5 Digital Products You Can Launch with Your Writing Skills
By Dana Sitar
You’re chugging along as a freelance writer, making a good living — but working hard for every penny. Wouldn’t it be great to start generating some passive income to complement your freelance work? Something you can create once that will make you money over and over in the future and cushion your income for shaky freelancing months?
Maybe writing a full-length book is out of the question at this point in your career, but there are a lot of smaller, low- or no-cost products you can create and sell to readers through your blog, Amazon, or other means (depending on your audience and niche). The best part is you can create all of these products with the major skill you already possess: writing.
1. eBooks or e-guides.
For some, the work “ebook” conjures an image of self-published novellas on Kindle, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about non-fiction books or guides that offer readers something of value in your niche, like The Renegade Writer’s Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Freelance Writing, which Linda created by updating already-written blog posts from The Renegade Writer. Depending on your goals, you can sell these to make money on the side, or you can give them away free to help build your audience and secure your place an expert in your niche.
2. Reports or white papers.
If you’re freelancing for businesses, you may already be a star writer of B2B white papers, so why not apply that skill to your own industry and gain a little personal benefit? Come up with a list of tips, a unique FAQ in your niche, or an irresistible list of resources (like Sophie Lizard’s Ultimate List of Better-Paid Blogging Gigs at BeAFreelanceBlogger.com). These reports make great giveaways as an incentive to join your email list, or a bonus to push readers over the edge into buying another product.
3. Checklists or worksheets.
These simple handouts are a great way to allow readers to take some of your tips and knowledge with them. Like free reports, they also help readers remember you as an expert, as your name will come to mind every time they need help outlining their to-do list for a particular task. Longer checklists can be sold as a full-blown ebook, and you can give away shorter ones as freebies for your email list, etc. You can also use them to gain visibility by allowing readers to “Pay With a Tweet” (like Alexis Grant is doing with her Social Media Strategy Checklist).
At Writing-World, Moira Allen shares simple step-by-step instructions for creating an ebook (or report, or worksheet) using your word processor and PDF.
4. E-courses.
Don’t be scared by the term! An e-course can involve multi-media elements and require some technical know-how, but it doesn’t have to. An e-course can be as simple as setting up an autoresponder email series (like Jeff Goins’ 12-week Intentional Blogging course).
Writing these emails is similar to writing blog posts or how-to articles, except that you want to use a little more personal tone. Getting started requires little technical knowledge, as services like MailChimp and AWeber offer you templates and step-by-step help through the process, including easy ways to charge for subscriptions.
5. Slideshows.
Not likely to generate income directly, but a great opportunity to get more eyes on your content, sharing information through a slideshow makes it easier to digest for some readers than sharing through an e-guide or blog post. Creating a slideshow presentation can make great outlines or samples for paid speaking gigs, as well. You can keep it simple, and focus on the written content — don’t go crazy trying to add transitions or graphics if you don’t know what you’re doing! Creating a slideshow is as a simple as:
- Write your slides in Word or OpenOffice (in landscape orientation).
- Convert those to one PDF file.
- Upload to Slideshare. Learn more from SlideShare 101.
If you’re not sure where to start, just take an old blog post and refresh it by turning it into a slideshow, like I did with this one: “5 Tips for Freelancing Success” slideshow, and original blog post.
Depending on your background and various skills, you might need a little assistance with formatting and some technical stuff for some of these products, but don’t be intimidated. At the core of all of these products is your knowledge and writing skills — which you’re already a pro at capitalizing! Focus on that, and keep it simple, and you can learn the rest as you need.
Have you ever used your writing skills to launch digital products? Do you have any tips for other readers? Let us know in the Comments below!
Dana Sitar is a freelance journalist and indie author. Her latest ebook, A Writer’s Bucket List, is a launching point for all of the possibilities of being a writer, a kick-in-the-butt for those who don’t know what to do next, and a simple guide to help writers forge their own unique career/life paths.
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Feb 7, 2013 Advice, Book authoring
Great tips, Dana! I definitely agree, as I think it’s really important for freelance writers to diversify their income sources. It can be scary to have your entire income resting on a few clients, so I love the idea of having paid products that can provide a safety net for lean months.
Thanks for these ideas! I’ve been looking for a while for a way to make passive income, but I feel overwhelmed by not knowing what would be worth the effort. I would love to see more nitty gritty details from people who have launched passive income products and how that panned out financially – particularly if they don’t already have a following via a blog or email list that can be used for marketing these products. Is it possible for someone who does not already have this type of following/email list to create one of these products and make money? If so, I’d love to know how. (For example, does selling it on Amazon work? What kind of marketing legwork is needed?) Anyway, thanks for getting me thinkign about this again!
These are awesome questions, Allie! And great points, as many freelancers don’t have a significant online following.
Re: Amazon, Typically those who make a splash on Amazon are drawing from an existing following to drive sales and get into bestseller lists and “related products”, which drive further passive sales. But, in general, since these products can also be used as a catalyst to BUILD an audience, a large audience doesn’t have to be a pre-requisite.
I’d love to get into more details with you, but don’t want to overwhelm Linda’s comments! If you email me: dmsitar@gmail.com, I’d love to chat further and share some resources.
I’m weighing my options right now for my next writing-based digital product: a course delivered by email, a set of worksheets and infographics, or a secret members-only section on my blog…? This is genuinely useful stuff, Dana, thank you.
Thanks, Sophie! I’m excited to see what you come up with
All sound immensely useful.
Love this post! As someone who’s currently developing a digital product, I know the importance of creating other revenue streams.
Freelance writing is awesome, but constantly trading time for money can be draining. That’s why I completely agree with what you said about how selling digital products is a great way to generate passive income.
You’re right! The initial creation of a book or product seems like an overwhelming time-suck, but once you put it out there, you can continue to earn far beyond what that time would have been worth at an hourly-rate. PLUS, it’s so refreshing to see money coming in while you’re sleeping or on vacation — or, stacked up while you’re earning money doing client work!
Very timely post, Dana. I’ve wanted to start building some passive income streams but haven’t had a clue as to how to get started or what to do. You’ve provided some good starting points. Thanks!
Awesome, Erica! Happy to hear it
Great post, Dana. I’d take it a step further and say these aren’t just products you might get involved in…but skills you SHOULD learn as a freelancer.
Right now, I’m building slideshows for Forbes posts…and if I couldn’t do that, they wouldn’t have hired me (I’m on the team they pay). They get huge traffic, take a look at this one I put up yesterday for instance, which seems to have done about 13,000 views in a DAY for the post and 15K more for the slideshow: http://www.forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2012/05/30/mcdonalds-social-games-marketing-mcfail/
More and more businesses want ebooks or reports done. They want to know how to drive huge blog traffic with slideshows. Learn these skills for your own info products, and you gain a valuable skill for your freelancing, too!
URGH…that wasn’t the right example link on Forbes! Sorry folks…here it is: http://www.forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2013/02/07/what-business-should-you-start-fast-growing-sectors-for-2013/
Good thing Linda knows me as I seem like a total link-stuffer now…
Thank you for the excellent example. I didn’t know that companies are looking for ebooks – good to know. Definitely a skill set I need to grow.
And I know you’re not a link stuffer. It’s okay.
Great point, Carol! Thanks for the example. That’s one good reason to offer these products for free, as well. Focus on creating a great product and getting good reviews/testimonials/feedback, so you can show off your skills when applying for a gig.
I have been working on an idea for a series of e-guides and I think I am going to make the plunge and write the first one and get my daughter (my tech-geek person) to figure out how to actually get it posted to Amazon, etc.
I know there are a lot of theories out there about pricing. I was considering pricing each guide at approximately $3.99 and then later offering the series (probably five e-guides) at discounted cost, i.e. a package deal of say $9.99 or $12.99, something like that.
I’d appreciate if anyone has had experiencing pricing Kindle books (e-books and e-guides) who could share what pricing points have worked for them.
Anne – I don’t have enough experience with pricing to speak authoritatively on this, and I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with the best resources to recommend to help you answer this question! The issue seems to befuddle everyone in the industry. One thing I CAN say to keep in mind is readers generally expect to pay more for non-fiction than for fiction, and prices for self-pub fiction on Amazon are kind of a race to the bottom right now. If you sell non-fiction through your own site (offer a PDF, for example), writers tend to charge more, because they aren’t being compared side-by-side with rock-bottom Kindle prices; though, of course, you lose the potential for visibility that Amazon offers.
I came across this video on publishing e-books with Joanna Penn and Ali Luke – great info throughout, but for a discussion of pricing, go to about 10 min in: http://youtu.be/bPhbTGVyY-k
You might also benefit from Tom Ewer’s description of FAILING on Kindle with his e-guide and what he’s doing to come back from it: http://www.leavingworkbehind.com/kindle-failure-plans-for-success/
Thanks for the response! I will definitely be looking at those links. I’m already familiar with Tom Ewer, but haven’t seen that post. Hopefully more education = positive cash flow! Thanks again!
This is great stuff; thank you so much! My mental wheels are spinning!