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Episode 9Mar 5, 2021· 9:35

Creating Products for Your Blog Readers

▸ Show notes from the creator
I hope this episode inspires you to look into creating and launching your own products for sale my bloggy friends. We don’t have to be the smartest in the room. We just have to know a little more than the people we’re creating things for. I believe in each and every one of you, and I know you have greatness within you. More Show Notes From This Episode: What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/ Be sure to follow me on social: Facebook | Instagram | X | LinkedIn | TikTok | YouTube ------------------------------------------------------------------- This podcast is supported by affiliate partnerships. Please check out a few of our partners below: – Start a podcast today here: https://rss.com?via=famous – Create content from your own voice with Castmagic's Suite of AI Tools: https://get.castmagic.io/dcjy15cirnts – Want to help support our show? Buy a girl a drink perhaps? https://ko-fi.com/famousashleygrant – Need content for your podcast or blog? Check out Tools for Motivation! The links above are affiliate links. This means my podcast will receive a small commission if you order through any of them at no additional cost to you. Affiliate commissions are one of the ways my podcast makes money so that I can create episodes free of charge. If you do purchase anything from my links, I sincerely would like to thank you for your support!
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About this episode
I hope this episode inspires you to look into creating and launching your own products for sale my bloggy friends. We don’t have to be the smartest in the room. We just have to know a little more than the people we’re creating things for. I believe in each and every one of you, and I know you have greatness within you. More Show Notes From This Episode: What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show…
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Full transcript
00:00
Creating products in a vacuum is a great way to waste a lot of time and money on books, workshops, courses, etc. that won't sell. What's up, bloggy friends? Famous Ashley Grant here, and today I want to talk about creating products for your blog readers. If there's one thing that holds promising entrepreneurs back from leveling up their business, it's this, a lack of confidence in creating and selling products. Sure, you think that new course, ebook, or workshop is a great idea, but how do you know it will sell? If you're like me, you don't even want to imagine spending weeks or even months of time plus the cost of document design, video editing, and all the other pieces that go along with it, only to discover that it's not what your audience wants or needs.
01:02
You know, that feeling would be really frustrating. And that's why I want to share a couple of ideas that you can use to move forward without leaving it to chance. There are plenty of ways to test your idea before spending the time and energy on a full launch. In fact, I tested a few of these ideas before spending time launching, and I think these insights will help you create and launch your own products for your blog readers.
01:30
Now, the first one may seem a little bit obvious, but the first and best method to get started is simply to ask your readers if they want what you're thinking about selling. It's the simplest way to get a feel for what your readers want and need. You can create a survey on SurveyMonkey or even a Google form and send it out to your mailing list. Or if you don't have a mailing list yet, but you do have an engaged community on social media, you could post a survey link on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Now for best results, what you're going to want to do is ask things simple like, what are you struggling with?
02:05
What's your preferred learning method? Do you like to learn with video, text, audio? How do you prefer to learn? And you could also say something like, what do you feel the training or product that you're considering with launching is worth? For example, let's say you're thinking about launching an ebook about how to be a blogger. You could ask your readers, if you were to release something like that, how much they think it would be worth. And that could be something that could be your jumping off point for your price. These three survey questions will tell you a lot that you need to know in order to create a program or book or some kind of product that's practically guaranteed to sell. Another thing you could add to your survey is something along the lines of, if I were to create a product, what would you want? They say that the best way to sell something is to give people exactly what they ask for.
03:00
By the way, I just want to give a quick side note here. As a blogger, you need an email list if you want to do this full time. That is unless you're doing what I'm doing and ghost blogging. I have to say I've been very fortunate to skate by without an email list because of the type of work that I've been doing for my clients. However, even I recognize that based on my work with them, that the money really is in the email list. In fact, it's why I'm planning still on preparing my own email acquisition campaign for my own websites. All right, we'll save the email list talk for another episode. I want to get back to the best ways to test your product ideas.
03:40
The next best way to test your product idea with your audience is to listen to their complaints. If you have a community or a part of one with potential ideal clients, you should pay attention to what they're asking about the most. For example, let's say you have a Facebook group and you're constantly sharing your blog posts with your readers and they're always asking the same questions in your comments. That could be the basis for an awesome book, another blog post, a sponsored pitch, anything. Or if you're in a Facebook group and you're a craft blogger and people keep asking questions about things like how to sell crafts on Etsy or where to get the best supplies to make your crafts a little bit cheaper, then clearly there's a need for training in that area. A third way to test your product ideas is to actually launch a sales page with a test offer. If you have been thinking about launching a course or
04:40
a book, you could announce it and put it up on a sales page to see whether or not anyone has an interest in it. I personally did this with a course a long time ago, and I actually sold two seats in a workshop before I ever recorded a single session for it. In fact, one of the things you can do is pre -launch a book on Amazon. Amazon allows you to pre -launch, and you can pre -sell it up to 90 days in advance. Of course, if you don't load your book 10 days prior to its official publication date, the pre -orders are canceled. And the other thing you need to know is if you do choose to go this route, you won't be allowed to do pre -order sales for a full year afterwards if you decide to take it offline instead of actually launching the book.
05:24
But the thing is, this is a great way to test the waters with your audience if you want to make sure that you'll make money before putting in a bunch of effort. I did have a friend that did this and they then sold so many that they only had a month to write and launch their book. But if you're looking for a way to give yourself a kick in the pants and light a fire under your butt, it's a great way to go ahead and put it out there, offer it for sale, and then get to work. Another way of pre -selling that I've seen is using GoFundMe or Kickstarter or some other crowdsourcing, crowdfunding website. One of my bloggy friends had a Kickstarter up before he even started working on his book. Once it was fully funded, then he got to work, sharing updates along the way while creating fabulous blog content to give his audience a front row seat to the behind the scenes work that it took to write and publish it. The possibilities with this are
06:21
completely endless. The final way I want to share of how to test your idea before you launch is to study other bloggers and what they did when they launched their products and books for sale. They might have even documented it and you can get an insider's look into how they went about selling it to their audience. If you don't already, you should create a list of bloggers, social media influencers, maybe even your top competitors.
06:48
and start reading their blogs, their emails, lurk in their Facebook groups. Hell, you might even want to buy their products. This is a great way to gain insight into what they're doing, not to copy them, but to discover what's working, what's selling, and what people are getting excited about. If you do consider buying their products, obviously you never want to copy them, but it could give you a chance to get your feet wet by promoting their product as an affiliate. Not only will this help you test the waters of marketing and selling, but it will give you a feel for what's missing and what you could do better.
07:23
From there, you can go and create a better, more comprehensive version of the products you're already selling or that they're selling. And if you don't want to be an affiliate, you can bypass that idea completely and dive right into creating something better than the competition. Who knows, you might be able to create a light or lower cost version of the book or course or whatever it is that you're seeing and hit the ground running with your target audience. If you take nothing else from this episode, please hear this. Creating products in a vacuum is a great way to waste a lot of time and money on books, workshops, courses, etc. that won't sell.
08:03
And what I mean by in a vacuum is where You get the idea, you work hard on it, you launch it, and you sell to crickets. Instead, pay attention to what your blog readers are already asking for, find out what they're willing to pay for, and delve into your competitors' offers. The information you gain from these activities alone will give you incredible insight into your market, what they need, what they want, and what's not out there, and then you can go and make it easy.
08:32
to create your own hot selling products for your blog readers. I really hope that this episode inspires you to look into something like creating your own products or books or whatever for sale. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to know a little bit more than the people that you're creating things for. I believe in each one of you, my bloggy friends, and I know you have greatness within you. Until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate be low.