Monetization

How To Plan Your Digital Products

by · Published Jan 31, 2025

So, you want to create your first digital product? That’s exciting! But you also might be wondering where exactly to begin. 

For creators new to the digital product game, creating your first digital product can seem overwhelming. Emphasis on the word “seem.” The reality is that building your first digital product doesn’t have to be difficult at all, especially when you adopt the right mindset, follow the steps laid out below, and use a great product builder like The Leap’s AI-powered authoring tool.

Read on to learn how to plan, build, and launch your first digital product in three simple steps.

How to create and launch your first digital product in 3 steps

  1. Identify your audience’s pain points
  2. Choose the type of digital product you want to create
  3. Adopt a minimum viable product mindset

Ready to launch your first digital product? You might want to dive right into building it, but the truth is that you’ll need to start by creating your game plan and doing some research, first.

Take it from content creator and online educator Juan Galán. Through his company IG Creator Academy, Juan helps other content entrepreneurs build and grow their brands and businesses online. Since founding his company in 2021, Juan has launched three hugely successful digital products, so he knows a thing or two about what does and doesn’t work when it comes to creating and launching digital products.

Want to learn Juan’s step-by-step process to launching your first digital product? Take his free mini-course, created using The Leap.

Mini-Course: Planning Your Digital Products

Learn how to research and plan which digital products to sell from creator Juan Galán.

Step 1: Identify your audience’s pain points

Before you start building your digital product, you’ll want to conduct some good old market research.

We know what you’re thinking: Research is boring, I want to get to the good stuff! But hear us out. Market research is a crucial part of your digital product strategy and is a major factor in staying competitive in the digital product market, so it’s not something you’ll want to skip over.

When conducting your market research, you’ll want to focus on two main things: identifying your audience’s pain points and figuring out which digital products they already consume. Remember: successful and best-selling products are designed to serve your audience’s needs or solve a pain point. Identifying these things will, ultimately, help you figure out the most profitable type of digital product to create.

Don’t know where to begin with your market research? Read on as we unpack some of the most effective ways to gain insight into your audience’s needs.

  1. Ask your audience directly
  2. Explore online communities
  3. Check out the competition
  4. Conduct market research calls

Ask your audience directly

The first (and perhaps the most obvious) step in your market research is to ask your audience directly about their struggles, needs, desires, and goals, directly. Asking these questions directly gives you a better and more immediate idea of exactly what your followers are looking for at the moment.

There are multiple places where you can do this. As a content creator, your social media channel is usually the first place to start! It doesn’t matter if Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook is your main channel, you can use any of them to get a direct line of contact with your audience.

If Instagram is your main platform, then Stories are a great venue to begin asking your audience. You can use Stories’ Poll feature to ask your audience specific questions about their struggles and goals. Instagram Stories’ Poll feature allows users to write in their own responses, which can give you a pretty clear idea of their needs and pain points. With those answers, you’ll get an idea of what kind of solutions your audience is looking for and, ultimately, what type of digital product to create.

On a similar note, you can also ask your audience the same questions in the captions of your Instagram or Facebook posts. These kinds of questions tend to get a lot of engagement because they make your followers feel like you’re speaking directly to them — so don’t underestimate the power of the feed post.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which platform you’re using or what kind of content you’re creating, you can always use your social channel to ask your audience about their needs. Get creative and have fun with it!

Explore online communities

Want more insight? You can also visit communities where your target audience hangs out to see what they’re talking about.

Thanks to social media, there are tons of these communities online. Think Facebook groups, Subreddits, Discord servers, and, if you wanna go really old school, even specialized forums.

You’ll want to be especially on the lookout for the kinds of questions your target audience are asking. Luckily, online communities and forums are usually the first place most people will go to ask for help with whatever pain point or struggle they’re facing, whether it has to do with learning how to invest or how to crochet.

A content creator coming up with his digital product plan.

Check out the competition

Another hack? Check out your competition.

Get on over to your competitors’ channels, swipe through their posts, and read the comments sections. Most comments sections are filled with tons of questions from followers looking to learn more or delve further into topics creators have touched on in their content. You’ll want to focus especially on which questions are being asked over and over again, because these speak to the solutions your audience wants but haven’t quite found yet.

These kinds of questions give you a good idea of what kinds of problems and pain points your audience is struggling with. What’s even better, though, is that often many of these questions go unanswered. Because these questions haven’t been met with a solution, they’re a great starting point for you to begin creating a digital product that solves for that specific pain point. In a nutshell, some of these unanswered questions are indicators of current holes in the market that your digital product can fill.

Conduct market research calls

Finally, there are market research calls. This final method does require more time and effort on your part, but if you’re willing to put it in, it can really, really pay off.

So, what is a market research call? This market research method is a phone interview or poll you conduct to gather insights about your audience’s needs and preferences, as well as their opinion on your brand and content.

For this method, you can choose to call individuals from your audience who you think are your ideal audience, or you can get on the phone with past clients or students (if this isn’t your first digital product rodeo.)

How it works is that you schedule a call with your candidate and ask them a variety of interview-style questions regarding their paint points and needs, and the types of digital products they like to consume, as well as their experience with your brand, content, and products (and you can even ask them about your competitors’ products, too — it’s fair game). These one-to-one conversations allow you to gain deeper insights into your audience and allow you to dive deeper into specific topics by asking follow-up questions on the spot.

It’s important to remember to record your market research calls for posterity’s sake. Once you’ve finished the call and you’ve got the recording down, you’ll have all the information you need to begin creating your first digital product.

The 6-Step Checklist for Selling Your First Digital Product

How to go from an initial idea to your first sale!


Step 2: Choose the type of digital product you want to create

Now that you’ve finished up all that crucial market research, and learned your audience’s pain points and product preferences, you’re ready to finally create your first digital product. Well, almost!

Before you start building, you’ll need to choose the type of digital product you want to create. When it comes to the type of product you want to create, there are tons of options out there. But, ultimately, the decision will come down to the two things you learned during your market research: 1) what your audience’s pain points are and, 2) what types of digital products they like to consume. Remember, your digital product should solve a pain point for your audience and it should be one that they will enjoy using.

It’s also good to remember that you can always repurpose older content and materials while creating your digital products. This will help save you lots of time and effort when creating your first digital product.

Profitable digital products to create

As mentioned, there are lots of digital products out there to create. Don’t know where to start? Here are some of the most profitable digital products:

  1. Templates
  2. Mini-courses
  3. Challenges
  4. Online courses
  5. Memberships

Templates

First on our list are templates. Because they’re so intuitive to use and provide immediate solutions, templates are some of the most popular and profitable digital products on the market.

What’s even better is that templates are some of the easiest digital products you can create. Why? Because you probably already use templates in your day-to-day — and have probably even created some of your own — without even realizing it. That spreadsheet you made to handle your business’ budget? Well, that’s a perfectly profitable template!

In addition to spreadsheets, think of to-do lists, planners, trackers, design templates, and anything else you can use to make your life easier, help you save time, or optimize your processes.

Templates can usually be sold for between $5 to $25 depending on their purpose and complexity.

Canva Template Ideas To Create and Sell

Get our spreadsheet of over 100 Canva template ideas across a range of popular categories.

Mini-courses

Mini-courses are a powerful income-generator for creators of all levels. So, why are they so popular? Well, mini-courses are pretty much the perfect way for content creators to break into the digital product space, especially for those experienced in creating short-form content. This is because mini-courses are essentially bite-sized courses made up of short-form content (text, video, and more) and engineered to help your audience achieve a very specific learning outcome. This means they’re easy to create and easy to consume, making them a win-win for both you and your audience.

The best thing about mini-courses is that they’re a great way of testing out and validating your larger online course ideas. This means that if your mini-course is successful, you have the go-ahead to dive into that topic via a longer-format online course. To save time and effort (and to maximize your profits), you can create multiple mini-courses and bundle them together into a larger product or a drip course in the future.

Depending on its purpose and complexity, your mini-course can usually be priced anywhere between $5 to $50.

Click here to start creating and selling mini-courses with The Leap. It’s free!

Challenges

Next up are paid challenges. A challenge is an educational product that helps your audience achieve a goal within a specific time frame. Challenges can be held live, but don’t always need to be. Either way, they typically run between five and 30 days in length.

Due to their involved nature (and especially if they’re live), challenges typically require more commitment and preparation on your end. However, paid challenges can also be incredibly lucrative because people tend to love live events.

Depending on its purpose and the level of involvement on your end, a challenge can be priced anywhere from $10 to $100.

Want to start selling your first paid challenge? You can with our AI-powered digital product builder. Try The Leap for free today.

A content creator planning their digital products.

Online courses

Now, onto online courses. As their name suggests, these digital products are similar to mini-courses, but are much more extensive and more complex. 

While mini-courses usually tackle a very specific issue and might only take a couple of minutes to complete, an online course addresses a broader-ranging topic in much more depth through a series of lessons and modules, which can take weeks or months to complete. It’s no surprise, then, that online courses require much more time and effort to build than mini-courses, and tend to have higher expectations attached to them on the customer’s end.

Speaking to these expectations, students typically expect more than a few bells and whistles to accompany their online courses. These can include a private community, live calls, Q&A sessions, bonus content, and more.

Juan recommends that rather than diving into the complexities of an online course, you start with a mini-course as your first digital product. Once you’ve tested out your mini-course and seen its success, then you can think about creating a larger online course.

Because they’re so complex and involved, online courses can usually be priced between $500 to $2,000 — or more. That’s a huge chunk of passive income!

Ready to start building your first online course? Thinkfic can help you with that. Start your 14-day trial on Thinkific now to try its online course builder.

Memberships

Finally, there are memberships. Memberships are content, tools or services that users subscribe to for a monthly fee. Need a visual? Think of an online workout membership that gives you access to livestreams and pre-recorded classes for a monthly fee.

Out of all the digital products on our list, memberships require the most commitment on your end. This is because you’ll need to be consistently putting out content and providing support to your subscribers to justify the monthly fee they’re shelling out. If you’re able to keep up the commitment, however, memberships can be a reliable source of recurring income.

Online memberships are usually priced between $10 to $100 per month depending on its purpose and level of involvement.

Want to start earning a recurring income selling memberships? Thinkific makes monetizing memberships easy. Start your 14-day trial today.


Step 3: Adopt a minimum viable product mindset

Now that you’ve chosen which type of digital product you want to create, it’s time to get down to it and bring your idea to life. It may seem daunting, but if you adopt a minimum viable product mindset, you’ll be able to start making some sales sooner.

What is a minimum viable product mindset?

So, what is a minimum viable product mindset? In a nutshell, this mindset stipulates that it’s better to get your digital product published as soon as possible, rather than making sure it’s perfect. A minimum viable product, then, is the simplest form of your product, which will only include essential features.

Generally, during the creation process, creators spend way too much time focusing on perfection. To start earning faster and to make your life easier, it’s best to think of your digital products as experiments and become comfortable with iterating them over time.

Not only does publishing a minimum viable product save you time and stress, it also allows you to collect valuable feedback from your audience before investing too much time and too many resources in your product. Once you’ve seen your product’s performance and you’ve received feedback from your audience, you can then start improving it and making it a better fit for your audience.

“It’s important to remember that not every product is going to be successful and that’s completely fine! I’ve had very successful products and then others where I didn’t even sell one,” says Juan. “Remember that the success of your business does not define your worth as a content creator. Every time you create a new product, you’re learning new skills and becoming a better entrepreneur. If [your first digital product] doesn’t go as planned, you can always iterate and improve [it].” 

Using the minimum viable product mindset and using customer feedback, Juan was able to transform a $7/month subscription into a successful $47/month one with over 150 members and counting.

Repeat after us: “Done is better than perfect!”

Tips for creating your first digital product

So, now we’ve walked you through the three basic steps for creating your first digital product. But we still have a few tips and tricks up our sleeve.

Read on for a few of our top tips on creating your first digital product.

Stick to the products that work

Creating a successful digital product can take some time. However, once you find a digital product that works for you and your audience, you’ll want to stick to it.

After the success of one product, it might be tempting to move on to the next big thing. However, to really earn the most you can out of a successful digital product, you’ll want to continue to dedicate time and effort towards it. This means promoting it over and over again, in any way you can, until you can confidently say that it’s flying off the (digital) shelves. 

Take it one product at a time

After your market research, you might have a ton of different digital product ideas floating around in your head — and it might be tempting to start working on all of them at once!

We advise against launching multiple digital products at the same time, especially for beginners. Working on many digital products at once can cause you to wear yourself thin and can quickly dilute the quality of your digital products.

Instead, choose your strongest digital product idea and stick to it. This doesn’t just mean creating your product from start-to-finish. It also means continuing to improve and iterate your product so your customers have the best user experience — and you gain the most income.

Create your first digital product today

So, now you’re probably excited to create and launch your first digital product. Before you can do all that, however, you’re going to need to walk it back to Step 1 and start on that market research.

When you are ready to create and sell your digital product, you’ll need a platform to help you do it. Why not consider The Leap?

The Leap is a link-in-bio store with an AI-powered digital product builder that enables you to create, sell, and market your digital products all from one platform. Because it’s powered by generative AI, The Leap’s authoring tool can help you create your first digital product in just minutes. How’s that for easy?

The best part? The Leap is completely free to use.

Ready to start creating and selling your digital products today? Try The Leap for free now.

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Create and sell digital products in minutes using The Leap!

FAQ

What are the most profitable digital products to sell?

The most profitable digital products to sell include templates, mini-courses, challenges, online courses, and memberships.

How do I create a digital product?

There are many steps to creating a digital product. These include conducting market research, brainstorming product ideas, creating your product, testing it and receiving audience feedback, and improving and iterating your digital product.

There are a number of platforms online that can help you create digital products. Some of these platforms include The Leap, Stan Store, Beacons, Pensight. The Leap is a free link-in-bio store with an AI-powered digital product builder that enables you to create your first digital product in just minutes.

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Create and sell digital products in minutes using The Leap!

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Further reading

kelsey mclellan
About the author

Kelsey McLellan

Kelsey McLellan is a writer and editor based in Toronto.
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