his project proposal, his client survey, and different parts of his agency, and turned them into digital products. He basically took everything he knew that he was already doing for his clients and turned them into digital products he could then use.
As you can see, he has his project proposal here as a doc, he has his client survey here as a doc, and he’s made additional income by doing this. So any content that he’s creating or sharing, he’s tying into these digital products and then people are able to go in and buy that piece of expertise, thus saving them some time.
So just to show you an example, if I go into our knowledge base, I can see a whole bunch of our internal processes here. I can see project update guides, job templates–all this cool stuff. So one thing that we turn into a digital product is actually done–probably about 40K in revenue by itself–is job templates.
So if I click here and I go to Job Templates, I have all my job templates here and then I have a link to our job template that’s broken up by a 90-day project right here. What I’ve done is, I’ve turned–literally–this thing that we already use with clients into a digital product. Now there’s a few ways that you can do that.
One, you can create a landing page on your website. Here’s my personal website, this is a course for standard operating procedures, I’m gonna change this to job templates.
What I did is I created a landing page for this product. It’s really easy and simple to do, I just use existing content from that page. As you can see, it has the details on the job templates, a little bit of information, and then some testimonials as social proof, and then you can click and download that course.
You can also watch the video intro as well.
Now, when you click Get the Course, it takes you to a new open link here, where it says agency job templates. You can purchase that for $39, you hit Buy Now, and now that user has access to that job template.
Let’s say you’re a new agency owner–me being in this space for 8 years and working with clients and doing seven figures in revenue gives me the expertise to be able to take that piece of content, repurpose it, and use that as a product that you can then sell.
So think about things that you do in your agency, think about how you’ve had proprietary things in your agency–like a brand identity guide, or the way that you do a brand discovery–and see how you can turn that into a digital product.
Now let’s walk through the steps of getting that done.
First thing that you wanna do is isolate the item that you wanna turn into a digital product. Let’s say it’s the job templates doc here. I want to turn this into a digital product.
The first thing you’re gonna want is a landing page–and I’m just gonna break down the components of what you want for a landing page.
One, you want a quick video intro–it could be 30 seconds to a minute, just talking about what the product entails. Then, some bullet points or features: I’m getting 10+ job templates, I’ve got 12 years of experience, and I have more than 120 five-star reviews. So two features and one piece of social proof. a little bit of details about that specific product, and then kind of a breakdown of that.
So you can build this in, probably, a couple of hours.
Then, you want to have some type of social proof. What I recommend is, any accolades, any people that are talking about you on Twitter, any reviews you get, text messages, create a folder on your Google Drive and call that thing Accolades or Reviews, or anything you think would work well.
I have a folder–I actually have a ton for the different businesses that we have–called Accolades, and you can see reviews and tweets, and you can basically see any screenshot of anyone that’s talked great about us.
Now what this does is it creates a repository of positive information and social proof and affirmation that you’re good at what you do. You’re gonna take that information, and put it on your landing page.
So just to reiterate where we are so far, you’ve got an intro about your digital product, you’ve got a quick video(1 minute, 60 second synopsis), you have a little bit of information here–and again, you don’t even need all of this as a detail.
As you can see with Jesse’s products, his project proposal is literally an image and one sentence. He’s selling this for $4.99 and anyone can go on and purchase this. So you want that information, you’ve got your social proof here, and then you have FAQs as well.
Now you have the title, video, features, a link to get the course–which I’ll get into soon–a quick synopsis, and then social proof and FAQs.
Again, you don’t need all that info, you can pretty much get it done with a landing page–and I’ll show you what to do in regards to that.
Now once your landing page is built, you might ask, “Well, where can I host this product? How can I sell this product?” And there’s a few really great components that you can use.
One is Podia. Listen, I’m so much of a fan that they actually feature me on the homepage–this is not a paid endorsement, it’s just a really great tool. One of my courses has actually done 200K+ using the Podia platform.
Podia lets you create different courses so you can add online courses, digital downloads, community, webinars, you can do coaching–I mean, it’s pretty much a one-stop shop for these types of products. So you could add digital products for a pretty nominal price. Pricing right now, I think, is at $33 per month and you get to try it for free for two weeks.
So if you sell a course and you sell a digital product, and you sell one, it’s already paid for itself. Set it up and you can add your digital products there, and make sure that you have a place for people to click through on that landing page.
You can even create a landing page native on Podia. So again, just a really great tool to be able to do that also.
Another one is Gumroad, where you can sell one off products. This is the one that Jesse Showalter is using here as well. You can go to Gumroad and you can pretty much set up a landing page for your products and sell them there.
They take a percentage–this is pretty much their fee here. So that’s what they take out, which is not a ton, it’s almost no monthly fee, they just take off per transaction.
There’s also another option called Samcart, which is another way to build quick landing pages to sell online courses, eBooks, membership sites, all that good stuff.
Now if you wanna do it completely native, Webflow is a CMS and website builder you can use to create a whole template around your course and resources.
Again, if you don’t wanna do something with heavy lifting and really just want to leverage your expertise, you might not wanna go this route. But if you’re like, “Hey, I can probably build a nice passive income business from this,” you might want to think about purchasing a Webflow template and getting that filled out.
So just to reiterate everything and what we’ve done, think about what in your business you can turn into a product that’s proprietary to how you run the business and how you do things. Then, what you’re gonna do is take that idea and then think about how you can turn it into an online course.
All you need is a landing page–again, not a super descriptive one, really depends on pricing. If it’s a low-cost product, you really don’t need a ton of details. So if you’re selling on, like, Gumroad and it’s a quick-like client handbook or something really simple, you don’t really need a long form landing page. Now if you’re looking to sell a larger course, then you want to have a landing page with more information, that’s more informative for the end user.
Ultimately, you don’t need that for the smaller products. Then, to get your landing page built, you use a platform like Samcart or Gumroad or Podia to get the job done. Now, you’re off and running.
The last piece of this is you wanna make sure that you’re showcasing your courses everywhere. So have it on your website, have it in your email newsletter, send it to your current audience, create content around it–maybe you’re creating content around it to be able to sell it, like Youtube videos–and I guarantee you’re gonna make some nice passive income out of it.
Again, I hope this was helpful, you all.
As you all know, I’m always a fan of any comments, likes, and feedback I can get. So make sure you Subscribe, make sure you Comment, make sure you jump in and join the conversation.
Again, thank you for the view, make sure you ask questions, and I will see you all next week.
