The best way to create a steady stream of passive income from your blog is to start selling digital products.
Unlike other blog monetization methods such as advertisements, you don’t have to have a huge traffic base to succeed.
You just need to attract the right audience to your blog, so you can qualify them and nurture them through your sales funnel, and eventually turn them into paying customers.
On top of that, the best thing about digital products is that the creation process is easy. All you need to do is to do what you’re good at–writing, podcasting, video casting, etc. You can even repurpose your existing blog posts and turn them into an e-book.
Selling products on your site is not a quick rich scheme. However, with tenacity and perseverance, it’s possible to build a reliable passive income from your blog by creating and selling digital products.
In this article, let’s discuss everything you need to know about creating a digital storefront on your blog.
What to Sell?
Before jumping in, the first question you probably ask yourself is what to sell.
When you’re just getting started and brainstorming product ideas, everything might seem like as it’s been done by someone else already.
Below are a few tips that will help you find perfect product lines that sell.
- Know your target audience:
There are many ways to find what your target audience finds most valuable.
For instance, you can look at marketplaces like Kindle marketplace to see what the hot trend in your niche is. You can use the brainstorming session as inspiration to create things differently from what’s being there already in the market.
Similarly, if you’re looking to create a premium course, you can browse through websites like Udemy to see courses that people are already interested in
- Choose a format:
You can sell your digital products in many different formats, including e-book, newsletter course, video course, podcasts and more. Make sure to pick the right format that best suits your needs.
- Validate your market:
Before creating a product, you can survey your audience to see if it helps to solve their problem. You can also use niche based forums or a site like Quora.com to figure out if your product can make people’s life easier.
How to Create a Digital Store
Now that you’ve decided the product lines, the next step is to figure out how to roll out your storefront.
Do you want to create a dedicated storefront or integrate it with your existing blog? Let’s take a detailed look at both the scenarios:
Creating a dedicated storefront:
If you want to brand your storefront separately from your existing brand, you might want to consider creating a dedicated digital store. The main drawback of this approach is that you need to grow traffic and customer base from scratch which can be a hassle especially if you are already running another blog or website and don’t have resources and time to promote a new brand.
Integrate a storefront with your existing blog:
Instead of starting out everything from scratch, you can piggyback your existing user base and start selling to them. Nautil.us is a perfect example of integrating a storefront with an established blog.
Their blog attracts lots of potential customers because they create great content on a regular basis. Nautilus attracts the same visitors to the store to purchase merchandise that mirrors the type of content they love.
The main benefit of such integration is that your storefront can be easily branded to blend into your website. This way you can promote the store to your existing user base with ease.
Choose a Platform
Hundreds of different eCommerce platforms let you easily integrate a digital store with your site. With all the different options available in the market, it can be overwhelming to choose the right one that fits your needs.
If you’re on WordPress, WooCommerce is one of the best solutions.
According to Datanyze, 22% of eCommerce websites in the Alexa Top 1 million sites uses WooCommerce. If you’re already familiar with the user interface of WordPress, then you may find it easier to set up a WooCommerce store.
WooCommerce is a comprehensive solution that lets you sell both physical and digital products. There are also extensions available that will even let you power a full membership site using WooCommerce. You can read this article on how to setup an online store in WordPress with WooCommerce.
Start Selling to Your Existing Audience
The main benefit of integrating a store into your existing blog is that you don’t have to build a customer base from scratch. Rather, you can promote the store to your existing visitors, and eventually convert them into customers.
Now, nearly 96 percent of your first-time visitors are not ready to purchase from your website right away. With email marketing, you can build a relationship with your visitors over time and convert them into customers when they’re ready.
Grow your list
To exponentially grow your email list, you can use a lead generation tool like OptinMonster that allows you to create high conversion optin forms to convert your visitors into leads. Using its exit intent technology, you can even convert your abandoning visitors into leads by prompting them with a targeted campaign at the precise moment they are about to leave your site.
Nurture your leads:
The success of your eCommerce business relies on how well you qualify your leads and nurture them through different phases of the sales funnel.
Email segmentation is the first step to nurture your leads. With segmentation, you can classify your leads into a distinct group based on various demographics such as user preferences, geographical location, on-site behaviors, etc.
Segmentation helps you to personalize the emails you sent to each distinct group. Personalizing emails on the basis of segmentation are proven to bring in more sales and revenue.
I hope this article gives you some insights on turning your blog into a digital store. By following the best practices, you can create a steady stream of passive income from your blog.
Do you sell digital products on your site? Share your thoughts and experience with us by dropping a line below.