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Logistics Planning for Your Product

We're going to dive in, teo, the logistics of planning for your products and figuring out what's going to go into creating it. And if we can't figure out all the details, one of my tips for everything is to google it, so we're going to learn as much as we possibly can, but if we don't cover something specific, I guarantee you, if you google it, you're probably going to come up with your answer so let's, talk about what we're gonna get into. I am going to go through some of the logistic examples for my products, so I'm gonna walk you through exactly what I used to create some of my stuff, then we're going to talk about howto logistically breakdown, the product you've chosen to work on. So in the last segment you picked to product that we're going to keep working on throughout the course, and this is what you're going toe try to break down and figure out some of the logistics on right now so that when you're done with it, you feel like, okay, now I've got the basis let's get to work, the...

n we are going to schedule the creation of your product in your calendar or planner, because if you don't schedule something it's probably not going to happen, and so I'm gonna ask everybody. Tio start to get the stuff in your planner and you have if you have to do it at the end of this session that's totally fine but start to put those really actionable tasks into your planner and then the last thing we're going to talk about in this segment is pricing your product because that's a tough one that's a tough one no matter what you make but I feel like it really tough as faras digital products I always get questions on pricing and so I also asked each of the ladies that I interviewed that I've used his case studies how they price their product so we have lots of examples so that you can see how lots of different people do it. So now that you've got your idea, you've got to figure out how you're going to create and sell it so that's what we're going to be doing from here on out and one of my best tips for you guys is to go with your creative bursts when you get really excited about a product that's when you want to focus on making work a top priority usually because sometimes when you let it drag out you can often get stuck two thirds or three quarters of the way through but if you're working with your creative bursts then you tend to finish things a lot more easily I know that that's what I found for me do any of you guys really toe that? Uh, sage, how do you do it? Tell me, hey, you gotto work when you're excited about it I had a product idea in march I didn't launch it till september and I got to tell you that last month of trying to finish it up I was like, why didn't I do this months ago when I was excited so yeah, yeah go then you have the energy? Yeah, yeah. And so one of the great things about digital products is setting your own hours so I know for some of you that have full time jobs that it's not easy to do a ton of work when you are the most excited about it when you have that moment. Um but I would say do as much as possible when I was working full time and building my business when I was really excited about a product I was waking up at four am so that I could work on it like crazy until the moment I had teo get myself prepared and ready for work and leave for work and I would spend the weekend even also working on that and thankfully I had a really supportive fiance of the time who's, not my husband and he would encourage me tio work when you know it was kind of more of us time but now that I have built my business to this place, we get lots more of us time, so just work with those creative first when I was working on this course, the things that were that I was really excited about, I would really be working until three a m because I had that moment I'm going and then there were other days when I only worked a couple of hours because I wasn't in that specific creative place, you know, saying so that's one of my best tips for creation is go with it. Another tip is pick along state and stick to it because I think we all have that inner critic and sometimes that perfectionist mindset where we say what we could, we could do just a little bit more or we could tweak this or we could add it one more time or we could add one more flower to this print or we could make it just a little bit better it's not all the way ready just yet and I don't think we ever feel like that that it's all the way ready so pig a launch date and stick to it that's going to help you move past that perfectionist mindset so many people when I told them that I was teaching this course, so many people in my audience said, I've been working on such and such project for months and it's ready, but I keep feeling like I could do a little bit more, so I haven't launched it to get past that set a date and stick with it. And if you're brave, tell your audience, let them know that it's coming out on a specific date, then it's got to be ready by then there's that level of accountability, you don't feel brave enough to tell your audience than tell an accountability partner or tell somebody if you're if you are in a facebook group that you feel like you could tell them or if you have another creative entrepreneur who's a friend you can say I am launching my whatever it is on this date, and I really want you to check in with me and see how it's going and closer the launch date. I need you to tell me, no matter what it's got to go out, so I know that that's a huge problem that so many people have, and that is my best advice for moving past that one thing that I think you have tio consider when you are creating your product is that positioning matters how you position something affects how much you can charge, how well it will fell, and who will want to buy it all of those things. And I'm talking about positioning as faras the copy that you're going to use the language that you're going to use, what you're going to call something, and also what format it's going to be in? So positioning is different when you have an e book or you have a course things like that and have an example, which you're probably looking at this and seeing smoked salmon mousse, ice cream and thinking, uh, what? I was watching a tv shell that is called hungry games on the food network have any of you guys seen that? Okay, I love it because it's really based on psychology and how that affect all different things within food and what sells in restaurants and all of that kind of stuff. And what happened was this guy set up one of those sample stands and ask people to taste this new flavor of ice cream, and when they tasted all of them, their faces real like, oh, this is so horrible, somebody spit it out, one of the kids who tasted it was like, e I mean, they really didn't like it, and because it was smoked salmon mousse, ice cream, you're expecting something sweet when it ice cream, right, they used the exact same product, I mean the exact same thing and put it on crackers. And had people taste it and people were saying this is the best spread I've ever had this's delicious where can I buy this? This is I want more of this and some people some one person really did say this is the best bread I've ever had and so it's all about the positioning when you're thinking of it like ice cream it's disgusting but when you're eating it on a cracker is a spread it's something delicious that people want more off. So consider that when you are deciding how you're going to create your product, the form of the product can make or break it sometimes and it really depends on your audience and what they want. So if you have an audience of let's say they're super busy and you're trying to sell them a six month course where they have to do stuff every single day, it might not work because of your target market because of the audience and also what you call that you want, teo, make sure that what you call something is what people are expecting. So if you tell people that you're getting of course and then all of a sudden they get a small e book and it's in the format kind of of of course you're probably going to get people who are upset because they're expecting something else whereas if you had told them that it's a book they would like so just consider that I know that I've seen people do this before where they've called something something that it really isn't and then they get unhappy customers because the expectations are different and don't wait for the big opportunities to come to you so even though I'm saying that positioning matters and that the form of the product matters don't let that keep you from releasing something if you want to teach painting, invite five people over to your house and do a painting course and just see how it goes and then go from there. So yes, I say that this stuff matters, but I also don't want you to use it as an excuse not teo create something because you feel like it has to be something bigger or better the cost of digital products. One of the great things about digital products is it doesn't cost that much to make them very often it's not a lot of money to get them off the ground, which is wonderful, whereas if you're creating a physical product sometimes it could cost a lot of money. Tio create a prototype and then tweak it, create another prototype and tweet that and then make enough so that when you launch it you've got it for sale you've got enough for when people buy up and there are always ways to cut expenses, so if you don't have a huge budget think about how you can cut the expense of your product that could be changing the form of the product. So instead of launching a course where you need to buy a video camera, and you need to hire a website to set up a separate site for your course, and you need all the bells and whistles, you, khun, turn that same content into something like an e book and it's going to be a lot less expensive, and that could be your starting product, and once you get that launch, then you're going to have money coming in, and you can create that bigger product. So if you're thinking I'm really nervous about the cost, investment makes something that doesn't cost as much, so I'm going to go over some of village, just ix for some of my products, the first one is marking for creative, it is my e book. I don't call it any book, because I don't like that term. I feel like people associate cheap with the book, so I just call it a book, but the logistics for it. I wrote the book in microsoft word, and if you're going to use indesign to create in the book, I highly suggest you start by writing it in some other software, word is great because it helps you with spelling and grammar and all of those kinds of things that don't necessarily get caught when you are working and in design I think is really difficult to write things within and design unless it's a short just a short ten men I formatted the book and in design which was pretty easy to dio I took photos with my nikon d ninety but you don't need a dslr to take beautiful photos these days there are so many options and then I edited my photos in photo shop I created illustrations for it an illustrator like for instance you see the arrow right there and you see the little boxes those things I created inside of illustrator nothing fancy nothing you need to have mad illustrating sealed because I don't and then I sold it on my wordpress website blacksburg belle dot com and I use one shopping cart as my shopping car you can use pape out there there are lots of other options for shopping carts a swell but I use one shopping card I fused them for four years now and I really I really I highly recommend them for a shopping cart you're looking for one I just want to jump in for a second because this slide is actually touched down a few questions that we share that I think has a good time to touch on them first off we had people who were saying how much they loved the work, the workbook that comes with our cp, and they were asking, how did april created where the tricks were? How do people do this so it's good that we mentioned that, but we have some people who are asking about the amount of time you spend on things you talked about, like the actual monetary value, how much to dedicate, but how much time should be spent on this? Because we have a question from hollow, who said how long you recommend spending on creating digital products for something especially like a video? Of course, what kind of quality do you need? Because my problem is that the longer the time I spend, the better the quality, but where is the point of diminishing returns? Is there a way to gauge when I may be spent too much on this? If it's not going to get the value back? I think improving the quality is always worth the time, but you need to start with where you're at, so wherever you're at, start with that for this particular e book. It took me a month about a month to create, so I used some of the content from my blogged and tweeted it so that I could make it. Right for the e book you don't want to just take a bunch of block post and slapped them together and create any book because then it kind of feels choppy but I did take some of those posts and then I added a lot more to it so I already had some stuff and then maybe spent a day coming up with illustrations and working an illustrator and the same with my photos I used a lot of photos that I already had I take photos on a regular basis because I used them within my business constantly I use them in my block posts and e books and courses on slides I used them all the time so I spend time on photography I would say on a weekly basis maybe thirty minutes to an hour taking photos sometimes I edit them right, then sometimes I don't so I had a lot of photos but I did spend about half a day taking photos just for that specific heat book. But I would say about a month that I spent on it okay and now and you mentioned selling it on your wordpress web site and a lot of people curious about this bobby king posted it we had six people vote what are the advantages and the disadvantages of selling digital products on a marketplace like etc versus your own wordpress blogger your own website? Yeah yeah that's a great question so let's see if you're going to sell it at sea or another market place like that you already have everything set up for you it's just so easy to set up a shop you khun do it in a day really if you take the time tio go through some of the cellar tutorials you can set up your shop and have it running right then it doesn't take that long however with your own website it takes a lot longer you may have tio change some of the code it depends on how your website is set up you may have to hire a web designer to do it for you if you don't feel comfortable doing it however when you sell on a site like I'd see one of the main problems is that people get easily distracted and so they're on your stuff and then all of a sudden they've clicked somewhere else and somewhere else and then somewhere else and then they forget even how to get back to you so that's one of the disadvantages to selling on etc but if you don't want anything to do with code and in fact I'm going toe say this later I'll repeat myself but if you don't want anything to do with code selling on the marketplaces like that is a great way to get started and then you can see how are people responding to your products what kind of money are you making? And then you can invest in moving things onto your website? I think it's essential to eventually have your own website because you you are able to decide everything every detail on at sea every shop looks thing right on marketplaces like that, they all look the same, you can add your own header, of course, and you customise it as much as possible, but you don't have a ton of options and with your own website, you d'oh plus you own everything I have heard, I know of nightmare stories of people getting their shops shut down and not having anyway to get it back up like trying, teo I know particular, trying to talkto at sea, trying to figure out how they could get their shot back up and that person got sick. What happened was the person godsick wasn't able to fulfill orders for a few weeks. I mean, she was in the hospital and they shut down her shop and then she wasn't able to get it back up. And so she lost all of her client base because she got sick and therefore I think it's really important to have somewhere where people can find you online, even if it's not a shop, even if it's just your own website and then you send people to at sea because then you still have your people that are on your email is that air reading or blawg so that you can tell them hey I no longer have a nazi shop I'm selling here so you keep your audience so if you can't set up a shop on your own website you still need your own website I think that's really important that's those are great questions okay so I used to running course blogging for your creative business and this was before I taught the blocking course here creative live now I send everybody there but I ran this course two three times I believe and the logistics for it I set up a site as another installation on blacksburg bell so it's not a separate website just another installation on my wordpress site and I used canvas as the theme because if any of you guys know anything about canvas you can customize everything and it's pretty easy to dio it's you just insert things I cannot do anything with cold you guys I am not tech savvy when when I have to change code that's when a web designer comes into play so I used campus and there are lots of other themes that are like that that you can customize or you can pick a theme that really closely resembles what you would want it to look like and I used the plugin wish list member you guys wish list member is amazing if you want a membership site and you don't want to hire a web designer because when I was setting up my first membership site, I didn't have the budget to hire a web designer for three thousand dollars to have them do it for me so I used wish list member I did some research about different plug ins that I could use it so easy and intuitive it's amazing do any of you guys use wish list member that ugo my last course and it was it was it was easy there's like a setup tutorial wizard and then you go across the tab at the top and then you have your set up your member sit set up so yeah it's really easy it's so easy and you can decide who gets to see what content you can have different membership levels within it. I can't say enough good things about wish list member because I've used it for every single course that I have done for blacks work bo I put together my presentation's using keynote so all of my videos I used keynote and I recorded them with screen flow and my mac book laptop and I edited the recordings with ii movie so that's how I put together all of the video modules for I used the plug inflow player for word press to play the videos on the site because I didn't want to use videos from youtube, arvin meo I wanted to have the videos to be hosted threw me because I wanted them to be extra secure and private on the membership site, however, now I would feel comfortable using them, you know, now that I've used their site a lot more and know about the security settings and all of that kind of good stuff, I sent my members emails through a webber that's, the software that I used for my email newsletter, so I just had a separate segment for those members and within wish list member, you can set it up so that anybody who purchases your course is added to that immobilised, they have to confirm that they want to be added so that you can automatically have them on a separate email us, which is really nice, and I created my workbooks and bonuses and in design. I also set up a private facebook group for members with facebook, and I sold it on my wordpress website, blacksburg belle dot com with one shopping cart and paypal and I have one shopping cart in papal linked so that it's seamless, and when somebody goes to check out through my shopping cart, they can pick if they want to pay with a credit card or if they want to pay via paypal and it's all secure. Which you need to have if you're going to have a shopping cart on your site, you wanted to be very secure for people who are in putting their information, so I know this seems like a lot you guys that went into putting together this course, but I probably spent two full days setting this stuff up, so in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that intense for I need to set up, so I know it sounds like a lot for my three hundred sixty five blogging props. So on my web site, I have an offer for three hundred sixty five blogging writing prompts that I have mentioned, and they come directly to your email each day I use a weber to send the daily prompts to customers. I sell them on my wordpress website with one shopping cart and paypal and I use a weber to host the sign up form. So what happens is people go to the sales page, they press that they want to buy their scent to the shopping cart day and put their information they can pay with a credit card or via paypal, and then they are automatically directed to an opt inform to put in their name and email address as soon as they do that they get an email that comes to them. And it says please confirm that you want to receive these emails they check that they want to receive them and they start coming that day and then they come for the next three hundred sixty five days so it's very seamless and we'll talk about making sure that this stuff happens automatically because what happens if you set it up where you have to input each person who buys from you it becomes a pain in the butt really quickly so my from heart made her life is messy planners she created her planners and illustrator in three weeks she sold them on her blog's heart may block dot com and used paypal as her shopping car because unfortunately being in panama she's very limited to what she confuses a shopping cart and so if you don't want teo have a separate shopping cart other than papal that's totally fine papal can work for you do you guys have any questions so far? I know this is a lot so I want to make sure no questions we're good we're good what's the advantage of using one shopping cart or another shopping cart over just using paypal on having the straight line to income when I use one shopping cart people can pay with credit cards very easily with paypal I'm not sure I believe there's an option to pay with credit cards but you have to take a bunch of extra step so customers get confused. I know from working with people who only use paypal, their customers get confused if they don't have a paypal account, sometimes they lose out sales. I know that my has lost sales before because she has paypal and not another shopping cart. However she's very successful cell in the grand scheme of things it's okay form questions kind of coming just want to get a quick take on. We have some people who are suggesting creative coach says you suggest e junkie or shopify and other platforms like that to deliver these digital goods. Is there any difference between all these really doing pretty much the same thing? There are differences you want to research and look at what you want for your specific needs? If you want something that has every option ever possible, and then you're probably going to want something like infusion soft or I believe it's entre port now they used to be named something else those air two options that give you a ton, however, they're not very intuitive, so once you get in them because I've used entre port before, once you get and there you have tio, it takes a while to figure things out, although it can be definitely worth it for your business e junkie I have used before, and it just didn't give me enough options. So, that's, why I use one shopping cart it's a little bit more expensive ini junkie, however, I feel like the shopping cart looks nicer, and it gives me more options. You talk a little about having your videos being secure, you know, putting them up using demeo. But cath holden and we had seven other people vote on this, and they want to know how can you keep your digital products secure so someone doesn't purchase them and then share that work elsewhere on the internet? Yeah, unfortunately, you can't keep people from doing that there's no way, tio, stop people, but there are certain things that you, khun dio to make it less likely. For instance, if you are in one of my courses, you can on lee sign, you can only sign in, you can only be signed in, nobody else can use your user name and password at the same time, and also somebody couldn't share their log in information. Also, if you are logging in from different ip addresses, it gives me a notification blocks you so I can tell if they have shared their stuff in multiple people, and I kick those people out there gone, you don't, you don't get a second chance with me if you're sharing my stuff, so I mean, that's, a very small percentage of people that are going to do that. And one of the great things is that if you have a loyal customer base and they see your stuff being shared, they're going to tell you. And not only that, they often not because you held them, too. Just because they're passionate and what support you, they will often harassed that person. And until they take it down, I've seen that happen so many times. And the creative entrepreneur, whoever it happened, who was, like, please, please stop telling god pursued. But, you know, it's getting a little intense. But if you have a loyal customer base and they see it, they're going to tell you. And that sometimes when you need to get a lawyer involved and make sure that you are protecting your work.