5 Ninja Tips for Creating Your Own Digital Product Quickly and Efficiently

Ninja Tips According to the Cincinnati research agency AcuPoll, around 95 percent of all new products launched every year ultimately fail. That’s a pretty terrifying statement, especially for the fresh marketer about to make a significant investment into his/her newest product development. The most common reasons that marketers fear product creation are time and money. Good products should take a significant amount of both to be successful, right? Well, not always. Regardless of your niche, you can create a compelling product to help build your brand’s visibility, and even net a tidy profit.

Package the Resources You Already Have

If you have an existing website or blog, you can take some of the content that you have created in the past and organize it in a creative way. For example, some of your most popular content can be recorded in an instructional video. That way, you don’t need to fear duplicate content issues (if the new product will be published online as well). Also, with the Internet as clogged as it is, many people are more than happy to pay a few bucks for well organized content in a report or guide. To be successful with this strategy, it’s best to remember the following:

The content you provide must be valuable (not sales driven or overly promotional).
Whatever product you provide, it should be something unique, or at least rare.
If you make a video by reading an old piece of content, consider taking the time to also prepare a slide show, rather than just using a static image.

If you’re getting plenty of link juice with the existing content (and don’t want to risk people accusing you of selling them free content), consider repurposing the product to serve a new but equally valuable purpose. As an example, a website page advertising toddler Halloween costumes can be repurposed to create a how-to guide full of toddler costume ideas. While this will require some time to rework the content, having the existing content helps cut down on writing or recording time for your product.

Outsource All or Part of the Product

This strategy works especially well if you are preparing an ebook or guide. Most of the time, you can outsource a great deal of writing to a copywriter, especially if your ebook is very data driven. For example, you might be writing a “guide to the solar system,” but you don’t need to spend time writing all of the statistics and technical information about planet compositions and mass. By giving a writer an outline of the information they need to gather, you can focus on writing the editorial sections that need your voice – then combine the two later.

In the same way, you can enlist a freelancer to help create an instructional video. So, you might hire a videographer to record the exercises for your fitness tape, edit the videos and add your voiceover. Before creating your product, outline areas that could potentially be outsourced and start shopping around. You might consider doing some smaller sections yourself if the outsourcing price tag is getting unmanageable.

Utilize PLR Content

There are a lot of misconceptions about PLR content – mainly that it is useless because it’s unoriginal content (which is true) and many people are likely already using it (also often true). Purchasing PLR content to build an entire website is probably not the best strategy from an SEO standpoint. However, PLR content can be used in many other ways, especially when creating a product.

If your product will be a password protected section of a website, you’re going to be using the robots.txt file to prevent this information from being indexed by search engines. So, there’s no need to worry about PLR content being penalized as duplicate or plagiarized content (at least by search engines). You should, however, rewrite some of the content to add your own voice and make the content “your own.”
PLR content can also be combined to create one massive ebook (once again not indexed by search engines) that you offer for sale on your website. Ebooks are especially prone to plagiarism, so it will be natural that some duplicate copies are floating around.
Perhaps the most powerful use of PLR content is not as a product, but in building an email list. You might purchase some PLR content and offer it for free to website visitors that sign up for your mailing list. You can then use this mailing list to advertise other products quickly.

Create an Interview With a Notable Figure

A great source of 100% unique and valuable content is in the form of interviews. However, keep in mind that most people won’t pay for an interview with a person they don’t recognize. One trick for landing a free interview with a recognizable figure in your niche is to set up an interview that deals with something they want to market.

For example, your interviewee might have just released a book or product and is more than happy to answer some questions related to his or her own product (nothing beats free marketing after all). Then, phrase your questions to have a double benefit (both explaining their product and giving your audience valuable general information) to make your interview seem less like an advertisement. Some examples of these types of questions are:

What personal business ideals led to the development of your new product?
What additional advice would you give to people that purchase your book?
Do you have any favorite passages of your book?
You mentioned in a recent article that (insert quote). Can you elaborate on that?

Record a Webinar or Seminar

If you have recorded any seminars or webinars that you gave in the past, you have a ready-made product that you can sell to people that weren’t able to attend. Many professional speakers always record their presentations for exactly this purpose. You might consider combining multiple recordings to create a set of valuable videos for your customers (or using the same PLR content mailing list strategy).

Avoid trying to sell other peoples’ webinars and seminars, however. Even if they are not selling it themselves, they might be angry to find that you are, and they could sue you. You might consider asking the speaker if they would be willing to let you sell the recording in exchange for a percentage of the profits. If you do, make sure that you get a positive response in writing and create a legal contract to avoid any future legal trouble.

With free (or at least cheap) routes to creating products, the yearly 95% failure rate on new products starts to look a great deal less intimidating. In the end, being a product ninja only takes a little creativity. If you’re worried that people will not be willing to pay for your product because it’s common information, you might need to invest heavier in your marketing efforts. With the right market timing and brand, you can sell almost anything. After all, we live in a world where it’s acceptable to pay $2.00 for a bottle of the same water you can get from your faucet. And when companies can sell something that people are accustomed to getting for fractions of a penny, chances are good that you’ll find a few people willing to buy your product as well.