Transcription
I was just a girl trying to make some money on the side of my photography business when I started selling a $59 ebook. No huge following, no paid ads, and that little $59 ebook went on to make over $500,000 in revenue.
So, if you've been secretly wondering if selling ebooks or digital products could work for you without dancing on TikTok, running expensive ads, or doing awkward sales calls, you are in the right place because this is the exact video that I wish I had when I was first getting started, and I am not holding anything back. Stick around because I'm going to share my story and my full step-by-step process so that you can do this for yourself, even if you have zero following right now.
Before I made a single cent from digital products, I had hit a wall. And honestly, from the outside, my life looked pretty great. I had built one of the top-earning photography studios in the country. I was making multiple six figures per year from my photography. I was booked out and busy, which sounds amazing for a service provider, until you realize that booked out and busy eventually leads to burnt out and exhausted. I had zero time left to give. I wanted to travel. I wanted to move to another state. I was in freezing freaking cold Wisconsin and craving sunshine, y'all. I wanted to spend more time with my family and friends, and I wanted to grow my income further, but there was literally no more time on my calendar left to give.
So, I had a decision to make. Keep doing what I was doing, keep hustling 24/7, stay stuck in freezing cold Wisconsin, keep trading all of my time for money, or try something different. And that's when I heard about digital products at a women's business conference, and I wanted to give it a shot. So, I asked myself, what's the worst-case scenario? Worst-case scenario, it doesn't work and I'm right back to where I started. So, I decided to go for it, and I blocked off Fridays on my calendar to make that the day that I focused on my new digital products business.
So, I sat at my desk, opened my laptop, and got to researching. And I had a very specific list of things I did not want to do. I didn't want to dance on TikTok or Instagram only to get two likes from my husband and my mom. No offense, Mom. I didn't want to run expensive ads when I was just starting out because I was trying to make money, not spend it, right? I for sure didn't want to do sales calls or cold DMs. I literally hate cold DMs so much. Just about every single cold DM I get on Instagram, I just block because otherwise they just keep following up and following up and following up, and it drives me freaking crazy. Does this happen to anyone else?
I also looked into Etsy. I used to sell handmade earrings on there back in the day, but I absolutely hated the listing fees, the race to the bottom pricing, and the pay-to-play model to stand out in the crowd. What I wanted was something I could create once and sell it over and over and over again. No inventory, no shipping, no more continuously trading time for money. I wanted something that would finally give me real financial, time, and location freedom. And that's when digital products clicked for me, specifically an ebook. It was simple, low overhead, create it once, sell it forever. And for platforms, well, back then it was blogging and Pinterest. And if that still worked today as well as it did back then, I would absolutely still be doing it, but sadly, it does not.
After testing all the major platforms, I have come to realize that today the platform that is working the best for leads and sales is YouTube. And I don't know about you, but I've been an avid YouTube consumer since college. I love the community, the endless base of knowledge, and of course, the no-BS culture of it. Even though being on camera absolutely terrified me, guys, I was a photographer. I was always behind the camera, never in front of it. I decided to do it anyways. And spoiler alert, once you do it again and again and again, it actually becomes unterrifying and then actually fun. And if you want to get my exact YouTube script template, the exact one that I have used to go from zero to over 100,000 subscribers, and guys, you can plug this into ChatGPT or Claude to write your scripts in minutes, go ahead and download it completely for free. It is linked in the description below this video.
Okay, so here's where things get good. Let me walk you through step-by-step exactly what I did because it wasn't magic, it was simply a system. Step one, I started posting content consistently on YouTube every single week. I didn't wait until I had a huge audience, I just started. And by the way, you have to start to get the audience. >> [laughter] >> I always love when people comment, "Well, you have an audience." Yeah, well, I didn't like come out of my mom's womb with an audience. I decided one day that I was going to start making videos, and then I grew an audience. Every single creator starts at zero. They don't just wake up one day and have an audience, and you can decide the same thing for yourself. It's as simple as that.
Step two is make a freebie. Just like the one I mentioned earlier about my YouTube script, you create a freebie where people can put in their name and email address to download the freebie and get on your email list as well. Now, back in the day, my first freebie was a posing guide for photographers. Honestly, you can make something like this today in minutes using ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. They all have free versions, and if you have a paid Google storage account, you usually get a pro Gemini account for free with that as well. What you want to do though is don't just open it up and say, "Write me a freebie." You need to train it on your knowledge and your voice. So, if you have any past things that you've written or you've made YouTube videos in the past, you can train it on that. If you don't, you can simply start recording audios of yourself talking about certain knowledge or stories, and then you can use that to train the AI as well. So, you're going to use that to train the AI to create your freebie. Use that as a draft, perfect it, and then put all of that text into Canva. You can use the free version with templates, and then you will have your freebie made.
Step three, I let that freebie grow my email list. And once I got to about 200 email subscribers, I sent them a simple form for free using Google Forms so that I could ask them a few questions to dial in what their number one pain point is within my niche right now. And here's where I almost messed everything up. Before I did the survey, I had tried to launch a paid posing guide because I assumed that that is what my following would want, but it flopped big time, and that led me to thinking digital products don't work. But then the survey results came back, and it was very clear to me that yes, digital products do work. Obviously, there are lots of people out there selling them and making a lot of money with them. But the results told me that they didn't want to pay to learn posing. They wanted to pay to learn how to book more clients. So, I created a 13-page ebook showing them my exact Model Call Method for booking more photography clients. And the first time I launched it, I made tens of thousands of dollars. I genuinely couldn't believe it, and that is the power of product-market fit. And that little ebook went on to make over $500,000 in revenue the years it was for sale. And then when I pivoted to what I do now, teaching you guys how to create and sell digital products with YouTube, I actually sold the IP of my Model Call ebook to another photography educator. And please don't blow up my comments and DMs asking about it. It is not something I currently sell. I am no longer in the photography industry. Teaching digital products and YouTube is my focus.
The lesson here is so important though. Don't just assume you know what your audience wants or create something that you feel like would be fun to create. You need to ask your audience and create a digital product that actually solves their most painful problem for them. And if you want to know all the four types of digital products that got me to 10K months, go ahead and download it completely for free. It's linked in the description below this video.
Now, here's what I want to be really clear about. My ebook didn't sell well because it was about photography or because it was 13 pages long or because I got lucky. It worked because I listened to my audience. I created something that actually solved their most painful problem, and it actually got them results. Yes, that matters. Hundreds of testimonials later, people saying it saved their photography business from closing. Some even said it helped them get to six-figure years, and of course, just book more clients in general. That is what made it spread like wildfire. I never had to run ads to it or anything like that. The simple truth is that it actually got people results, so they actually told their friends about it. They would post about it in groups and forums online, and it spread like wildfire.
But here's what I see people doing wrong all the time, reselling a crappy template from Canva or selling information that people can easily Google or ask AI. Not only is that not going to work, that is not going to get you a lot of sales. And honestly, don't you think your customers deserve better? If you bought a product like that, wouldn't you be disappointed? What will work is sharing your experience, your story, your unique way of teaching, your framework, and infusing your personality. Those are things that Google and AI simply cannot replicate.
Okay, so let me give you the full road map. Here's exactly what I would do if I was starting to sell a digital product from scratch today. Step one, figure out your niche. What's a problem you've helped yourself or others solve? What do people come to you for advice on? What do you love teaching and learn about? Start there.
Step two, start posting weekly educational videos on that topic on YouTube. You do not need to wait until you already have a following, which spoiler alert, if you don't start and you don't have a following, you can't wait until you have a following. Does it even make sense? Again, nobody has a following when they're just getting started. Like it kills me. Every time I make one of these videos, I get some amount of comments that are like, "Easy for you. You You have all these things." I'm like, "Yeah, and at one point in my life, I didn't have these things, but I decided to do that and create it and make time for it." Like, bro, I dropped out of college with 81 cents to my name living with my freaking grandma. I started a photography business knocking on doors with free VistaPrint business cards, driving a 1987 Chrysler New Yorker that my great-grandmother gave to me out of pity. And when I would turn, the doors would fly open, okay? Now, look, I get it. I still have more privilege than some people out there, but I have a lot less privilege than a lot of people out there, too. Stop comparing yourself and pitying yourself and do the work. Like it actually drives me nuts. If you want a following, go create one. No one is born with a following unless you're like a freaking Kardashian.
Step three, create your freebie. This is something that should be short and sweet and get someone a quick win so that they are ready and at the spot you need them to be to purchase your digital product. And again, this is something you can mention throughout your video. People will put in their name and email address to get the freebie and get on your email list and then you can survey them to figure out what you should create your digital product about.
Step four, which I just kind of said, but once you have 200 email subscribers, survey your list to figure out what their biggest pain point is. And here is step five. This is the step most people miss and that is to pre-sell your digital product. I literally cannot stress this enough. Don't just create what you think will sell and spend days, months, years, weeks trying to build something that you're like, "Oh, I hope people buy this." Pre-sell the freaking thing. Pre-sell it. So what you want to do is create a checkout page, say what it is, what's included, what you're going to help them with, have the price so they can put in their name and their payment information, and then tell them this will be ready at XYZ date. Two weeks from now, three weeks from now, four weeks from now. You choose, it's your business, it's your special day. You get to choose when you want it to be ready. That way when you go to send emails to your email list, you can pre-sell your digital product and let them know that it'll be ready by X date. And then if people buy, you have X amount of weeks to create the thing. And if people don't buy, then you didn't just waste months of your life building something that nobody was going to buy. What you can do then is just try it all over again until you get that product market fit.
And again, I should mention I did all of this while just carving out one day per week to focus on my digital products business. And I don't want to hear, "But I have a 9-5 and I can't do Fridays." Use your creative little brain. You can do Saturdays, you can do Sundays, you can do one hour after work each day. Like stop trying to look for reasons why you can't do something. Like if you don't want to do it, then that's fine, you don't have to do it. But then stop going to YouTube University and telling yourself you're going to build this dream thing, but then constantly coming up with the silliest, littlest reasons why you can't do something. You absolutely can carve out the time. You have the same 24 hours in a day as anyone else. And if you really truly want it, you will make it happen. So ask yourself, do you really want to do this? Because if you don't, that's okay. There's a million other things you can do with your life. But if you do, then stop waiting. What are you doing? What are you doing? We don't have unlimited years on this planet. Like go and do the thing that you want to do. You won't regret it. And if you're ready to stop consuming and be someone who actually works towards their dreams, I have a totally free on-demand training that will teach you all of this step-by-step. You can register your free seat, it is linked in the description below this video.
Now, my life looks completely different today because of digital products. I live where I want. Aaron and I moved to sunny New Mexico. No more cold Wisconsin winters for me. Yes. We travel overseas on average one to two times per year. I max out my Roth IRA and 401k every single year. I became a net worth millionaire at 30. Are you kidding me? Like I literally never dreamed that that was possible. I went from 81 cents in my bank account, a college dropout living with my grandma in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, mind you, driving that shitty car that I had to use a rope between the two inside door handles so that the doors wouldn't swing open when I took a curve. Yeah, for real, to all of this. I grew up in a 9,000 person town in rural Wisconsin. I truly didn't even know people could build a business like this, and that's why I wish I had this video a long time ago. So trust me when I say you don't need a degree, you don't need certifications, you don't need a huge following. You just need your knowledge, your experience, a willingness to show up, and a system that actually works that you can follow. And the best thing is you can keep things simple by doing this as a solopreneur, or you can scale up big with a team. The possibilities are endless and you get to choose the outcome that you want.
Now that you know how selling ebooks changed my life, you might be wondering, "Okay, Molly, how do I actually grow a following on YouTube so I have people to sell to?" Well, it all starts by watching this video next year because when you pair what you just learned with what's in this video, it's going to be way more powerful. See you in the next video.