The E-commerce Leader

Adding a digital product to your ecommerce business
[00:00:00] Michael Veazey: So Jason today, we’re going to be discussing digital products, which I know is a subject close to your heart. And I’m also a massive fan of digital products, but I know we are talking particularly about adding a digital product to a thriving, physical business, which is interesting. So I know that they can create a huge set of advantages to grow your business in instant way.
[00:00:17] So we’re going to cover these and give suggestions on how to make it real in the business. Um, so awesome topic. Why should a physical product Salado add a digital product? Um, To a physical product type business.
[00:00:31] Jason Miles: Sure. Yeah. I love this, this topic it’s near and dear to my heart. Obviously we, we built our whole business for the last decade around digital products. And, um, so lots of thoughts and ideas to share on this one. Um, I guess the, you know, to answer the question, the reason why. There three or four really good reasons.
[00:00:50] I mean, solid, solid ideas. The first one is it’s another product that you can sell, you know? I mean, like you create a digital product, you’ve got another, you’ve just stacked another [00:01:00] item in your product suite, I guess, you know, Brendon Burchard calls it an integrated product suite. And so you’ve got a second thing you can sell.
[00:01:07] And, uh, and so that’s. By itself. I mean, just a great reason, uh, to do it, but obviously a digital product is a lot different than physical product. So it gives you a different product, but you can sell that product in a lot of different ways. Um, sell it on your own website is the suggestion I would make to people.
[00:01:26] Um, and there are tons of benefits to that, but if you don’t want to sell it on your website own website, you could also still sell it on marketplaces. You could sell it on Amazon. You know, through create space, um, Kindle direct publishing and, or you could sell it on Etsy or other marketplaces. So, uh, you know, so that’s the second, the second reason to do it is if you’re looking for a powerful anchor to your own website, uh, you know, digital product can be it, you know, the third thing I think, you know, the merits of digital products would be, um, they have [00:02:00] the property of what’s referred to you by economists as a near zero marginal costs.
[00:02:04] Once you create the initial work of having it done, then, you know, replicating over and over. It’s like software. I mean, it’s no, there is no additional costs, uh, uh, delivery or, you know, production costs. And that means you’ve got tons of choices and you can price it. Mmm. Any way you want. And you know, so I guess that’s a, like a fourth benefit is your pricing is.
[00:02:31] Literally anything you want, it could be free. Mmm. Or you could charge 2000 bucks. I mean, you can put it anywhere and customers will, except that answer, which is the craziest part. Um, so I dunno, these are just a few of the top of my mind ideas for why I like the idea of adding a digital product. What are your, what are your thoughts on it?
[00:02:54] Anything that I’m missing there or things that you’ve thought about for your own business or 10 K collective [00:03:00] members.
[00:03:01] Michael Veazey: Well, it’s interesting because obviously I kind of struggled both of this, but I don’t have an integration in the way that you’re working towards. So I’ve obviously sold physical products on Amazon and as a very separate thing and this sort of guru, or if you’d like, I hate that word, but educational business, I’ve sold digital products of various kinds and clinic courses.
[00:03:18] And I guess if you call online coaching digital products, I mean, at least part of it is digital, I suppose. Um, so yeah. I suppose, reflecting back then, what would a cynical member of my mastermind listening say, I suppose there might be a feeling of a sort of disconnect between the perception of your brand as you’re great at making a certain type of physical widgets and then suddenly feeling like you’re a publisher.
[00:03:40] Um, so that’s the main sort of, I suppose, resistance, I might send someone, what would you say to that point?
[00:03:46] Jason Miles: pick an example. Can you have any, any seller, just even if it’s a fictitious one
[00:03:51] Michael Veazey: Yes, certainly. Well, so we’ve got, we’ve got a couple of guys who are very, very good in the toys space. So if you’re producing a lot of toys that are really great for our family, and you’ve [00:04:00] got a reputation as a great sort of physical product maker and delivering things with the skill set that kind of implies in the trust that the consumer has in your skill.
[00:04:08] So that implies, I suppose, maybe it might feel artificial to suddenly be producing books or something, for example,
[00:04:14] Jason Miles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, well, I could just off the top of my head, rattle off four or five angles on how that would completely and totally integrate. I mean, the first thing is, let’s say it’s a complicated toy electronics or that kind of thing. Um, you could have, uh, like a parent’s guide to it. I mean, you know, with, uh, how to use this effectively, some toys are obvious, like, you know, But some toys are not, there are tons and tons of how to guides for things that are more complicated toys like Legos or board games, you know, you can have a digital product that is a supplemental educational component to the exact thing you’re, you’re selling.
[00:04:56] And even for, you know, for parents [00:05:00] playtime, For a lot of parents, especially sort of a type a parents, playtime has a purpose. It’s like, I want you to play, but I also want you to learn life skills and also how to survive in the world and also economics and also math and also, you know, a whole bunch of things.
[00:05:18] And so you could play right into that. Here’s a, how to guide to use this toy in your child’s life so that they learn whatever. I mean, something no. That’s one angle, you know, other angles would include, you can create if your toys have any type of brand or naming structure, like if you’ve named your toy something, you can create a fictitious story for the child, you know?
[00:05:43] So your audience could be the parent in the one case, if a, how to focused in digital product, the child could be the focus in another, you know, I mean, think about the biggest hit movies. Of the last 30 years, a lot, like, you know, the transformer series started as a, [00:06:00] a little car, little transformer, plastic toy, and Hasbro, turn that into a massively successful movie franchise, although okay.
[00:06:13] Debate them quality of those movies. But at least the first one was pretty good. So I mean, you know, those are the angles you start to play with. And so, you know, you think through, okay, what could I do in this space that would be consistent with serving my customer, uh, something that they would bye.
[00:06:32] Anyway, you know, they’ll likely buy that type of product anyway. And can I offer it, you know,
[00:06:37] Michael Veazey: Yeah. I was just thinking of the setting, I suppose it would be naming particular keywords, which is always a no, no, in the Amazon space, but a lot of board games. And one of the people that I know sales sort of very interactive family type games. I mean, yeah, you, you almost certainly there are books out that they’re going to buy anyway, referring to how to use that kind of game.
[00:06:53] So, I mean, yeah, there’s, there’s gotta be. A reason why you would hire an author and take that cash for [00:07:00] yourself. So that makes a lot of sense. The very interesting, I mean, I don’t know why there’s this resistance in me. I’m particularly obsessed. I’m I sell digital products. I love the near my near zero marginal cost aspect.
[00:07:10] So I’m sold on digital products, but I it’s just the integration thing that I think may be a resistance that I sense out there in other people’s I’m hoping to try and, you know, help you break down those barriers. So, okay. So we’ve asked the why question pretty solidly. So, so I guess we’re coming into the, the, um, you know, how do we do it thing?
[00:07:29] How does somebody go about this doing in a professional way? Not just chucking an ebook on top of the product, which is the classic Amazon seller lazy version, but how do we do this in a, in a really good way?
[00:07:39] Jason Miles: Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think the first thing you want to do is really sort out in your own mind, what a good PR, what a good digital product looks like, and you can pull your audience, do a survey work. Obviously you could scour the Barnes and noble or bookstore in your area and look for. You know, similar products to your niche or industry really start to [00:08:00] unpack the idea associated with, um, what, what your customer will pay for versus what they expect to get for free.
[00:08:10] And, you know, either of those are fine choices, you can make a digital product. And as we talked about, we, you can make it free. So that’s fine. But you know, a lot of people just aren’t interested in, um, information. If they can easily just get it on Wikipedia or Google search or YouTube video that, you know, you have to ask yourself the question, what will somebody actually want to get from me?
[00:08:34] Um, and that’s the hardest work I think involved is, is what is an appealing product look like? It’s a digital product. We got lucky in our business because, because sewing, as you know, an activity requires a pattern. I mean, like, you know, that’s just patterns are what we sell on pixie Faire. And we have catalog of about 3000 of them.
[00:08:57] So we, I get the fact that we got lucky, [00:09:00] but, but in other niches or industries, I do think there are angles that you can ask, you know, w what would people be interested in and, uh, getting from me, um, And, uh, and so, so I think that’s the hardest work. You know, the second thing is make it professional. If you want to write it yourself, write it yourself.
[00:09:16] If you want to have a ghost writer, do it, get a ghost writer, but don’t do an amateur version of the writing, you know, the actual content. Okay. And the nice part about it though, is if you take a first whack at it, you can always make a second edition, third edition, fourth edition and upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, answer additional questions, get feedback, incorporate that in so you can improve iteratively over time.
[00:09:39] And then I would just say, make it professional. In terms of the interior formatting, you can use Fiverr. There are people who have gigs on Fiverr. They will prefer professionally format, even like a word document, you know, digital products. Generally the outcome is a, is a PDF. You know, if it’s going to be a downloadable.
[00:09:55] Mmm. And then you can use 99 designs. It’s the go to source, I think, [00:10:00] but I, you know, I love and recommend all the time. I even run 99 design contests for my coaching clients, um, to get a professional cover done by legitimate graphic artists. Um, and I think that’s a key part of it. You have to have it look professional, so it represents well, yeah,
[00:10:17] Michael Veazey: but those are two things. I am sorry.
[00:10:20] Jason Miles: Yeah. So those are a few, few ideas.
[00:10:22] Michael Veazey: So those are two things that come out of that, that, that Stripe is maybe that’s where the sort of internal resistance comes from unarticulated problems that are real, but are solvable, which is number one. I’m not a book writer. Well, okay. Hire somebody. I don’t manufacture plastic stuff in my garden shed either.
[00:10:36] And neither do most people that I know that. I mean, a few people, I do know somebody who literally. Made sort of face cream at his kitchen table, and that’s actually not a bad non-scalable way to start, but sooner or later he’s going to be hiring somebody, but most people can’t even physically make the widgets that they sell.
[00:10:51] So we used to the idea of outsourcing products that are physical. So I guess we used to get you to get used to the idea of outsourcing some aspects of the products that are [00:11:00] digital as well. Right. That really strikes me.
[00:11:05] Jason Miles: Ghost writers who are ready, willing, and able to write for you. I’ve all varying qualities, you know, from a $5 Fiverr gig, the person who will write you 2000 words or whatever, to a professional ghost writer that will charge you $30,000 to write a book.
[00:11:19] Michael Veazey: Yeah. The other thing that really strikes me, what you’re saying is that obviously, quote unquote in theory, iterative product development is a great thing. And the trouble with physical widgets, especially they’re made in China is so many of the private label goods or custom made products are. That my guys work on.
[00:11:37] Um, so my guys have been mentoring clients who at the early stages or the TennCare collective mastermind to in some cases, generations old, um, it’s so long a cycle that although that does happen, it happens over the course of maybe two or three years, sometimes another, the third or fourth generation of a product.
[00:11:52] Whereas in fact, the speed with which you can iterate a digital product is so high that actually you can almost do the Microsoft thing of [00:12:00] putting. Rubbish out into the market. That is just about functional minimum viable products as an entire way of life. Like as, as a person who’s bought a Mac, I would claim there is a limitation to how far you can go without like Skype keeps asking me for feedback.
[00:12:11] Like it’s in Bita 20 years after it started, but you know, that’s the opposite extreme, but that’s a pretty massive business. Nobody really mentions it, but it’s one of the world’s biggest companies. So, you know, that constant iteration thing is. I think a really important aspects of the digital products, um, that in theory is the same across all the types of products being practiced, obviously way easier and quicker, right.
[00:12:34] Jason Miles: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I totally agree. And it’s easy to iterate and if you’re willing to invest in time and energy to make your digital product good over time, you can, you can go from good to great. Um, you know, I mean, I think the other question that I would have for you is, uh, obviously. We’re talking about a PDF downloadable.
[00:12:55] That’s not the only type of digital product, uh, membership programs or different digital product. What are your [00:13:00] thoughts on incorporating digital, a membership program into your digital . Okay. What are your thoughts on integrating a membership program into your physical product? Have you seen people do that or you’re
[00:13:16] Michael Veazey: I haven’t. I know that you guys are expert on that. That really, really interests me. Cause again, I have had, uh, an experiences of selling physical products. I’ve helped other PeopleSoft products. I’ve obviously done the educational type products you would expect, which is a course selling other people’s courses as an affiliate, of course, which is.
[00:13:31] Um, a different relationship to the same kind of product I E digital products. And because of that as an affiliate, by the way, because it’s digitally delivered and they have zero near zero marginal costs. Even as a sales person, you get like 50% commission of the revenue, which is an insanely great, uh, deal if it works.
[00:13:50] But yeah. I haven’t combined it or seen other people in my, um, most minds or, or mentioned clients, uh, with a physical products business. So [00:14:00] obviously you guys are the masters of that. I mean, tell me how you go about that.
[00:14:03] Jason Miles: Well, I think that, um, it’s a great opportunity for a lot of people in niches. The primary question, the philosophical question to ask is would your customers like to know each other and no kind of community be formed out of your customer base? Now, you know, some the answer might be no, some sellers would say, no, my customers hate each other.
[00:14:24] They’re competing against each other, but other. Other sellers would say, actually, yes, my customers already kind of do that on my YouTube channel. They make comments or, you know, they, my customers already kind of want to know each other through my Facebook page. And that’s the inklings of the right idea.
[00:14:42] And then if you’re the facilitator of that, what you’ve really got the opportunity to do is create a tribe around your. Niche or industry, you know, your product. And that to me is really something to think through. If you can be the convener of [00:15:00] a hundred people, a thousand people, then you’ve got an opportunity then to sell them future products, too.
[00:15:07] You know, I mean, there’s all kinds of opportunities that spin off from that. When we started our membership program in May, 2017, our goal was to see if we could get a hundred people to sign up. And we figured it would, that was our minimum viable product number for our membership program. And, um, in the first month we had about 400 people sign up.
[00:15:29] Um, right now we’re about a thousand people. So it’s taken us three years to get it to a thousand people and they pay from nine to $14 a month, depending on how, you know, they, they signed up. Mmm. So, so, and, and they like to be in community. They want to, you know, they want to. They want to chat and they love to get information together.
[00:15:51] Michael Veazey: now this brings me to another fascinating point about the price thing, because a lot of people see, um, well, first of all, let me reference the, uh, [00:16:00] Information wants to be free idea, which is it, Chris Anderson, that you’ve mentioned that before that people, people talk about moving the free line, particularly in the sort of information product slash guru slash education space.
[00:16:11] What is interesting to me is you’ve moved it the opposite way. So instead of giving more and more stuff away for free in order to try and sell something paid down the line, you’re charging upfront for this community in order to then be able to sell them other products, as well as giving them value, of course, giving them other.
[00:16:27] Sales opportunities in the future. So, um, and obviously that’s much better for the cashflow, cause it means you can do things like afford to run paid advertising because you get the money back when you make your first sale and things like that. So tell me about your thoughts around all of that sort of structure.
[00:16:42] Jason Miles: Yeah. I mean, you get to decide as the creator of the product, how you want to use it. If it’s a PDF document. And you’re going to make it free. Then it’s a fantastic lead generation tool. People call that your ethical bribe or, you know, your lead magnet. Um, if, and so think of that as, uh, [00:17:00] an attractive, an attractive top of the funnel, you know, tool for getting loads and loads and loads of perspective customers.
[00:17:08] Now they might be good buyers in the future, or maybe they just wanted your free thing and then never gonna buy anything from you that, you know, you have to work that out. Mmm. That’s a great, that’s a great strategy. If you want to do a membership program. You’re right. It’s, it’s actually the opposite.
[00:17:24] You’re, you’re actually paying people, asking people to pay monthly for a few benefits, a community information, access to you to answer questions. And if you can make that work, then, uh, that’s a really, really beneficial, you know, business model. And it’s got a lot of benefits to it in both. Are readily accepted by customers, I think is the main thing that to realize many, many customers are willing, two pay for a monthly membership.
[00:17:57] I’ll tell you one that you might be interested to know about. [00:18:00] There’s a British show. That is my favorite. I think my favorite show on TV completely. You’ll never guess what it is, but I’ll tell it to tell you it’s called Gardener’s world with auntie Dawn
[00:18:11] Michael Veazey: I know Carden as well as my mother used to listen to that. She’s a big fan of gardening. Yeah. I know. Very well.
[00:18:17] Jason Miles: it’s the best gardening TV show in the world.
[00:18:21] And it, what you might not know, because like in the U S home and garden TV, HDTV used to run gardening shows on like Saturday mornings. Well, they stopped. All they run now is remodeling shows, remodel your house this way, remodel your house that way. And, um, and they stopped doing all the gardening content.
[00:18:40] And so I was on a hunt and I saw this show Gardener’s world on YouTube and the quality was horrible. It was like somebody held their iPhone up and recorded an episode and put it on YouTube. But I thought, where do I get that show? So I Googled around as it happens, the only way for an American to get Gardener’s world is to sign up for a monthly recurring membership [00:19:00] product called Brit box.
[00:19:02] And you can do it through Amazon. You sign up for a Brit box. It’s like $4 and 99 cents a month. And you get access to all the, I guess, top, you know, British shows, including Gardner Gardner’s rule. So I’m in man. I mean, no questions and every Saturday morning, I turn on gardeners or before I go out and then yard and I watched Monte Don, and he’s a genius, add it.
[00:19:25] And he gives me my to do list for the week at the end of the show. And I’m happy as a clam. I mean, I’m thrilled to pay for that. It’s it’s terrific. So there’s an example for you.
[00:19:36] Michael Veazey: Beautiful. I love that example. Um, and I think, uh, when it works well, it’s a beautiful thing all around because you got very happy customers. And actually this is one of those things, isn’t it. With price and psychology. You often find, I used to find that with, uh, Amazon products back in the day was.
[00:19:51] Discounting to 18 90% to try and get some, you know, some movement on the sales. When you first launch a product, they’re often the worst customers and people who pay good [00:20:00] money off and the happiest about don’t even know why we can dig into why, but I know it’s a fact, but the other one is, um, The economics of it are so beautiful because you can afford to advertise because you are going to get the money back early, rather than speculatively later, whether you sending paid advertising to a free download, people may never pay you money.
[00:20:19] And then you can also, because it’s a monthly recurring, you have an incentive to provide great ongoing, good, um, content. And. And interaction. And also you have that monthly recurring revenue, which makes your business more valuable, more stable. I mean, there’s so much, that’s good about it. And I’m familiar with all those virtues from doing this sort of education type, um, monthly recurring stuff.
[00:20:42] I want to get further with it because I think it’s wonderful, but that integration with the products thing is, is just a great, great idea. So, okay. We’ve now covered why it’s so great. What are the common errors that people make when they try to, uh, achieve this? Cause obviously there’s going to be, it’s quite outside.
[00:20:57] A lot of people’s comfort zone. If they’d been used to dealing with physical [00:21:00] products,
[00:21:01] Jason Miles: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I think I kind of touched on a few of those leading into the beginning of the conversation. Amateur content is a real pitfall. And a common mistake. I mean, it’s just easy to do it yourself and to imply or sorry, it’s easy to do it yourself and to have what you might call your personal standards that are imposed on it.
[00:21:26] And they’re just low quality standards for what people are looking for. So I would really challenge everybody if you’re going to do a digital product, find an example. That’s professional in both the. Okay, content itself. And then the formatting and presentation of the content and strive for professionalism.
[00:21:44] Take the money, you know, a few hundred dollars to get it done. Right. And really make it a pro . Um, I think the other common mistake is it’s not, I’m not saying you made a mistake, but I, cause I’ve done the same thing. A common [00:22:00] mistake is to say in response to a conversation like this. Oh my gosh. I want to do a digital product.
[00:22:06] Therefore, I’ll start teaching people about Facebook ads or I’ll start teaching people about, uh, how to use MailChimp or like some, some educational a thing that’s completely divorced from the product you sell. And I would just say that that’s not a, it’s not a mistake, but you really should realize if you’re doing that, you’re creating an entirely different business, you know?
[00:22:29] So if you sell auto parts, um, right now, My suggestion to you is fine. An auto parts related digital product. And if you hear me saying digital products and you say, I’m going to start teaching about Facebook ad advertising and how to do Facebook advertising, just realize it’s a completely and totally different.
[00:22:49] Customer completely and totally different business you’re entering. And, uh, so, so I’m not advocating for people to start a new business, really, to be honest. [00:23:00] Mmm. I have done that. You have also done that. There’s pros and cons. Um, but I can tell you a lot of people listening to this episode hopefully will say to themselves, I, I have no interest in being a guru.
[00:23:11] Like my, my wife comes to my mind, the first thing we started getting requests to do when we were. You know, when we, our stories started to get out and Shopify featured us was people would ask her to speak like at conferences and that kind of thing. And they they’d ask us to do presentations. She has no interest in that.
[00:23:29] She doesn’t want to talk about how to do, you know, uh, trainings or, you know, that kind of thing. She doesn’t, she doesn’t want to talk about guru topics. And so, um, people like that I think are well suited to just say, okay, Here’s my thing I sell and how can I brainstorm it related, uh, you know, e-commerce Oh.
[00:23:50] Or digital product. Yeah. Anyway, a
[00:23:52] Michael Veazey: Yeah, that’s, that’s a very, very important point. I think that may be another one of the points of resistance from some, um, Amazon sellers who, [00:24:00] by the nature of it. Uh, although you can sell Kindles, which obviously in a Kindle books, which are a digital product, but it’s harder to sort of integrate a product funnel that might be more.
[00:24:11] Centered on a type of customer and variety of types of products. It tends to push you more in the direction of physical products, I guess, more strongly, but also I think there is because it’s so saturated with, as a guru type products, people probably just automatically associate digital products with that model.
[00:24:25] And you’re quite right. That actually it’s really different. And I would argue, um, I th I think also, and I just want to address this because. It does come up in people’s minds that people look at that and think, Oh, that’s an easier business model. And you know, a few years ago, it might’ve been in some ways.
[00:24:39] I mean, you’ve got the near zero marginal cost is always good, but actually it’s just as crowded a space now as any physical product space in my view. And it doesn’t have the same. Ease of scalability, the education thing, because you’ve got to establish some, you know, very strong brand first. And as you say, completely different customer, if you’re great at selling, you know, doll’s clothes and then you suddenly want to help people become [00:25:00] entrepreneurs that may have nothing to do with each other.
[00:25:02] So I think it’s a very important point that you’ve made there. So, um, Another question that another thing that comes up is okay, great. So you’ve got a Shopify store for physical products. What about using click funnels or WordPress for again, because I guess a lot of people come from the information marketing education guru type space.
[00:25:20] ClickFunnels is all over that. WordPress is quite common as well. So tell me about the platform side.
[00:25:26] Jason Miles: Yeah, sure. Um, I think that there are a lot of choices that are good choices these days. Um, and here’s how I kind of categorize them in my mind. If you want to do e-commerce selling, that’s both physical and digital, um, at scale Shopify as your platform. And I could debate the merits of it versus all the other choices, but I would just say Shopify is the best.
[00:25:48] And I, you know, So that, that’s my answer in terms of scaling, you know, a good number of products. If you have one product that you want to sell or maybe one product and an [00:26:00] upsell, then ClickFunnels does a completely legit and awesome tool. Well, I use all these tools by the way. I mean, I literally run them Mmm.
[00:26:07] Revenue and money. I make money through all these tools. So, so I, it’s not as if I’m all in on one and not on the others. Um, but ClickFunnels is great. If you have one product and maybe a. Uh, you know, an upsell, um, WordPress is great. If you want to have a blog, I do not recommend people try to sell on word press.
[00:26:26] It becomes a quagmire that is just not worth, it’s not worth the effort. I mean, when Shopify exists as an eCommerce platform, why would you use WordPress? There are no benefits to doing it. Mmm. And it just doesn’t make sense. Unless you have an, just a straight blog, you know, kind of an informational corporate website.
[00:26:47] This is about us. Mmm. So even if those are, those are my thoughts, um, click funnels is, is, is as a terrific option again for, you know, either digital or physical. If you’ve got a very, very small catalog, [00:27:00] one or two items, um, the benefit of Shopify. Let me just mention that is you can, for example, sell on Shopify.
[00:27:08] A digital product, an upsell, a physical, your physical product and set it up so that, that fulfillment of the digital immediately automatically happens. And the fulfillment of the upsold physical product, it happens through your Amazon FBA fulfillment process. So you can still use Amazon to fulfill
[00:27:33] Physical products that you sell through Shopify. So it’s not as if you have to do, you know, boxing and taping and, and mailing go into the post office stuff yourself. Mmm. And so it really gives you a fantastic solution for, uh, you know, the site and how to sell. Yeah. I think those are a few of the benefits.
[00:27:49] So does that help answer?
[00:27:50] Michael Veazey: It does it really, it really does. And the fact that you use all of them is also reassuring that you’re not sort of pro or anti a platform, but in the end, things have built into their DNA because [00:28:00] they don’t just evolved anyway, that DNS is the wrong, the wrong thing to say, because they are, they are designed products.
[00:28:05] WordPress was designed for blogging and it’s in its sort of great structure of you like DNAs, the word I’m trying to avoid a Shopify was designed for eCommerce. So I mean, it’s obvious that they have certain that they’re built. They tend strongly in a certain way and click funnels. The name is, you know, a bit of a clue.
[00:28:20] It’s a funnel, a funnel is a narrow thing. It tends in one direction. It goes from white as more. So again, it’s pretty obvious that it’s likely to be the case. So there’s your answer. Doesn’t surprise me. But the thing is also, you know, from experience, I know you’ve had your nasty WordPress experience, which we talked about before and yeah.
[00:28:35] Um, yeah, so I know you’re a big fan of Shopify, but for a reason, not, not just because you’re just being partisan. So another question then obviously after you’ve got it completed, you’ve set the thing up or how do you get selling? So you’ve got your physical products, you’ve got a digital product that you’ve had created professionally.
[00:28:51] If it’s a book or maybe it’s a course or even a membership program, um, what do we do next? How do we get it out into the world and making us money?
[00:28:59] Jason Miles: yeah. I [00:29:00] mean, I think the first question is, well, there’s two, two audiences exist at that point for you. People who know you. And you can reach and people who you don’t know and who you have to, you know, reach them in a different way. So the people who already know you maybe are customers that have bought something on Amazon from you.
[00:29:20] Mmm. So then how do you put this in front of them? Well, you can rebrand some of your packaging to, um, include or reference to your website. Um, you can include inserts carefully and, or your instruction guidelines in your Amazon product. Two call out the fact that there is a how to document or, you know, whatever you want to do, but you get the idea, you integrate it into your existing product, the physical product, so that it calls to people’s attention.
[00:29:50] The fact that you’ve got a digital product, um, that’s the most obvious thing is of course, if you’ve got it, your own email list, if you’ve got any kind of Facebook. A fan page or [00:30:00] group or anything like that. Of course, putting it in front of your existing known audiences. Just a no, no brainer. Uh, Jeff Walker’s product launch formula is the best tool in my view to understand how to do that.
[00:30:10] And then the question comes up. Well, how do you get it in front of the new people, the prospective people who don’t know about you. And I would say, you know, refer to our nine mountains of traffic conversation and refer to nine mountains of traffic. We have a ebook available for a few dollars. We sell it through ClickFunnels, go to nine mountains.com and you can pick it up.
[00:30:33] And it does a deep dive on the nine sources of traffic on the internet. And I always encourage people to start with the free ones. You know, start with, um, Google organic search results, uh, strategies, um, and then other free strategies, free social media strategies, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and start to learn how to generate traffic to your own website.
[00:30:57] And this will revolutionize your business. I mean, [00:31:00] just, just going through that process, even if it feels, if it feels like you’re failing, if you fail forward through that for three, six months, six months, nine months, you’ll look back and say, man, I. I revolutionize my business because on now I’m not a hundred percent dependent on Amazon to send me customers.
[00:31:17] I figured out some ways to do that myself. So,
[00:31:20] Michael Veazey: Excellent. And so there’s lots to dig into here and I’m sure that like, everything else, we’ve got the space to dig into it, which is really nice. Cause we don’t have to do sort of a hit and run 30 minutes and then see you in six months like an interview podcast. So I love that fact about this podcast, I must say.
[00:31:34] Um, so let’s sum up a bit then. So there’s a lot to take on board. What are the simplest or the most powerful actions that somebody can take now? So you’re talking about six to nine months of failing forward. Where do we start with our failing or indeed succeeding.
[00:31:47] Jason Miles: I would do the research step first. What does your customer want? informational or relational. That you could provide for them. Maybe it’s a membership. Maybe it’s a, how to guide. Maybe it’s a, [00:32:00] a fantasy story associated with your product, even though I can totally sell it or something like that. Um, what could you potentially put in front of them?
[00:32:07] That’s an additional product. I would do that. Brainstorming, ask people’s opinion. Um, do a survey to your customers, ask their opinions. Okay. Talk to friends. Um, ask people who were in your target demographic about your ideas, um, really brainstorm and see what’s out there. And I think that will take you down the path towards the right ideas.
[00:32:30] Um, and I think that’s the first and most vital step, get that step, right. And you’ll have a whole new revenue stream. You know that you’ll build over time, that’ll revolutionize your business. And if you get that step wrong and you just say, well, I’m going to write a book about X, Y, Z, and you don’t really have the backing of a, you know, well thought through and research plan.
[00:32:48] You really could hit it or you could totally failed. Yeah.
[00:32:53] Michael Veazey: Yeah, but I guess the cost of failure is probably not as astronomical as going and producing 50,000 widgets of something. [00:33:00] So I guess there’s gotta be a good, the downside is more limited. I would, I would guess. But anyway, so we must wrap up there. I know that we just. Talking about the podcast in general, we have had a contest recently for the ultimate book bundle.
[00:33:14] So tell us about what’s the results of that contest.
[00:33:17] Jason Miles: the contest went well. We had good participation, Tim Covey won. And, um, so that was really, really cool. So congrats to him. He won what we call the ultimate book bundle. I think it was a hundred dollars actually, when I did it, it was $120 worth of. I think it was six, five or six, really terrific, um, marketing books.
[00:33:38] And so that went out the door. So we’re gonna fire up another contest. I realize it’s a little bit of attention because it’s available to us, uh, listeners and it’s just complicated to do in the UK. It’s simpler to do in the U S but we’re going to fire up another one of those, but I just want to thank everybody who entered.
[00:33:56] Obviously some of the call to actions associated to the [00:34:00] contest were. Subscribe to the show, which of course you can do and leave a review would be fantastic as well, go to the e-commerce leader and check it out. We’ve got some, some solid resources there, which we haven’t really saw or mentioned. I don’t think so.
[00:34:17] On the eCommerce leader, when we started this, you set up a, um, a couple of free resources and I did as well. And so I’d encourage everybody to go check those out. They’re a great place to start. And we’ve got obviously all our other episodes and then information about the show and how to work with us, connect with us, that kind of thing.
[00:34:35] So that would be my suggestion to everybody. Who’s listening. Go check out the e-commerce leader and all the goodies we’ve got there. And thanks again for listening.