☁️ Digital Products: $550,000 with One Course, Lifetime Deals, Side Project Marketing

In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about product ideas, building an email list, monetizing your audience, crowdsourcing and more.

🔍 Problem

You know something that others don’t.

But 1:1 help does not scale.

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💡 Solution

Digital products help you share your knowledge in a scalable way.

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🏁 Players

Ebooks

• Landing Page Hot Tips • How to build effective landing pages
• Zero to Sold • How to start, run and sell a bootstrapped business
• Writing for Software Developers • How to write technical articles

Online Courses

• Notion Mastery • Master your life and business workflows with Notion
• Driven Digital • How to make passive income with affiliate marketing
• The Art of Visual Design • Improve the aesthetics of your product with images, colors, fonts and more

Templates

• Lume 3D • Portfolio website template for Webflow
• Figma iOS UI Kit • Responsive mobile app templates for iOS
• Design System UI Kit • Design system templates

Databases

• CyberLeads • 1,000+ handpicked companies that raised millions
• Free To Use Sounds • Library of royalty-free sounds
• ChatGPT Prompts • 1,000+ prompts for lawyers, recruiters, marketers and more

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🛠 How to Build Digital Products

• Build in public to earn trust.

• Vensy has built Notion Planner in public.
• Eelco Wiersma shares the new features of SaaS UI in public.
• Josh W. Comeau made $550,000 with CSS for JavaScript Developers. He was sharing short recordings of the course in public.

• Presell to validate demand.

• Jane Portman presold UI Audit (now free) for $3,500.
• Jay Clouse got 40 pre-orders for Podcast Like The Pros.
• Ayush Chaturvedi presold Make Money with Words for $512.

• Build an audience to get early customers.

• Quentin Villard made $3,000 by sharing TIMS with his audience.
• Xavier Coiffard says building an audience helped him launch UserBooster.
• Arvid Kahl used his audience on X (Twitter) to launch Zero to Sold. He sold 350 copies of the book in 24 hours.

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🌱 How to Grow Digital Products

• Use affiliate marketing to get others to sell your product.

• Gabe Ragland offers a 50% commission to Divjoy affiliates.
• Kerry Godsall offers a 50% commission to How to Sketch affiliates.
• Rob Austin and Michael Andreuzza offer up to 70% commission to Wicked Templates affiliates.
• Ryan Sager says Who Sponsors Stuff attracts customers through inbound inquiries and referrals. It makes $100,000 ARR.

• Use digital products as lead magnets. It’s easier to sell to warm leads.

• Nicole Osborne offers a free Agency Growth ebook.
• Dan Martell offers Growth Playbooks by SaaS Academy.
• Modest Mitkus offers free resources for making digital products.

• Use social media to drive traffic from your existing audience.

• JPatz is showing music beats on TikTok.
• Chris is promoting his SEO course on YouTube.
• Matt Olpinski embeds Project Proposal & Contract Bundle in his blog.

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💰 How to Monetize Digital Products

• Offer lifetime deals to get early users, feedback and revenue.

• Pixel True has a $299 lifetime deal for illustrations.
• Seth Kramer has a $159 lifetime deal for No Code MBA.
• Landingfolio has an $89 lifetime deal for all UI components.

• Offer a one-time pricing to lower mental overhead.

• Doing Content Right costs $300.
• Podcast Cover Templates cost $19,90.
• SaaS Conversion Strategies cost $157.

• Offer recurring plans to get predictable revenue.

• Mark Anderson sells cartoons for up to $75 per month.
• SaaSFrame offers SaaS layout examples for $14 per month.
• Andrew Kamphey sells Better Sheets for up to $29 per month. He made $200,000+.

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🔮 Predictions

• Companies will use side project marketing to get more leads.

• Clientjoy is a CRM for small businesses. They offer contract templates for freelancers and agencies.
• Surfer SEO is a content creation platform. They have an SEO Writing Masterclass to help you optimize your writing for SEO.
• Karthik Sridharan runs Flexiple, a recruiting agency. They made free illustrations that attracted 150,000 visitors in 24 hours.

• Platforms for selling digital products will offer real-time help to educate users. Sellers have a high lifetime value for platforms and this boosts customer success.

• Kajabi helps you make and grow digital products with 1:1 sessions.
• Teachable helps you make better digital products with group coaching.
• Thinkific helps you launch online courses with growth and marketing calls.

• Creators will crowdsource content to build products fast.

• Pieter Levels crowdsourced the chapters for MAKE.
• Lokesh Gupta wrote Art of Email List Growth based on insights from top email marketers.
• Gergely Orosz made $14,000 with The Tech Resume. He based the book on insights from recruiters and hiring managers.
• Philip Kiely made $39,141 with Writing for Software Developers. The book is based on interviews with software developers and writers.

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😠 Haters

“Digital products are easy to copy. It’s hard to build a moat.”
To boost value, base your digital product on your personal brand, unique experience and provide great customer support.

“Digital products are prone to piracy.”
This is true. If you’re worried about piracy, it can be wise to choose another business model.

“Some digital products get out of date fast.”
Some digital products are evergreen. For products on fast-paced topics, offer lifetime deals to boost the perceived value or sell updated versions as “new” products.

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🔗 Links

1. Made $550,000 with a Programming Course • The thread behind this report.
2. Building a Report on Digital Products • The tweet behind this report.
3. 77 Best Digital Products to Sell • List of digital products for bloggers, freelancers and more.
4. How I Made $3,000 With a Digital Product • Build, launch and grow a digital product without tech skills.

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📁 Related Reports

• Ebooks • Learn from the lives of others and explore new worlds.
• Data as a Service • Gain a competitive edge by fueling your decisions with the right data.
• Email Courses • Deliver promised transformations in a scalable way.
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • Find your highest point of leverage.
• Audience-First Products • Validate products, build distribution and stay accountable.

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