One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that you can potentially sell something to anyone, anywhere in the world.
You might already do this in your business, or you could be focusing on customers in your local area instead.
Over the last decade, there has been a growing trend towards digital products, courses and workshops. These are all forms of instantly accessible content. An interested customer can purchase and gain immediate access.
For you as a business owner, this is something that you can sell in your sleep. Once the product is created, you’re able to sell it many times over. It doesn’t need inventory or manual labour.
It’s easy to feel like your business isn’t suitable for these types of products. Maybe you run a restaurant or you’re a mechanic. These are physical jobs where you’re creating a dining experience or carrying out essential maintenance tasks to keep a vehicle running.
Almost every business can come up with something that they’re able to sell digitally. You just need to focus on the problems that your customers suffer from. These are the things that they’re looking to solve.
Here’s a few examples:
- Mechanic - A mechanic could put together a workshop or short course that teaches their customers how to maintain their car during the winter. It might seem easy to the mechanic, but to many of their customers it could be something that they struggle with. Wouldn’t it be great for them to learn a new skill and for the mechanic to deliver more value to his or her customers?
- Photographer - Photographers have a great opportunity to share their skills with others. Many people own digital cameras and would love to learn how to take better pictures. A photographer could create a course on landscape or portrait photography, something that gives them access to a new revenue stream and audience.
- Restaurant - A restaurant owner could run online workshops to teach their customers how to recreate the taste and flavours of their favourite dining experience. They could even put together meal kits to run alongside this and create a whole new revenue stream for their business. These workshops would also be perfect as an in-person event at their restaurant.
- Therapist - There are many different areas of therapy, from sports therapists to counsellors. This gives scope for a wide range of products and ideas. A hypnotherapist might decide that a ‘stop smoking’ product would be great for their audience. Whereas a sports therapist could create a course that teaches athletes to be more confident.
There is an initial time investment required to create the product and to set up how it will be delivered to your customers. However, once this has been done, the only focus needs to be on sales.
The best part is that you can pre-sell your products before you’ve even created them, taking away any elements of risk. Simply present the offer to your existing audience and set a pre-sales goal. Once you hit that number of sales, you can create your product and launch it to the world!
Digital products, courses and workshops allow you to bring a new revenue stream to your business. It could even open your business up to a whole new audience.
