In this week’s episode we are talking all about the four small digital products you can make in a week. So let me first start off by… by clarifying what I mean by small digital product. Uh, I don’t mean something that you have to offer as a service all the time.
So maybe you are a service based business and you always have like… consults with clients and maybe you offer a $75… you know, like strategy session, for example. That’s not what I mean by that. While that’s a great thing to offer… and it’s an easy way for someone to learn how you work. And get a feel for working with you… that’s not what I mean by digital product.
I mean, something small, usually under, I would say under $50 for price and something that you can easily make in a week… two max, depending how deep you go into it, depending on your niche, your industry.
From there, when I say small digital product, it’s something that anyone can purchase at any time and they can go through it at their own pace. They can keep it for reference for later.
And the big thing with that is you then take this small digital product and you connect it to your lead magnet or your freebie, whatever your preferred term is for it. And then you can start to build some evergreen income with that as you drive people to your lead magnet.
*Note: Links with an * are affiliate links. This means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I love and use in my own business.
Before I dive into telling all about my not so small first digital product that I regret and totally messed up on… let me tell you about my favorite tool to track it all. Asana is the best when It comes to making sure you’ve covered everything for creating your digital product. If you’ve never used Asana, grab my free Asana Setup Guide below and check it out.
Now… let’s get back to that list of those 4 small digital products you can make in a week. Let me start by telling you about my experience. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.
The First Not So Small Digital Product I Made…
So let me tell you about the first time I made a digital product. And no… it was not the small digital product you can make in a week kind. I did the wrong thing and I went way… way… way too big. I went from having never made a course to trying to make a thousand dollars course. And I was so overwhelmed. I was organized enough that it wasn’t overwhelming… of what I had to make. It was overwhelming in the fact that there were so many moving pieces, so many things to think about and it wasn’t something I had ever done before. I had never made a course period. So when I went and made that big course, that was something that I had done wrong. In that sense.
I wish I would’ve started with something smaller because the first time I made a smaller course, a small digital product, it came together in roughly a week. It was far less of a headache. It was probably the easiest thing that I ever created that way. And I wish that that would’ve been my first experience with a course, because then it would’ve helped me as I made bigger ones.
I mean, that, that first big course I made. Feels like such a mess that I don’t even have it open for enrollment right now, because I’m totally revamping the entire thing because looking back on it, I think of all the different ways that I could have done something different, changed it, improved it, made it better. So that’s something that I have to do. Um, that’s on my to-do list of projects for the year.
But that’s something where if you’ve never made a course or a digital product, starting with something small is the easiest way to dip your toe in the water and see if you like that kind of thing, because not every type of digital product or offer is gonna be right for you to make or for your audience. Or for your niche, depending on what your niche is, sometimes different niches lend themselves better to different types of digital products.
I’ve taken a couple courses that have helped teach me how to package and position that offer and put it together to really make it something enjoyable that people are gonna actually want. Because there is a little bit of a science behind it. And it’s something that I had to learn myself. My two favorite courses I’ve taken that were a big help.
Those Super Helpful Awesome Courses
The 4 Small Digital Products You Can Make in a Week
So let’s get started looking at the four types of small digital products that you can make in a week. and I say in a week, because these are things that you should be able to block out one, maybe two days over the course of your week, worth of time
So maybe it’s just two, eight hour days, or maybe you do just a couple hours every day to work on it. But it’s something that if you block out just a little bit of time, Or you block out a whole day or two, it should be easy enough for you to completely get through, outline, and put together into something that is ready to be sold.
No. 1 - Mini Course
So, number one, a mini course, this is something that is small and simple. You cover one topic, you… you solve one specific problem really… really narrowed down. So for example, I have a client of mine who’s a… she’s a nutritionist and I’m building her website. And one of the things I was talking with her about is lead magnets and that kind of thing.
Related Reading: The Ultimate List of Tools to Build Any Website
And she’s like, you know, every time I think about a lead magnet, I feel like I get stuck or it doesn’t work. And of course, when it’s always your own industry, sometimes it seems like it’s always harder. So I thought about… what made me want to work with her and how did she help me in the beginning when her and I first started talking and communicating about what she does, what I do and that kind of thing, and building that kind of relationship between the two of us.
So what she helped me out with was discovering that I have a dairy allergy… intolerance… problem. Um, basically when I have way too much dairy, it messes with me in multiple ways, from congestion to messing with my asthma and a whole host of other things. So dairy is something that I cannot handle too much of.
And I had no idea I’m an avid cheese lover. Yes. It breaks my heart, but I’m an avid cheese lover, Mac and cheese, you know… queso, chips and queso, cheese fries. If it has cheese on it, it makes it better. It’s kind of like that bacon makes everything better line. So I… I gave it a shot. I cut out dairy and I dropped a pant size… pant size and a half I say and a half, because I was kind of in between two sizes.
I was starting to dip down into a second size. And that was within just a few months of cutting out dairy. So for me, that was life changing because I noticed that I felt better when cutting it out. So my thought is if she could do that for someone else, they’re gonna go, okay… she knows her stuff.
You know, she... she's got this, she can help me.
So I suggested the idea to her of a lead magnet of a little course on, do you… do you potentially have, you know, a… a food intolerance issue causing you to hold onto stubborn body fat. And from there going into a mini course, that talks about really how to determine if you do for certain. So that’s what hers is about. Is how to determine if you actually have a… a food intolerance, how to check for it, and how to see if for certain you do. And that alone can change someone’s life and get them to go, oh I feel better. So it’s that kind of tiny little thing. It doesn’t have to be this big massive thing. It’s… it’s really something small and super specific.
So a minicourse is a great idea because you can outline it and do just a couple of videos and maybe a couple worksheets, maybe a workbook, maybe one or two other types of things to go with it. And these might be things that you already have, if you’re working with clients or if you’ve got bigger, higher ticket offers, maybe… maybe it’s something that you pull out of your offer… of your bigger offer or from your one on one clients. And you give them just this little worksheet to kind of go along.
No. 2 - Pre-Recorded Masterclass
So type number two, a pre-recorded masterclass. And I… I put this one on the list because I feel like I’ve seen this a lot lately. This one is a really nice thing, because this is as simple as making a slide deck, writing your sales page. And then pre-recording an hour to… I’d say two hour long video where you talk about your topic. Whatever it’s about.
And then you package maybe a workbook, maybe a little tool, a couple little things like with the mini course, but to go with this masterclass to help people implement it, make it easier, better to use, and then you can record it and have that done in a day.
So that one is super easy. I see it a lot lately. And this is something that if you’ve got an existing email list, you could offer to them. At… at a price point as a way of, you know… hey, this is the one time I’m gonna do this live after that, it’s gonna be pre-recorded. So you’ll get access to maybe a special q and a.
So then you’re getting paid to make this, offering it to your current email list, but then it becomes something that you can offer to future people who join your email list and sign up for your lead magnet. So that’s another great idea for an easy to create digital product.
No. 3 - Email Challenge
Type number three, an email challenge. I have a bit of a love, hate relationship with these, but I left it on the list because depending on your niche and what your industry is, this may be really good for you.
Um, I have a bit of a love, hate relationship with them because sometimes I just want it all up front, but I’m also aware that I have ADHD. So sometimes having to remember every day to go back to my email is hard to do. Plus when we sign up for things sometimes. Our inboxes get bombarded by emails that it’s kind of hard to filter through all of the chaos of them. So that’s my love-hate relationship. And I know that that’s a personal thing, but it is something to be aware of about your audience.
So if your audience is maybe entrepreneurs who are. Neurodivergent and have that kind of ADHD attention span, they might not remember. Maybe they’re impatient and they just want it now. Um, that might be something to not do because it’s something that you are… depending on what you’re solving, what problem you’re solving with your email challenge.
It may be something that you end up irritating them. Or upsetting them because they don’t have… have all the answers, especially if it’s like a really big pain point where they’re like, I just want it all now. Maybe it’s not a good idea.
But if it’s something where it’s one of those little nagging problems that they’ve been wanting to solve, maybe it’s a good idea.Maybe it’s got a little bit more bulk to it and you wanna break it down like that. So think about your audience with this and how you think that they’ll best respond to this type.
No. 4 - Workbook / PDF / Guide
Type number four. Um, I would call this workbook, PDF, guide, something like that. I would not do a one page checklist. I’d say a one page checklist is better for something like your lead magnet, but a workbook, a PDF, a guide, something that’s gonna walk them through something in a little bit more detail.
With the right tools… um, I used Canva to make, I think, a 40 page website planner that I offer for $17. And I think it took me a day to build it, to be honest at max. And that was like planning and everything, but this is something that it’s just that, and this may be better as like a tripwire price. So maybe, you know, $27 or lower kind of price range, where it’s a little workbook or a PDF or guide to walk them through something.
Tips for Creating these 4 Small Digital Products You Can Make In a Week… Or Less
And the goal of it is… everything is packaged up and in that it all walks ’em through it. It’s just the one thing you have to make. All you have to do is put together that workbook you could use Canva. You could even use Google Drive to put that together.
Um, really, however it works best for you to put these together, you know, email challenges can be done in your… your email service provider.
A prerecorded masterclass, you could put it up as a page on your website, put all of the info on that page. And then after they purchase, they get an email that then gives them the link to that page.
Now I use WordPress and I use Yoast for my SEO and in WordPress on that page, within the Yoast settings I believe, you can block access for search engines to that specific page. So that way you wouldn’t have Google showing your paid masterclass recording page, you know, in the search engine. So that way it still keeps it secret. And then you just don’t link it anywhere except for that one email.
Related Reading: The Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins
Um, a mini course… a mini course would be great for, um, basically there are a ton of different course platforms out there that you can use. And a lot of them will let you do like one for free. So that’s something that you could do there.
I use something, I use a separate tool on my website for courses. But that was because I knew I was gonna be building a lot more. And that I wanted to have control over the website myself and not be reliant on something like teachable or, you know, Podia or any of those other course platforms. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, they’re perfectly fine. But it was just a preference of myself, of, I wanted to have control over the domain where all my courses sat and how it all looked.
In The End…
Um, so… so in the end, those four types, a minicourse, a prerecorded masterclass, an email challenge, and a workbook PDF type guide. The big takeaway… I would say, be sure to consider what pain point you’re solving, what problem you’re , and you know… how it’s helping your audience. Think about that topic you’re covering and how it would be best to learn it.
And consider your audience and think about how they might best enjoy it.
And from there, outline it, plan it, and go ahead and put it together. And in that… it shouldn’t take you much more than a week, maybe too. If you’ve got some technical things going on, connecting it to like lead magnets, adding it to a page on your site.
Either way, these are all little things that can come together relatively quickly. Because I know when I built my first course, I spent what felt like two or three months on it. Thinking back if… if memory serves. And it felt like it took forever. It felt like a nightmare because it was taking forever. So doing that small little thing for the first time kind of gives you the momentum to, okay… that wasn’t so bad.
You learn, you know... what makes it easier for you.
Is it easier for you to batch it? Is it easier for you to take an hour a day and you know, just record whatever you can. So it’s that kind of foot in the door. See how you like it. You know… do you enjoy the masterclass format? Do you hate email challenges? Are you terrible at Canva? Do you love Canva?
That kind of thing, but make sure you think about what you enjoy and what’s easiest for you to create what your audience will enjoy. What’ll make it easier for them to learn, and what topic and how it best fits the format. Because some things may not always work with a workbook or an email challenge.
So that is it for the four small digital products you can make in a week. They’re easy, they’re simple. And they should not give you a massive headache at the end of it. So go ahead and start creating one. I would love to know what you create.
And speaking of creating things, I know it can be overwhelming. Especially if you’ve never made one before. My favorite tool for tracking all the pieces of my digital products (no matter the size)… is Asana. I want to make sure you had a chance to get your hands on my free Asana Setup Guide.
