Dream Of Selling Digital Products? It Might Be Easier Than You Think

By Doug Bennett, with Destini Copp

Is quitting your full-time job and running your own business on your bucket list? If so, are you interested in setting up a side-hustle before you take the plunge? It’s a good way to reduce financial stress and help you learn some of the skills that you’ll likely need as an entrepreneur.

If you’ve been reading these blogs for a while now, you’ll know that I’m a financial adviser, The Goals Guy®, and I love to support people like you to “make work optional” so that you can spend more time enjoying other aspects of your life.

My work is service-based, and although I don’t sell digital products, I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a digital course. I was delighted to cross paths with Destini Copp and bring her onto the Goals Do Come True podcast, because she supports business owners to increase their passive income through digital products and evergreen sales funnels.

In this blog, we’re going to explore why it’s important to maintain a degree of flexibility when you set goals, and just how easy it can be to create an online course that makes money while you sleep.

Why you benefit from giving your goals wiggle room 

Destini: “One of my original goals was to get my Master of Business Administration [MBA] and have all my children before I was 30 years old. I had two kids before I turned 30 and I got my MBA, but I had additional kids almost eight years down the road! 

Things in your life will change and it might take you longer to achieve some of your goals than you originally thought. I had always wanted to start my own business but I didn’t end up doing that until I was in my mid 40s. I wish I had started it earlier, but I didn’t give up on that goal and it was not too late. It’s okay to pivot, to change your ideas and to make adjustments.”

Destini shared a really valuable lesson: it’s important to be able to change or scale up your goals, because as you reach some of your milestones, you might want to set your sights higher or refine your original objective. A mind that’s open to new opportunities is more likely to spot them, which is exactly what happened to Destini.

New opportunities might suit you more than your original plan

One of Destini’s clients introduced her to the concept of  “blog flipping”, which means you create a blog, monetise it, and then sell it to someone in that industry.

Destini: “One of my superpowers is getting businesses up and running; it’s really easy for me to do that. If you have a business idea right now, I could tell you ten ways to create and monetise a blog and make it profitable within a few months.

There are new businesses that I’m starting in the next two years and then we’re going to sell them. I’ve learnt that you can sell them for 30 to 40 times of your monthly net profit, and since setting up businesses or blogs is one of my superpowers, that sounds like heaven! I could do it all day long and it doesn’t feel like work to me.”

Destini makes it all sound so easy, but I know that if you’re just starting out, the volume of information on the internet can make it feel overwhelming.

I wanted to know if creating digital products was really so simple.

Making digital sales easy

Destini: “Mini courses are a brilliant way to monetise your expertise. They’re easy to put together and sell from your website, which makes it good for you, and they’re an additional revenue stream. Digital courses are one of the best ways to get started.

I tell people that their success is not dependent on the tools that they use. You don’t have to go out and spend lots of money; make sure you have an email service provider that can handle automations and sequences, and that you have a website put together where you can sell an online course. You can do it all very cheaply.

I create courses using screen recording on Zoom, so don’t stress about video quality! There’s no need to record it in a professional studio. You can also record directly on a platform like Canva. I also record courses that are audio only and get so much great feedback. We offer a Course in a Box programme which will walk you through how to create your mini course. Some of our students have put theirs together in less than a week!”

Is there a secret goal-setting strategy to make it easy?

Destini has provided a simple solution if you’re looking to create an online course, but remember that it’s unlikely to turn you into a millionaire overnight. That said, Destini is a powerhouse of energy, which made me keen to find out her method for goal setting.

Destini: “I’m a little bit old school: I’ve used all the expensive products, but when I set goals, a simple Google Sheet works best for me. It doesn’t matter whether the goal is to sell a business or a blog in a year’s time; we just use the spreadsheet to break it down into the tactics, because those actionable steps make it more manageable for us.”

I hope that’s helped fuel your enthusiasm for setting up a side-hustle or building on your existing business. If creating a digital course is so easy, there’s really no excuse not to do it, so I’m definitely adding that to my goals list for 2022.

If you’d like my professional support around goal setting, email me at doug@dougbennett.co.uk; or why not book a complimentary chat before I start charging?