Generating passive income is a must for the self employed and creative people in this world. There are only so many billable hours in the day, and it is hard to make a living if you are just billing billable hours.

I decided to experiment with a digital product and adding it to my blog to see how easy the process would be.

Creating A Digital Product

E-books: If you are going to be selling any form of e-book, it is generally delivered as a pdf file. The best software to use to generate the pdf files, in my opinion, is adobe acrobat professional. However, there are free pdf writers available for creative people on a budget. Cute Pdf is an example of a free pdf writing software.

Audio Files: If you are going to be selling mp3 or audio files there are a number of great software options available for recording and generating mp3 files. One free software that I recommend to clients who want to generate vocal audio and not professional music quality is Audacity.

My Journey – bundling audio and pdf: I happened to purchase finale print music software several weeks back and spent a euphoric couple of days experimenting with writing beginner/intermediate piano scores. I was able to save these scores as pdf files by using adobe acrobat professional. Now I have a handful of piano scores suitable for the beginner/intermediate player and so thought to myself, why not bundle a score with mp3 file to sell digitally for this blog example?

First of all, I want people to be able to hear what it sounds like when played. Finale Print Music can generate a digitally produced  audio mp3 file of the music score. I needed to insert the mp3 file in this blog post so that people can hear a sample of the song.  Supplying a sample listen is a great idea for musicians selling mp3 files, or for experts selling audio files. If you are thinking of selling an audio file, I recommend installing the plugin below so that visitors to your site can easily listen to a sample.

WORDPRESS PLUGIN TIP: I installed the following plugin into my wordpress blog so that my audio links would be playable with an audio player.

http://wpaudioplayer.com/download

It generates an audio player just like the one here. Click on it to listen to my Simple Song 1 for the piano.
Simple Song 1

If you want to play audio on your blog, I highly recommend wpaudioplayer.

3 Examples of Digital Delivery/E-commerce Options

1. Option 1: free and the least passive:
   The first option for selling digital products would be to use paypal and then manually email people the product. Setting up a business paypal account is free, and then you can sell products and services online and paypal takes a small percentage of sales. This is the least passive option as you have to manually email people the digital product, but it is free. You can use the steps that I illustrate in this tutorial on adding e-commerce to your blog: http://goffgrafix.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/adding-e-commerce-to-your-blog/ to generate the code for your buy now button and copy and paste it into your blog post. You would then have to manually email the digital product to the customer once you receive notice of the purchase.
2. Option 2: e-junkie.com
   With e-junkie.com you can sell up to 10 products for only $5/month, and it ties into paypal. Click here to view the complete list of features that e-junkie offers. With e-junkie the process is automated. When a customer clicks the buy now code that e-junkie supplies you, e-junkie will automatically send your customer to a page to download the product when the payment goes through. They will also email the customer a time sensitive link to the product download page.
3. Option 3: 1shoppingcart.com/marketerschoice.com
   1shoppingcart.com/marketerschoice.com is a robust and comprehensive shopping cart service that offers digital products options, autoresponder capabilities, recurring billing and much more. I use them for my hosting/web design business, so they were the obvious choice, for me, for selling digital products. After I upload my product, the cart generates a buy now link that I can just paste into this blog post below. Voila!

Purchase Simple Song 1 Piano Score for the beginner /intermediate piano player.
$2.75
Score comes bundled with mp3 file.

Listen to the score below:

Simple Song 1

Your Experience with selling digital products

Please share your experience with selling digital products. What e-commerce system do you use? Do you sell pdf files? audio files? Is there a software that you have found useful in generating digital products? Please comment below. I look forward to your input.

If you found this tutorial useful, feel free to test the button below and make a donation.

1. FUNCTION
The first step to developing a web site is to figure out exactly what the function of that web site is going to be. By function, I mean what do you want your website to do for you, and how effortlessly or intuitively will it do it. You need to have thought out what role you want your web site to play in your business in order to have a good design developed.

For example: Is it to sell a product? Is it an on-line catalog? Does it tell a story? Is it an educational tool? Are you using it to support a cause? Is it entertainment? Do you just want it to answer a bunch of those questions that people are calling and pestering you with: hours you’re open, contact info etc.

A web site can have more than one function, however it’s critical to have a clear idea of what those are before you meet with your web designer.

2. WHO IS YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
It is important to start researching who your target audience is, how they are going to find your site, what will make them stay on your site, and what you want them to do when they arrive at your site. The answers to these questions effect every step of the web design process.

3. SEO and INFRASTRUCTURE
Search engine optimization plays a critical role in how the website will be designed and programmed. The names of files, the type of coding, the directory structure all add to that mysterious algorithm of how well your site will be indexed by the search engines.

Before programming a website, some research needs to be done on the keywords you would optimize with to attract your target audience.

I always design my content management systems so that my clients can update their content and meta tags, but beyond this, I can name the very files and directories that make up the site with keywords.

There are different options in how to code a website, and these will need to be discussed in relationship to search engine traffic (css, flash, html). Even if you opt to use a blog platform for your website,  the research you do on keywords will help you when you create your categories, tags and name your posts.

4. USABILITY
Marketing and usability should play a role in the website design and structure.

The graphic design isn’t just pretty, it’s usability. It is important to be clear about what you want visitors to do when they get to your site. There is lots of research on what parts of a web page people look at the most, how colors effect behavior, how to write effective content for your target audience. The graphic design and layout of content is a balance between visual branding and persuasion. Here are some good resources on usability.

If you plan on working with an SEO specialist and/or marketing specialist, my advise is to have them meet with you and the website programmer/development team so that everyone is on the same page.

The last thing you want to do is build a website and after it is built, have an SEO person or marketing person tell you it needs to be redone in order to attract and keep visitors.

Everybody is tightening their budgets right now, and where to place your online advertising dollars is a big question. Not only does google analytics let you see which websites are sending traffic to your website, it lets you search those statistics.

Today one of my online advertising links was up for renewal. I thought to myself, before I spend this money, I want to see if this site is actually directing visitors to me. I logged into google analytics. I clicked on the date range and set it from January 1st, 2008 until the present. I clicked on “Traffic Source” then clicked on “Referring Sites”, and it pulled up a graph with the site usage starting with the sites that refer the most traffic – but here is the secret weapon – at the bottom of that graph is a search field.

I typed in the name of the website that was selling me the link to see exactly how much traffic they had sent me last year. I found out the exact number of visits to my website in one year resulted from that advertising. What a powerful tool this is! Now, with the help of google analytics, I can make really informed decisions, very easily, about what sites are sending me clients and which aren’t. Being able to search the data for the specific website address is an incredible feature. It saved me so much time. With just two clicks, I could see exactly how much traffic a given site was sending me within a specific date range.

If you don’t have a google analytics account, and you run a blog or website, I encourage you to sign up for one today. Being able to view referring sites is the tiniest fraction of the useful information that it will supply to you concerning the visitors to your website, where they come from, how they navigate your site, which pages they land on and how long they stay. Even if you’re not going to look at the data right now – sign up and start compiling the data. Just go to http://google.com/analytics

Ever wonder why images or photographs sometimes appear next to people’s comments on blogs?  Those images are called avatars, and it is really easy to create an avatar image for yourself. You, too, can have a photograph or icon that will follow your comments around the internet.

Why would you want to do that? For branding, and to call attention to your comments. You don’t need to use a portrait. You could use your logo, for example.

Below, I am going to walk you through, step by step, how to create your custom avatar image using gravatar.com.

1. The first thing to do is to have an image on your computer that you want to use. I used a photograph taken of me by Lynn Christoffers – a Martha’s Vineyard Photographer.It doesn’t have to be square. Gravatar will let you crop it once you upload it.
   
2. Step two: Go to http://www.gravatar.com
3. Step 3: Click on the “Sign up now” link. (view image below)

4. Step 4: Enter the email address that you want your avatar image associated with. (see image below)
5. Step 5: They will send you a confirmation email.
   Click on the link in the confirmation email to activate your account. (see images below)
   

   

6. You will then be directed to a page that will ask you where the image is that you want to upload.

7. Choose where it is. Search for the image and upload it.

8. You will then be able to crop it to be the perfect avatar image.

   

9. When you’re done cropping, you will be asked to rate it based on the image content.

10. The final step is to assign the image to your email address. Just check the box next to the email address that you want to associate with the avatar, and click on the “use for selected address” button. Then you’re done. It is that easy.
    

You can log into gravatar at any time to update your avatar images or add new email addresses.

I am always fired up when I learn about a new tool, and slideshowpro is really exciting. I immediately purchased it so that I could play with it.

I purchased the slideshowpro for flash ($39), and the CMS slideshowpro director ($39). My server will work with slideshowpro director, if any of my clients are interested, however, if you are going to be making tons of video slide shows, I recommend the slideshowpro hosting for the CMS, because you won’t have to worry about bandwidth, and it is really reasonable.

1. Step one in getting slideshowpro up and running on my wordpress blog was to install the director on my website server. This was pretty straight forward.  You ftp the files to the server, and then browse to them. The installation process through the web browser walks  you through any permissions that you need to update. It will prompt you to manually create a .xml file called crossdomain.xml, it will tell you exactly what to copy and paste into that file,  and upload that to your root directory, which I did with bbedit.
2. Step two was to create an album in the director and upload photos to it. I uploaded pictures from a walk I took on a landbank trail in Chilmark, just two days ago. I then copied the path generated to that albums .xml file to paste into the flash file parameters.
3. Step three was to install the slideshowpro extension into my flash cs3 and then create a new flash file.
4. Step four was to plug in the path to the album’s .xml file generated by the album, and also to choose that the .xml file is a director generated file, publish the .swf file and ftp it to my server.
5. Step five was to install the plug-in Kimili flash embed tag generator into my wordpress blog, and click on its icon to add the new .swf files path, size etc.   I made sure to add the base=”.” parameter to the embed tag. I found the instructions here.
6. The results of my efforts are at the top of the page.

I am pretty excited to learn more about the slideshowpro customization and parameters.

Now you can just ask people for their email and name. You could say, “Hey, can you give me your email address and name so that I can try to sell you my stuff through personalized emails?” That would be the most honest approach, don’t you think?

Maybe you aren’t just trying to sell people your services and products. Maybe you are completely altruistic and just want to give away great advice and tips. Maybe you have truly useful information to share with them. Then you can say, “Sign up to receive my useful tips and advice”, and that way you might get people interested in your tips and advice signing up, because you are giving them something that they consider valuable.

When people give you their name and address, they are giving you something of value. You need to give something back. Don’t solicit emails from people unless you have something of value to share. And make sure it is valuable. Be it a free e-book if they sign up, or useful advice, or a promise of the information that they are looking for, make sure that you are giving something of value. Otherwise people will unsubscribe faster than they signed up, and you are just adding to the obesity of our spam layer.

Back to Speaker A, she said that when you send out your emails to this growing list they should be 75% content and 25% sales. I disagree. I think that if you send emails out to a list of people they should be 90% valuable content and 10% sales. In fact, I don’t think you should ever send an email unless you are offering value. I do believe that email lists are important, however, unless you have something of value to offer your list in addition to advertising, I want to discourage you from sending emails. My point of view might not be the most marketing savvy opinion, however, as someone bombarded with hundreds of email every day, I would urge you to not add to the empty calories. I want nutritious email landing in my inbox. I want them to feed my intellect, or my curiosity, or my spirit. I don’t want the internet to be a huge commercial. I want to believe that the internet is a vehicle for communication and sharing ideas.

That said, I do enjoy an occasional notice from amazon.com about my favorite author – so how is that different? The key word, I think is “occasional”.

Speaker B asked Speaker A, “How often should you send out emails to your list?”. Speaker A said that in the past experts have suggested sending an email once a month, however, she urged, recent studies show that you should send an email every week. “you should be contacting them once a week .. be it with a newsletter or a tip … the reason is that people purchase for different reasons .. emotional … does no good to do it only once … you need to continually be staying in front of your list – broadcasting – it doesn’t have to be lengthy … send a benefit … tie it into current events … share a tip, then at the bottom of the email mention your information.”

Now, I have issue with this again. I recently attended the Social Media TeleSummit, and each of the speakers had a free gift for attendees that required filling in your name and email address (They ALL must be listening to these experts!) Caught up in a flush of enthusiasm about what I was learning, I naturally signed up for ALL. I was then bombarded, literally bombarded with email. The variety of the email that I received in response to my action of signing up for their gifts covered a range of useful to down right annoying. One speaker bombarded me almost daily with emails that were transparently just a framework to sell me. Other speakers have been sending me an email once a week, and although some of the content is useful, most of it is just a sales pitch. They might have ONE sentence that is good advice and then point me with an affiliate link to another class or teleseminar that is happening. ONE sentence. That is just plain lazy.

What I am trying to say is, if you are going to start broadcasting email to an email list, put time into it. Don’t cut corners. Give value. Don’t sell products with every email, unless you space them way out, (so people have a chance to forget they were annoyed by the balance of value content to sales in your last email. )

And no matter what Speaker A says. Please don’t send an email every week unless there is really time sensitive information that you need to communicate. If the emails are just a vehicle for a sales pitch, keep it to twice a month, or once a month. And no matter what you do, make sure you send emails that are well written and contain 90% value content. Don’t do it, unless you are willing to take the time to do it right. You expect your recipients to take the time to read them, after all. You should be willing to invest the time thinking about what you are sending.

Time, Money, Sex (and Salvation): How to Turbo Charge Your Blog Posts, Podcasts and Sales Copy for Maximum Traffic & Greater Impact with Andy Wibbels

(On a side note, Andy Wibbels is a very entertaining speaker, so if you ever have a change to listen to him – to a podcast, or to attend a teleseminar that he is participating in – I encourage you to do so.)

Andy Wibbels has a background in theater, and because of this he sees the world from a narrative perspective. He sees the act of shopping as a giant screen play, and has spent years studying the characters involved and analyzing what motivates them.

Wibbels started by saying that we tend to focus on “why should people buy from me” from the perspective of ourselves – because they like me, because I’m credible, because of my reputation. That may be true, but in order to successfully market, he says that we need to understand the underlying motivation behind their purchases – we need to see into the DNA of their psyche. Shoppers won’t buy from us only because they like us, they will buy from us because something in their emotional psyche is urging them to buy our product, and that that underlying urge is wrapped up in self preservation.

Andy Wibbels pointed out that we buy things (and he is not talking about essentials, like eggs and milk and toilet paper, he is talking about the extras) – we buy based on emotions and then justify it.

Andy asks us to look at the stories around us, and at how things come out in a narrative structure. In every a story, movie, play or poem, he points out that characters act when their self preservation is threatened. “Every movie, play, story or product is about the end of the world. ”

According to Wibbels, you can translate that to the marketing world. If we have a perceived threat to the trajectory of our lives or our livelihood, if we, as consumers, feel threatened, then we act – AND to do so we must see the product or the service that we a compelled to buy as the savior, the grail, the salvation. The product must be perceived as the life raft.

To better illustrate his philosophy, Andy Wibbels had us draw a Venn diagram.

Andy specifies that these are the main reasons why we buy things beyond our daily needs – (not toilet paper, oatmeal, cat litter).

TIME
We want to save time – to use our time more wisely. Everybody is so busy, no one has time to do anything.

How does your product or service help people use their time more wisely? Does it free up time for them to do what they would rather do?

MONEY
Everybody is broke.

How can your product, service, ebook, teleseminar, phone call, magazine help people make money, make more money, or have them use their money more wisely

SEX
Wibbels points out that our advertising is “soaked in sex, wreathed in sensuality and bathed in lust”. He said that (and I paraphrase some of this) “Sex is one of the main reasons why we buy things … not talking about getting on – rather how does your product or service make people more attractive so that they can have more sex? How does it help people have more sex, better sex, more partners, better performance, more offers for sex. The idea not just of sex as ‘get it on’, ‘get it together’, but performance and yourself as an attractive person”…
“to a business this translates to: search engine ranking, brand, visibility, how your business is perceived – your means, your products, – the best description of social software is software that gets you laid.”

Andy Wibbels’s VENN diagram maps out an easy way to talk about your products and services. This is a quick way to cook down what you do, and put your job description to 3 points.

1. How do your products/services save time
2. How do your products/services save money
3. How do your products/services increase sex appeal, the attractiveness of your brand and visibility

According to Wibbels, people are driven by emotional needs which are tied to our self preservation – “our need to spread our genes and our means.” You can answer their emotional reaction, justifying this NEED to buy with data: (your products saves time, money and increase a business’s sex appeal).

CONTROL
At the center of Wibbels diagram is control.

“Who wants to be out of control?”, he asks, ” Nobody! We all want control … every theme in every movie, song or play is about control”.

Ask yourself, how do your products and services help people take that control.
YOUR MARKETING SCRIPT

We must write our marketing material as if we were writing a screen play, (or a one act skit). We have analyzed why our hero is in pain and in need of help. We have scripted how our products and services can save the day!

In writing this marketing script, Wibbels advises us to make sure we illustrate tangible benefits of the product or service that we are selling. We need to be direct and exacting, to point out specific benefits that people (our hero) can latch on to. Do not talk generalities, he says, we are talking about the pain/discomfort that people are experiencing in their lives, and how our services can help.

SALVATION

Wibbels has an addition to his diagram. Off to the side, there is another reason why people do things – a dotted line not connected to the main circles. And that reason is salvation – some people do do what they do for salvation, divinity, to connect with a divine inside themselves…
Salvation, he said, is less about control and more about connection.

TO SUM IT UP
That is why we buy: time, money, sex, control, salvation

Today my office phone was amazingly quiet and I was able to listen to the telesummit from noon until 3:00 without interruption.

The way this telesummit is put together is a testament to the power of social media and the importance of mixing up your different medias (if they weren’t posting the audio archives of the guest speakers – I would be unable to benefit from this summit). It is hosted on a blog (http://wordpress.com is the platform used). It uses a wpmember interface works with 1shopping cart to create membership levels in wordpress. (Your intuitive-website also has the membership component that you could use to create premium/ members only content for your visitors.). It uses a forum, as well, that attendees can post questions on. It combines written content with audio, and interactive elements.

It is wonderful to be able to hear a panel discussion and to submit questions. The speakers today had pdf handouts that we could download and refer to during their discussion, and an archive of the telesummit will be posted in podcast form to re-listen to at our leisure. There was a LOT of information given to us today – so it will be nice to have the pdf files and the audio to refer to later.

• What I learned #1 – combine media: use written, printable, audio (and video) to disseminate your content
  

The first speaker today was Jason Van Orden and his topic was: Using Social Media and Premium Content to Create New Profits Centers for Your Business

Jason was eloquent and had some great advise which I will start to summarize here, but will go into more detail about later. He outlined several steps:

1. Find a niche market
   • Find a niche that you are familiar with – that you are a member of or understand very well
   • Find a market that has a need that you can fill
   • pick a market that has money to spend
   • narrow down your niche
2. Realize that you have valuable information to offer and that you don’t need any body’s permission to be an expert in your field.
3. Use as many different media channels as you can to get your content out there.
   • Create a web presence using social media tools best practices.
     Your web presence should be RSS ready (by the way, your intuitive-website allow you to publish rss feeds of your content)
   • You should regularly create valuable content for your market.
   • Establish through leadership – post fresh content, offer tutorials and step by step tips for people.
   • Use as many different media channels as you can and always link back to your home site or blog.
4. Create a relationship with your target market. Relationships and trust are the new branding. Maintain your email list, but also, start a community.
   • inform your relationships – give them valuable content
   • entertain them – through anecdotes that illustrate your points, through the passion that you bring to your area of expertise
   • offer them a place where they belong – offer belonging.
5. Find out what your niche wants – not what you think they need. Ask for feedback. You can use services like http://surveymonkey.com or the custom form builder in your intuitive website to create questionnaires and find out what your audience is looking for.
6. Give your niche premium content at a premium price.
   • through membership areas
   • e-books
   • archives of content and podcasts
   • consulting

Session 2: Branding and Blogging: The “New” Success Secret for Attracting More Clients and More Money with The Blog Squad

The blog squad talked about the importance of establishing an online brand, and that branding in combination with blogging is a powerful tool. The blogs that thrive are ones that have mastered the branding with the blogging. The blog can help you control your business identity, what people see of you online.

My first question might be, “What do you mean by branding?”
This is what I think they mean, and we can combine this with Jason’s wise words: What is your niche market and what do you have to offer them? That is your brand. Ask yourself, “who is my ideal reader? how do I solve their problems? what are the core reasons for reading this blog?”

My second question might be, “How do I incorporate my branding in my blog?”
One way is to write smart titles to your posts and pages . The blogsquad said that you need to be strategic with your keywords – using words that are specific to your niche – specific to your customers and your expertise – when people do a search on those keywords that are specific to the problems that you solve – in all likelihood you’ll be found much easier.

What is the core message of the blog? what is the brand? Make sure the blog includes that brand statement, a consistent design and what you want people to know about you and your business and your services.

Communicate consistently with passion and focus, and stay on topic. Stay focused on your expertise.

Make sure your blog reflects the look and feel of your other marketing material.

Include a photo of the author, an about statement and contact information. Blogs are less formal, so use the first person – this is your story – not a cv or resume.

Include links to other social media pages- facebook link etc.. so that people can see where your active (professional pages).

Remember what the purpose is – is it to build your business? to get leads? to get sales? to establish yourself as a thought leader? use common sense about what stays on and what goes off.

Include testimonials from your clients.

To develop your brand through blogging requires ongoing activity, over time. It doesn’t happen writing once a month – or with one blog post. You have to post several times a week.
Professional blog etiquette
In my notes I have written:

a blog is a public forum – keep in mind – anyone can find this content – future clients etc.. which is what you want – so keep it professional. Make sure you are professional. It is okay to reveal personal information but make sure it supports your objective, and tread lightly around religion and politics unless you are in that business.

Some of the last advise from the blogsquad was to mention your blog everywhere. Drive traffic to your blog. Find other blogs that are in your niche, read them, and leave comments on them (respectfully and without overtly marketing your business), including your blog url in your signature. Start building relationships.

Starting to build relationships segues into the next speakers.

5 Ways to Use Social Media to Find & Create Your Next Joint Venture with MaryPat Kavanagh & Michele PW

Michele and MaryPat spoke about the importance of networking and finding people with similar business interests to work with. I am going to have to comment on their input later, however, because it is almost time to listen to the final speaker in today’s telesummit schedule.