Over the weekend, I presented a session at the Fuel Your Influence Conference hosted virtually but typically held in Denver, Colorado. My friend Jenny Finke, founder of Good For You Gluten-Free, is the founder of the event and it was a wonderful experience. For the past 6 months I’ve spent quite a bit of my time talking about personal finance focused topics. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that I’ve neglected talking about the other part of what I focus on with Michelle is Money Hungry-making more money and leveraging the internet to do it. In this episode, I will share how creating digital products changed my business and my money mindset.
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Are you trying to figure out how to make money online selling what you already know? What the following webinar that will help you get started on creating your first product and figuring out who your ideal client avatar is as well.
Show Notes
- Whenever people who are new to me discover the name of my website and podcast they react in a couple of ways.
- They laugh and tell me they love the name.
- Or, they react negatively and ask me if I’m greedy (or, something similar)
- What people may not realize is that by naming this money focused project “Michelle is Money Hungry” I was giving myself permission to unapologetically earn more and have conversations around all aspects of money.
- When I first started blogging about money, the goal was just to share my story. I felt that if I could help at least one person with their money, feel supported, or less alone, I’d achieved my goal with this project.
- In fact, I never had the idea that I would make money online. I was focused on sharing my story. But, as the years passed by I started seeing how other people that I knew were able to grow their income over time by using the internet.
- These people had a couple of things in common. They’d simplified their finances, they envisioned something bigger than themselves and had figured out how to help their ideal clients via the internet.
- To be honest, I had an existential crisis. Was it right of me to want to earn money online? And, how could I do it in an ethical way? In the personal finance space? I didn’t want to become a credit card affiliate, or share links to questionable products and financial services moving forward. It pains me to admit that when I was really broke, I said “yes” to those types of collaborations and I’m just thankful that was only a couple of times.
- I began freelance writing, I edited podcasts, did virtual assistant work, and just tried my hand at a lot of different ways to make money online.
- It would take several years for me to discover what I truly loved:
- Digital products!
- Digital products such as ebooks, courses, resources, and yes, even this podcast.
- In fact, my love of digital products was equal to my love of affiliate marketing. The best thing about developing products was that they were MY products and I didn’t have to worry about an affiliate program changing overnight and killing my income.
- During the process of developing my products I discovered that it took far fewer customers than I originally thought to make a big difference to me financially.
- With each product I learned the following lessons.
- Done is always better than perfect
- Feedback is the key to creating an even better product.
- Always grow your email list.
- Make it easy for people to understand what you’re selling and the transformation that your product provides for them.
- Don’t be afraid to tinker with the pricing-don’t forget, someone paid $100,000 for a banana duck-taped to a wall last year.
- You just have to know more than the person behind you.
- It takes awhile to learn how to sell, but if you’ve ever worked as a barista or in retail you’ve got the skills.
- Your funnel to your product doesn’t have to be that complicated.
- Don’t confuse your customer with too many options.
- For the next year, I’m shifting to a new aspect of my business which is doubling down on growing my email list and growing sales. I’m no longer in constant product creation mode and I’m so happy about that.
- If you’ve been thinking about creating a digital product for your platform please do! You will learn a lot about yourself and your ideal clients from the process.
- Also, don’t be afraid of what many perceive as “failure” you’ve already won by taking the risk.
Final Thoughts
I would like to leave you with the following thought-start where you’re at. When I started developing and creating my products I had no marketing budget. In fact, I was paying off a ton of debt. My money had to go towards that. I had a teeny tiny email list and low page views and I still was able to sell enough products to make a difference to me professionally, personally, and financially. The money I made allowed me to say “no” to low paying projects, reposition myself, and say yes to higher paying projects. Sit down and figure out what would make a difference to you financially. Maybe it’s $100 and you use that for groceries, $250 and you reinvest it into your business or $500 a month that could be applied to your debt. Only you know what will change your financial and business life.
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