In this Trends.vc Report, we talk about product ideas, building an email list, monetizing your audience, crowdsourcing and more.
You know something that others don’t.
But 1:1 help does not scale.
Digital products help you share your knowledge in a scalable way.
Ebooks
Online Courses
Templates
Databases
- Vensy has built Notion Planner in public.
- Eelco Wiersma shares the new features of SaaS UI in public.
- Josh W. Comeau made $550,000 with CSS for JavaScript Developers. He was sharing short recordings of the course in public.
- Jane Portman presold UI Audit (now free) for $3,500.
- Jay Clouse got 40 pre-orders for Podcast Like The Pros.
- Ayush Chaturvedi presold Make Money with Words for $512.
- Quentin Villard made $3,000 by sharing TIMS with his audience.
- Xavier Coiffard says building an audience helped him launch UserBooster.
- Arvid Kahl used his audience on X (Twitter) to launch Zero to Sold. He sold 350 copies of the book in 24 hours.
- Gabe Ragland offers a 50% commission to Divjoy affiliates.
- Kerry Godsall offers a 50% commission to How to Sketch affiliates.
- Rob Austin and Michael Andreuzza offer up to 70% commission to Wicked Templates affiliates.
- Ryan Sager says Who Sponsors Stuff attracts customers through inbound inquiries and referrals. It makes $100,000 ARR.
- Nicole Osborne offers a free Agency Growth ebook.
- Dan Martell offers Growth Playbooks by SaaS Academy.
- Modest Mitkus offers free resources for making digital products.
- JPatz is showing music beats on TikTok.
- Chris is promoting his SEO course on YouTube.
- Matt Olpinski embeds Project Proposal & Contract Bundle in his blog.
- Pixel True has a $299 lifetime deal for illustrations.
- Seth Kramer has a $159 lifetime deal for No Code MBA.
- Landingfolio has an $89 lifetime deal for all UI components.
- Doing Content Right costs $300.
- Podcast Cover Templates cost $19,90.
- SaaS Conversion Strategies cost $157.
- Mark Anderson sells cartoons for up to $75 per month.
- SaaSFrame offers SaaS layout examples for $14 per month.
- Andrew Kamphey sells Better Sheets for up to $29 per month. He made $200,000+.
- Clientjoy is a CRM for small businesses. They offer contract templates for freelancers and agencies.
- Surfer SEO is a content creation platform. They have an SEO Writing Masterclass to help you optimize your writing for SEO.
- Karthik Sridharan runs Flexiple, a recruiting agency. They made free illustrations that attracted 150,000 visitors in 24 hours.
- Kajabi helps you make and grow digital products with 1:1 sessions.
- Teachable helps you make better digital products with group coaching.
- Thinkific helps you launch online courses with growth and marketing calls.
- Pieter Levels crowdsourced the chapters for MAKE.
- Lokesh Gupta wrote Art of Email List Growth based on insights from top email marketers.
- Gergely Orosz made $14,000 with The Tech Resume. He based the book on insights from recruiters and hiring managers.
- Philip Kiely made $39,141 with Writing for Software Developers. The book is based on interviews with software developers and writers.
“Digital products are easy to copy. It’s hard to build a moat.”
To boost value, base your digital product on your personal brand, unique experience and provide great customer support.
“Digital products are prone to piracy.”
This is true. If you’re worried about piracy, it can be wise to choose another business model.
“Some digital products get out of date fast.”
Some digital products are evergreen. For products on fast-paced topics, offer lifetime deals to boost the perceived value or sell updated versions as “new” products.
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Anyone else still obsessed with the one-person digital product model? ✋
How would you go about doing pre-sales on a product that either has a free trial or free tier? Drop the free parts of it?
Great post! Thanks for putting it together
Appreciate the effort! I would try and use it soon!
Great list, appreciate you pulling together.
Thank you for this comprehensive list, will be sharing it with my audience soon
Haters gonna hate! Excellent tips Dru. Great job!
Good compilation
Great information. Thanks for sharing,
Super informative post. Can you also add how to productized Telegram or Whatsapp channel?
Case studies for them.