How to Start an Online Business By Selling Digital Products

Let me take you back a few years... I was working as a sales consultant at Volkswagen and pretty darn good at it. But deep down, I hated every part of it - the haggling, waking up at the crack of dawn to get to the dealership, the insincere laughs and fake courtesy that I had to extend to every customer that walked through the door. I was insufferable!

I knew something had to change - and change it did.

While I sat at my desk for 12 hours every day, 6 days a week, I secretly plotted my way out. You see, one of the things I enjoyed about working in sales was the fact that I could make however much I wanted. Prior to getting the sales job, the most I made in a month was ~$2k/month. After payomg rent, and covering all other expenses, I could barely save a dollar - and here I was talking to people all day and making over $10k in my best month.

Yes, the money was good, but the hours were long.

Years prior, I had created a number of online stores to sell dropshipping products, and in order to get eyeballs on my products, I had to run ads - so I learned social media advertising by watching a ton of Youtube videos and courses. Although I failed A LOT, I learned a many important lessons which still serves me till this day.

For a long time at my sales job, I would leave work at 9pm, get dinner on the way home and by 10pm I was already working on my Youtube videos. I made sure I filmed, edited and uploaded at least 3 youtube videos on a week day and 2 on my days off.

This was my strategy.

Finally, my hard work began to pay off and one video that I made at 11pm and quickly edited started to take off. I'd begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so I doubled down.

Within a few days, I gained a few hundred subscribers and in one month, I crossed the coveted 1,000 subscriber mark.

No, you're probably wondering, "what were you talking about in these videos?"

Well, remember my days of dropshipping? I managed to put a spin on the popular method that most people knew. In fact, I was one of the first people to start sharing about this new method on Youtube - so you can say the timing was right.

In my first 6 weeks of testing out this new method, I made over $20k and this was the proof that I needed that this method could work out. So, I shared it on Youtube without any hold-backs.

My videos would get a few hundred to a thousand views and some even got over 10k views! It was mind-blowing to think that something to obvious to me felt like magic to others.

In the weeks that followed, I made a video talking about this method on TikTok and that video, over the course of 3 months had gotten over 2M views. This was when everything changed.

I had people asking me if I could teach them for a fee, and people asking me to share the tools I was using. So I reached out to the creators of this software and negotiated a deal - for every new customer I brought in, I would get a 30% commission. This was my first real taste of Internet money. In one month, I enrolled over 1,000 users for the software.

Over the next several weeks, I enrolled people into my 1-1 consultations and charged well over $100 per hour. I'll tell you. Things have never been the same.

A few months after that, I'd made enough money to quit my job - so I did. I bought a plane ticket to visit my family for the first time in 5 years since I'd moved to the US, and I've been travelling full-time since 2021.

Here's the lesson from this story

In this digital day and age, there's nothing stopping you from making as much as you do in your current job. If your goal is to stay home with your kids, it's possible. If it's to make just a little more to cover some extra expenses, it's possible.

What are some key steps I took to make this possible?

1. I identified a gap in the market and sought to fill that gap.

There's always going to be room for more knowledge. I hear people say all the time "but there's already a video about that topic", "that topic is saturated" etc.

Think about this... If you need to learn about a subject and go to the bookstore, do you think there's only one book, by one author about that subject in the entire bookstore? I'm sure you don't think that. Every author has a unique way of teaching, of passing knowledge across and it's the same with video.

If you have a unique skill or knowledge that you think can help another person - no matter who's talked about it before, put it out there - now it doesn't have to be Youtube like I did - it could be in a text format. You're reading this right now and I'm sure you're getting just as much value as you would if you were watching a video format. Don't hoard your knowledge because it helps no one if you do

2. Look for the signals

When you find something that works, double down. Like I did when that one video started taking off, I made more videos just like it and the dominoes fell on each other.

3. The more value you put out, the more value comes to you.

Don't hold back. Aim to help people through your content genuinely and they will reciprocate. When I started really making valuable content, my channel started to grow and so did my bank account.

Steve Jobs said... if you want to make a billion dollars, help a billion people. simple.

4. Use content as leverage.

The content I put out was merely a bridge to the other things I had to offer. On the back end, I was offering my services, tools, and other things that didn't necessarily require me to use my time, and that is the ultimate goal.

5. Don't stop putting out content.

When you start making progress, you'll be tempted to take your feet off the pedal. DON'T! This is when you need to double down - in fact, triple down. Momentum is a powerful thing, use it!

I have a gift for you...

If you're thinking of starting a digital product online business but have no idea where to start, I want to invite you to download a copy of my Ebook - 10 Digital Product Ideas to Kickstart Your Online Success.

I have out in a lot of hours into writing this material and I'm sure you'll find something that works for you and can finally nudge you in the right direction. So, download it here.

Let me know in the comments if this short article has been helpful to you, it gives me ideas on what to write next!

Appreciate you reading all the way to the end, and I'll talk to you next time.

Peace.