Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com.
You might generate a large number of sales during your initial launch period only to find that sales taper off after the promotional efforts for your launch conclude. You might be worried that you won’t be able to generate meaningful sales from your digital products after launch and think that you will have to create another new product to generate any additional sales. Fortunately, that is not the case. There are a number of strategies that you can use to continue to generate sales for your existing digital products over time:
- Use your auto-responder series. Add a variation of some of the promotional emails you used during your product launch to your auto-responder series. Your digital product will be automatically marketed to your new subscribers when they hit the appropriate day in your auto-responder series and receive your promotional email. New subscribers will not have been on your list during your digital product’s initial launch, so the auto-responder emails they receive will likely be the first time that they hear about your product.
- Create a products page on your website. In your website’s main navigation, there should be a page called products that highlights all of the digital products that you have produced and sold. For each product that you have created, you should include a description of the product, along that product’s logo or any other promotional graphics you used during launch and a link to buy that product. This will give people that are clicking around your website looking for more content an opportunity to find your paid products.
- Offer time-limited discounts on your products. We regularly discount our subscription products during the weekend after Thanksgiving as a way to boost sales during a traditionally slow sales week in the year. By only making a discount available for a few days, you can create an artificial sense of urgency for potential customers that are on the fence. If they want to buy your product at the discounted price, they will have to take action and make their purchase before your sale is over.
- Relaunch one of your existing products. Simply go through the content of one of your existing products, make any updates that are necessary and add an additional section or two of content to the product. When you re-launch an existing product, you can send a two week or three week email campaign just like you would when you are launching a new product. Make sure to give everyone that purchased the first iteration of your product a free copy of the new version, because your audience will revolt if you expect them to pay full price for a slightly updated product. You should only re-launch a product about a year after your last launch. This will allow for plenty of time for new people to subscribe to your mailing list that weren’t subscribed during your initial launch.
- Launch new products. If your existing products are no longer selling that well to your audience, you can always create a new product. While starting over from scratch on a brand new digital product may be a lot of work, it will serve as another long-term digital asset that you can use to generate revenue for your business.