How to make your first digital product sale (Video included)

So you’ve done it. You’ve created your first digital product, and now it’s time to make your first sale. If you haven’t yet, it’s okay – it might take a little time. And there’s no shame in taking time to find the right way to market your product to make that first sale. But once you get the ball rolling, all the sales after that will come in much faster.

So, let’s discuss effective (and easy-to-utilize) marketing strategies to help you make that first digital product sale and get the ball rolling.

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7 strategies to help you make your first digital product sale

Strategy #1: Utilize your email list!

The best place to sell your online courses and make the first digital product sale is your email list. You’ve spent time cultivating it and engaging with your subscribers, now it’s time to use your email list to its full potential! You already know it’s a place where people are truly interested in what you have to offer. So, once your digital product is ready, utilize your email list and promote it there.

You can make the promotion as simple or complicated as you want. If it’s a bigger digital product like an ebook, you might want to do a pre-launch email campaign. Create a series of emails (3-4 should be enough) that you’ll send out a week or so leading to the product launch date.

Otherwise, you can simply create one email with all the information. And send it on the day of the product launch with a call to action for your audience to buy it and a link to the landing page where they can do it with ease.

Strategy #2: Set up order bumps

An order bump is a sales strategy that involves advertising an additional product on your checkout page. Usually, that additional product is a lower-cost one that doesn’t require a lot of consideration. You want it to be a high-value product that is a no brainer for your customer to decide to buy.

If you want to make your first digital product sale, you should definitely take advantage of this strategy. Set up your digital product as an order bump, so that when people buy your courses they can also see that you offer a digital product to complement the course.

Teachable’s new digital product feature makes it super easy to set up an order bump, so it’ll only take you a few minutes to do.

Strategy #3: Optimize your product page

Your product landing page is one of the most important marketing assets you have. This is a place where people who come to your website get all the information they need to decide whether or not they’ll make a purchase. Your job is to create a landing page that’ll convince them.

Here are a few key elements of a successful sales page you want to keep in mind when creating your product sales page:

• Clear product explanation: Explain what is it that people are buying and why they should buy it.
• Social proof: Show them it’s a valuable product and give them a sneak peek so they want the whole thing!
• Clear call to action: Make it super easy to buy.

Teachable’s new digital product feature has a landing page builder that allows you to build custom sales pages for each of your digital products. It’s fully customizable and easy to edit. You can change images, choose different layouts and truly customize each page to fit your brand the best:

Strategy #4: Promote your product on social media

If you use social media to promote your online course business, consider using it to promote your new digital product to get the first sale. There are two ways you can use social media:

• Build pre-launch excitement: You can easily get people excited about your new digital product by announcing it in advance and offering pre-orders. Maybe even offer a discounted “early bird” price for those who pre-order before the release date.
• Promote post-launch: If your product is already out, use your social media accounts to let your audience know that you have a product and where they can find it.

Depending on what kind of digital product you launched, you might want to consider showcasing how it can benefit your audience and why they might want to buy it.

For example, if you’re a personal finance coach who offers online courses on personal finance and your digital product is a budget template, consider creating a few short videos for TikTok or Instagram Reels that showcase how people can use your budget template to budget.

Strategy #5: Run a limited-time sale

The fear of missing out is an extremely effective tactic for motivating people to make a purchase. So, you can utilize this in your marketing efforts and make your first digital download sale by offering a discount for a limited amount of time.

You can run a limited 24-hour sale where you offer a 40% or even more percent discount on your digital product. Make sure you’re doing them sparingly though! If you offer big sales too often, people will come to expect them and they won’t be as effective. Plus, you might dilute the value of your product.

Teachable’s new digital product feature allows you to create custom coupons for your digital products that you can utilize to run a limited-time sale on your digital store. Create a coupon, share it with your audience on socials, or make it more exclusive and only share a coupon code with people who buy your courses or join your email list.

Strategy #6: Consider affiliate marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the most effective forms of marketing. People buy from people they trust. That’s why social proof is so important for online course creators.

The good news is that you can easily utilize word-of-mouth marketing by creating an affiliate program to incentivize people to promote your digital product to their audience. And don’t worry, it’s not hard to do!

You’ll want to offer either a commission (10%, 15%, etc. per sale) or a referral fee ($5, $15, $50 per referral) as an incentive. You might even consider adding other perks like discount codes or free products for your affiliates to further incentivize them to promote your brand and products.

Anna from The She Approach has a “sell 5 get 1 free” offer for her affiliates which is a great incentive because her affiliates can get her awesome products (online courses, ebooks, and more) for free:

Strategy #7: Create more products

Lastly, you want to create more products for your digital store. The way it works is pretty simple – the more digital downloads you’ll have in your online store, the more options your audience will have.

For example, imagine you sell personal finance online courses that teach people how to get out of debt, build wealth and learn to invest. The only digital download you have to complement your courses is an ebook about paying off debt using a snowball method.

While this particular ebook might be useful for people who are interested in learning more in-depth about the snowball method to pay off debt, it might not be what other students will find useful.

If you expand your digital product library to have more products like workbooks, budget spreadsheets, and other personal finance-related products, chances are that you’ll be able to help more people and increase your chances of making your first sale in return.

Making that first sale

If you’ve got a quality product and you promote it well, we have no doubt you’ll be making sales in no time. Use these tactics to make sure your audience is fully aware of the stellar product you’re offering!