How To Create A PDF E-Book or Worksheet & Sell As A Digital Downloadable Product
Wondering what the process is for turning your ideas into an actual digital product? In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps to create the product & set it up to start generating sales.
STEP ONE: Create The Digital Product & Download As A PDF Document File Type
To create your product you could use different types of software like a simple Google Drive Doc, Microsoft Office Doc, or Canva.
If you are using Canva you may want to take their design course to learn how to use their platform to design your project.
Something to keep in mind if you are creating a product that already exists in the world that is another business owner’s, you will want to only use the idea and change up the appearance to make it your own so you are not going against copyright laws.
Same as using Canva and simply using a template, you must alter it & make it your own adding your own branding to the project.
Additionally, you may want to search and see if there are any current Trademarks for what you will be designing. The last thing you want is a cease & desist letter to come in the mail after you have put in tons of effort to create something.
Something to consider and also add to your product is a Title Page and a Business Information Page (at minimal put your website link on the document itself) so they can refind you if they need help or want to check out what similar things you offer.
Once you have created the document as you want it you can then download it as a PDF document file.
STEP TWO: Hosting
Next, you want to host it online either with Google Drive, Dropbox, or some other platform that is going to allow you to get a view-only share link so those who purchase your product can view, download, and print the document.
If you have used Canva, you can easily get a share link from there and continue to host it in your designs dashboard.
Once you know where you will host it, upload the pdf file of your product.
STEP THREE: The Sales Machine
Now that you have your product completed, it’s time to make it sellable.
This is where the process of explaining can get a little tricky and you may need some consulting due to the selling platform you are going to use because they all work differently. And it’s important to know what your whole sales system is for the product especially if you plan to sell this product on autopilot.
Some options you may consider as your sales platform may be:
- An invoice that you send manually from your bookkeeping software to a customer in exchange for you manually sending them the product download link.
- A platform like PAYPAL or STRIPE allowing you to create a checkout button that you could easily put on a website sales page or Google Drive document sales page for them to checkout.
- Your own website or storefront (depends on what platform you use on what sales checkouts are available)
- WordPress with OptimizePress® Landing Pages, Funnels & Checkouts in WP theme
- WooCommerce
- Etsy
- Membervault
- ThriveCart
- Stan – Your Creator Store
- Etc. – Tons of options available — (keep in mind your investing budget from your business plan so profits are achievable in your business)
Once you know which platform you are using just follow the instructions they have for creating a new product, setting up & testing your checkout, plus making the product live.
After that, you will connect your shareable view-only product link with your product somewhere (often in the notes section) in the setup process so that your customers can access the product once it’s been purchased.
To create an automatic download for Google Drive documents when they click the shareable link instead of just viewing the link and having to download themselves, you can follow the directions here for creating direct download links.
Lastly, if you want to automate the selling process, create your sales page and add your checkout button to the page.
Then test everything to make sure it works.
That’s it. You have created your digital downloadable product.
Conclusion
Once you understand the process of creating your product and having an existing platform to sell on there really isn’t much to it. However, there is a bit of a learning curve when just starting out. The main thing is to remember to create the product, download as pdf, upload to hosting site, get view-only share link & turn that into direct download link if need be, and then add to your checkout, and create the sales page that directs them to the checkout. Easy Peasy.
Need Support?
Having trouble with getting everything set up? Schedule a next steps call and let’s work through it together.
