Are you planning to create your own online product? Are you confident about creating a product that people will pay for? Are you ready to face the challenges that come with the territory of selling your own products? If you’re not, we have the following 10 steps for you, on how to create and sell your own online products successfully.
1. Make Something People Can Actually Use
Think in terms of an eBook or tutorial that offers useful tips and information on a less-known topic. Let’s say you notice that a very famous product does not have any documentation in English. You could come up with an easy-to-understand tutorial to serve this shortage, and it is something that people will find useful and therefore buy.
2. Know Who Your Target Audience Is
Don’t ask among your friends – you won’t get the right input. Rather, look for people who’re asking for the information you’re providing. Apply specific keywords to get to the questions and know who your target audience is. This will help you identify who exactly will buy your product, and how much they would pay for it.
3. Know What Your Audience Wants
You don’t need to create a complex product to wow your market. All you need is to understand what your audience really wants. People want more of things that make them happy, and less of things like uncertainty, fear and so on. Create products that focus on eliminating people’s pain points, and you have a strong online product.
4. Create Something Unique
Don’t offer something generic; whatever you put out there must be unique, both in name and content. Make your product specific, actionable and doable. For example, instead of writing an eBook on how to become a successful online entrepreneur, offer insights on how to make a specific amount within a specific time period.
5. Make Sure You Focus On The Marketing As Well
Creating a unique, special product is only half the job done. What you need to do is to market the perceived usefulness of the product through various channels. If people don’t know about the usefulness of what you’ve put out there, they won’t be buying it.
6. Do Put In The Research
Make sure that your product contains the most current information. For this you’ll have to invest in research, stay updated, and constantly check up on your market to see if anyone else is offering something similar. If they are, look for more unique things that you can add to your product to make it stand out.
7. Save People Money In The Long Run
People are interesting in things that make a difference to their lives – in specific, they are happy with things that help them save money. People will be willing for pay for a product that will pay for itself over time. This means that your product has to continue to prove its value, helping your customers solve their issues for a long time.
8. Test Market Reception With A Working Prototype
To get your product vision right, you need feedback from your target market. Identify a couple of people from this market and get them to use your working prototype. You will be able to glean all the faults in your product and correct them in this way. Your users can be your friends, or you can even pay your target users to be your testers.
9. Work On Creating Useful Iterations
Make sure each iteration is complete in itself and offers usefulness, which increases with every iteration. Also, hold back on advanced features till you get user feedback. With each iteration, it’ll become harder to make up for earlier mistakes, which means even your first iteration must be tested thoroughly before it hits the market.
10. Your Product Should Talk To Everyone
There’s no point in being elitist with your product. Make it good enough for anyone to use, and simple enough that anyone can use. Don’t consider anybody too stupid to use your product. If your user is not willing to buy your product even they need it, it’s not their fault. It’s your product’s fault for not being intuitive or clear enough.
11. Use The Best Team You Can
If you’re developing your product entirely by yourself, get it run by a few experts. If you’re working with a team, work only with the best. No one created a great offering by using mediocre talent. Get the best people and deliver something great and elitist – the hallmark of quality should stand out from a mile away.
12. Construct The Offer Right
Focus on the value you’ll be delivering to people and construct your offer accordingly. Whether your offer is in the form of a sales letter or web copy, it should hit the right buttons with your audience. Start with your understanding of your audience’s pain points, and use your copy to explain exactly how your product is going to help them eliminate those pain points.
Stephen works for Invesp and writes on various eCommerce related topics including lead conversion and tips to optimize site for lead conversion.