Creating Digital Downloads on Autopilot

Digital downloads are ideal products to sell through any kind of website including blogs because everything can be done on auto-pilot and the potential profit margins can be very rewarding indeed. There are literally hundreds of different products that you can sell through digital downloads. Setting up your downloads can be a relatively painless affair and once you have one product set-up for download it’s just a case of rinse and repeat. Bear in mind that the cost of setting up is minimal apart from bandwidth which is tiny; in fact it’s one of those products that is pretty much solid profit.

Which Digital Downloads To Create?

Most people when they think of digital downloads are used to e-Books being the most popular product to download, but there are a multitude of products you can sell. The various media formats you can include are Text, Video, Images, Audio, along with countless software applications. I’m fairly sure you can think of more products you can use as digital downloads, whatever industry you’re in there will always be something you can sell.

Selling your own e-Book

If you blog on a regular basis like me then you have all the content you need to produce your own e-book. Getting your e-book set up for download is a cinch too and will cost you absolutely Nada…zero. There are many free programs and services available like Open Office that will convert your document into the PDF format favoured for e-Books. As for your download set-up you can use Payloadz to take care of your product for no cost, in fact with Payloadz which I promote and use myself you can set-up your products to the value of $100 for free. The great thing about Payloadz is that they take care of everything from delivering your e-Book or whatever product you have, to sending payments straight into your PayPal account…..all on autopilot.

Promoting your Product

You will need to promote your product and the good news is that the web was made to promote. Some of the best places to start are forums that are connected to your subject and e-Book directories along with Web 2.0 sites like FaceBook and Twitter. A good way to whet the appetite is to release a sample page or chapter and link this up to your blog or an online PDF page. Links to your promotional material should be blasted out through forums, social sites, in fact as many outlets as you can find.

If you need some inspiration on “how to structure your eBook” then click the link….search results from Google.

Audio Products

Selling audio products is big business online and apart from the obvious “The Music Industry” there are various ways you can use audio to sell either as individual products or as an incentive to by other products. If your in the marketing business then you can record interviews with top Im’s or how about doing some training materials for newbies….the list is endless. If you need some ideas then check out Amazon they have a vast choice of audio products for all sorts of markets including Meditation and hypnosis. The great benefit of audio is that it allows listeners to consume your content within their busy schedule - in the car, when at the gym, or on the train.

All you need to produce an audio product is a microphone and a PC, there are loads of free software app’s available on the web. The best format to convert your audio into is mp3 which is easily downloadable.

Hot Video Products

Video is a hot and exciting medium because of its rapid popularity with the masses. Generally speaking digital video formats have a higher perceived value to the end user. To this end people will pay more for this type of download. If you are in any doubt as to what you can use to produce a downloadable video then just take a look at Youtube…enough said. The real beauty of video is its visual presentation to the user, for instance learning and training gets a whole new meaning with video where the user can literally follow instructions step by step. Make sure to produce your video in a popular downloadable format, one that works with many free media players.

You can take this downloadable product a step further by offering the hard copy or DVD by postal delivery. There are services that will bundle and package your product and even design covers for you to deliver straight to the customer. Other popular video formats you can use are AVI, MP4, and MOV.

Sales System

The easiest way to setup a sales system is to use a popular payment processor like PayPal, they will provide everything you need from setting up a shopping cart to creating buy-now buttons and subscriptions if you need them. Another good service is E-Junkie where you can setup your own affiliate program to manage your products. E-Junkie allows you to manage, host and protect your digital download. You simply upload your product, and E-Junkie will host it and send your buyers to an encrypted download link that expires in a time limit set by yourself.

Protecting Your Downloads

To protect your downloads you will need to use a dynamic link, its a special link that is dynamically generated, so when any customer makes their purchase the link then resolves to the real URL of the download and is never revealed to the end user, so it can’t be shared. With E-Junkie they provide you with a dynamic link, you will then need to specify two settings; How long you want the link to remain active for and how many times the download link can be used before it is locked out.

If you want a more professional service to handle your downloads then consider DLGuard, this is a more expensive option but gives you more choices when it comes to setting up discounts and cross marketing ventures. The software installs on your server and retails at around a one time cost of$130.

Remember to always cross promote your products and link them up with other affiliate products from different markets, this way you build relationships and grow your influence.

Do you have any thoughts? Please feel free to leave your comments

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