What i learn building a $500 Digital Product - Could they be the best get way to Solo Entrepreneurship?

Hi good people!

How are you today? Are you okay?

Before we dive into the contents of this newsletter issue, help me decide; what day of the week are you most comfortable receiving this newsletter in your inbox?. Kindly reply to this newsletter and tell me whether you prefer Thursday, Friday or Sunday.

Well, let’s get into it shall we? When I was starting my “make money online” topic on YouTube, I sought out for inspiration or mentors so to say. I learnt along time ago that learning from a mentor is first class education. When choosing a mentor, you look through people who have achieved what you want to achieve then copy, edit and paste what they’re doing. Isn’t that what Oprah Winfrey did as well? She said in her earlier TV days, that she copied her personality from Barbra Walters. Infact she said she read the news like Barbra, sat like her and pronounced words like she did. She did this until she discovered her real craft. I think that’s the part she did the “edit”, then continued to paste. Mentors also have walked the path that you want to walk and have figured what works and what doesn’t so it really saves you a lot of try and error. In this internet era, you can get yourself a mentor from miles away, doesn’t have to be in your community or even your physical location. Your mentor may not even necessarily know you. And this is where I belong. All the people that I consider my mentors don’t even know that I exist but believe me I follow them for a living.

Anyhow, when I was starting out, I watched Matt Par, Vanessa Lau and Ali Abdaal and I locked them in as my mentors. These are YouTubers who’re making over $1M per year from their YouTube businesses. I said YouTube businesses not channels because you can build a fully fledged business from a YouTube channel. To be exact, Ali Abdaal made $4.6M from his YouTube business in 2023, Matt Par made $2.9M and Vanessa Lau is clearly doing so great for herself even though she had a full year leave from the platform. Why is that context important? Both Ali Abdaal and Matt Par made half of that income from sales of digital products and surprisingly from just one product. Precisely they create a $1000 product and make thousands of sales of that product. Imagine you sell 1000 products at $1000 each. That would be a million dollar, right? Obviously, they use several top notch ways for promoting their products to bring in such juicy sales. We’ll discuss those too just stick with me.

So, after studying how my mentors are building their business, I said I’ll also copy, edit and paste. And I did. I thought for quite sometime (let’s say several months) what my magical digital product should be, may be not necessarily at $1000. May be at $500 and that’s how the “YouTube Millionaire Kit” was birthed. Quickly, the kit has the following features;

1. 2000 video ideas which are A/B tested from the top 20 niches on YouTube. The ideas will be engrossed on cards which you can print out.

1.1. Each card will also have a section where you’ll track your 1^st months metrics like how many views that video got, how many subscribers that video got you, watch time, Average View duration etc. These are usually good for memories when you look back at how your journey started.

1.2. The cards will have a customizable background where you can attach your YouTube logo or profile picture to customize them.

2. Editable digital products like eBooks, checklists, templates etc that you can customize and sell to your audience and start making money on day 1 of your YouTube career.

3. Editable website templates, mobile Apps, SaaS, discord channels etc that you’ll customize into products that you can launch to your audience for Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) or Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

4. A free productivity planner with an option of being freely upgraded to the mobile App. This helps you to set your goals and keep yourself accountable not only for your YouTube career but your entire entrepreneurial journey.

5. A free video process checklist to help you in the creation, editing and uploading your videos.

6. Recommended for you equipment that you’ll need to film the videos in your Niche.

7. A motivational quote per Niche to keep you going on your journey

8. Templates on how to pitch brands for brand deals.

9. Affiliate marketing links to products and services per Niche to help you make money on day 1.

10. After purchasing the kit, as per your preference, you’ll be added to a telegram group which gives you an opportunity to network with other YouTubers across the globe thus an opportunity to collaborate.

What have learnt in this process? Of course the other pointers I talked about in the eBooks video suffice (Because eBooks are also digital products so the pointers cut across. Find it here if you missed it). But precisely these are the pointers;

a) Have a target audience for your digital products. Mine is people who want to start a profitable YouTube business from day 1. Who is yours?

b) Pick out what problem you look towards solving in your target audience. The easiest way of figuring this out is looking out for a challenge that you faced and solved, is existent in your target audience and your target audience is potentially looking for solutions too.

c) This is by far the most important; Start with the most minimum product that you can launch out for sell to your audience. In the products or software world, they call it Minimum Viable Offer (MVO) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP). What this does is that it helps you to launch a fraction of your product having invested lesser compared to the bigger product that you want. Obviously an MVO/P also helps you to test your market’s responses as well as guide you on some additions or omissions to your product that you’ll need. Basically, an MVP has lesser features compared to your final desired product. Personally am launching my MVP; “YouTube Millionaire Kit 1.0” in a week’s time at $99 while the final desired product will be $499. And because it’s an MVP, it has 6 of the 10 features desired features. From the above features I noted, my MVP has features 1,4,5,6,7 & 10.

Not to make this Newsletter long, let’s pause here for this issue, we’ll come back next week for probably a shorter issue on how digital products could be the best get way to solo entrepreneurship. Why is this important? Solo entrepreneurship is on the rise these days. Blogs data suggests that over 45M people worldwide are currently preferring solo entrepreneurship, that’s almost a quarter the population of the US and it’s thought to exponentially increase year on year. This category of entrepreneurs wants to bring in sizable amounts of income but don’t want the hassle and bustle of managing staff or growing big enterprises like the Teslas or Amazons of this world or even building Unicorns. They simply want to make good money, travel the world and buy property on their own. So let’s get back to that short continuation next week.  

Quickly, if you have something; goods or services that you believe this audience or that of my YouTube channel may like, kindly reach out.

If this issue has been interesting for you, kindly forward it to a friend to have the read too. Otherwise thanks for reading on, we catch up on the next one.

With love, Denis!