A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Successful Digital Products

A Step-by-Step Guide To Building Successful Digital Products

Many creators believe that they need to have 100k subscribers in order to make money, and this is far from the truth.

I’ve had many people book a Clarity Hour call with me this year with small audiences who were sitting on a goldmine without realising it.

You may remember me mentioning Charlie a few months back. Since that newsletter, she’s built a £10,000 ($12,700) a month business.

Creating digital products is a must for creators, no matter their size.

I reached out to my friend Angus Parker, who worked with Ali Abdaal to launch the Part-Time YouTuber Academy (PTYA), to give some fantastic advice on how to build successful digital products.

Here's a simple guide based on his top three tips to help you get started:

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Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

Knowing exactly who your product is for is crucial.

Think of it this way: If you try to sell a product such as a ‘Piano for Beginner’s’ video course to people who don’t play it or care for it, it simply won’t work, right?

The same goes for literally any digital product. You can’t just make a product and hope someone in your audience buys it.

It’s Essential to Know Your Audience.

Understanding who they are and their pain points helps you create products they actually want. It also makes your life much easier, as you’ll know how to market your product and where to find your customers.

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How to Define and Segment Your Audience

• Step 1: Think about who will benefit the most from your product.
• Step 2: Break them into groups based on things like age, interests, and problems they need solving.
• Step 3: Focus on a specific group first, like teens who love photography or adults who want to learn guitar.

When Angus and Ali planned PTYA, they focused on people who wanted to grow their YouTube channels whilst having a full-time job. They didn’t target everyone, just those interested in becoming successful YouTubers.

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Step 2: Craft an Irresistible Offer

Your offer must be so good that people feel stupid saying no. Angus suggests reading $100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi (I also recommend this as it’s fantastic).

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The key is to focus on your audience's real problems, not just what you think they want.

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You can identify this problem in a couple of different ways: by posting a community post on your channel, sending a newsletter to your readers, or adding a fun quiz like ScoreApp to your website.

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Steps to Identify the Core Problem and Craft Your Offer

• Step 1: Talk to your audience. Ask them what problems they face.
• Step 2: Identify the most common issues and consider how your product can solve them.
• Step 3: Make sure your offer is clear and directly addresses these problems.

Once you’ve created a list of problems and solutions, you can test your ideas with a small group and get feedback.

When creating PTYA, Angus realised that many aspiring YouTubers struggled with accountability. So, they designed the academy to provide structured support and deadlines, which helped students stay on track.

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Step 3: Draft a One-Page Sales Page

Before you build your product, create a sales page.

This may seem completely backwards and a ‘waste of time’ to some, but it will force you to think about what you’re really offering to your audience and spot any problems with your offer early on.

It’s also really useful in helping your audience understand why they should hand over their cash to you and provide any feedback before you make the webpage live.

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Detailed Guide to Creating a Compelling Sales Page

• Headline: Grab attention with a catchy title.
• Subheadings: Briefly explain what the product is.
• Benefits: List how it will help your audience.
• Features: Highlight key parts of the product.
• Testimonials: Include quotes from people who have tried it.
• Call-to-Action (CTA): Tell people what to do next (e.g., “Sign up now!”).

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It’s good to look at sales pages for products you admire and note what you like. Avoid clutter and keep your page focused on the main benefits. I think that the PTYA website does a great job of this:

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Building a digital product can be a fun and rewarding journey.

By defining your target audience, crafting an irresistible offer, and starting with a one-page sales page, you’re setting yourself up for success.

Remember to start small, get feedback, and keep improving.

One of the key points Angus really emphasises is not being afraid to make mistakes and that if you learn from them and iterate often, you’ll be in a much stronger position.

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Watch The Full Interview:

This email was based on just the first 3 minutes of my interview with Angus, if you’d like to dive deeper into the full 30 minute interview you can watch it here.

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My Favourite Things This Week

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Video I’m Watching…

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Why Every MrBeast Video Gets 200M Views - Jon Youshaei continues to give Colin and Samir a run for their money as the go-to ‘creator for creators’, as he interviews MrBeast.

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This is a fantastic 90-minute interview going in-depth on his latest projects and creative processes, including an exclusive look at a secret project 6 years in the making.

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ViewStats is Mr.Beast’s amalgamation of Social Blade and YouTube Studio, mixed with his own internal tools to create, what looks to be a must-have for anyone working in the Creator Economy.

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Tool I’m Using…

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Alex Hormozi Unofficial Chatbot - I stumbled across this AI chatbot earlier this week that is built on the transcripts of Alex Hormozi’s videos.

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It’s been very good for digging deep into how I can improve my business and having a back and forth with the AI version of Alex.

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My guess is that there will be more tools like this surfacing over the next year that will serve the audiences of major YouTubers.

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Video I’m Watching…

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The Unbreakable Kryptos Code - One of my favourite YouTubers LEMMiNO uploaded his new video recently and it’s simply fantastic.

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He rarely posts but when he does everyone flocks to his video as the animation quality and storytelling is on a different level. If you want to see what ‘excellence’ is on YouTube, look no further than LEMMiNO.

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🎙️ Podcast I Released

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Is This Podcast Even Working? — In this episode, George Blackman, Gwilym Sims-Williams and I take a reflective look at our year-long podcast journey of creating Making It to where it is today.

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If you’re thinking about launching a video podcast any time soon, you’ll get a lot from this conversation.

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You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Thanks for reading, if you want to reach out to me, just send a tweet to @WhiffenYT.

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Jamie