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Student Highlight: How Claudia Makes Passive Income Selling Water Color Templates
- December 13, 2020
Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links of which we receive a comission. I only recommend products and services I’m personally passionate about. For more information, please review my disclaimer.
In this week’s episode, we highlight student Claudia Orengo who is a mentor for artists and other creative business owners about how to gain passive income selling artistic templates on digital marketplaces.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts

Table of Contents

How Claudia Started Her Online Business

Claudia Orengo started her online business as a freelance graphic designer and web designer with a specialty in watercolor art. She originally studied graphic design in Barcelona and Denmark and has worked as a freelancer for since 2013. Claudia shares free tips about her watercolor and making digital products on her Youtube channel and blog. Not only are Claudia’s creations beautiful, but she has a passion for helping graphic designers, calligraphers, and other creative online business owners make more money through selling their digital creations and products online.

How Claudia Setup Shop with Digital Marketplaces
As like many freelance artists, Claudia loved creating beautiful art for her clients, but she started to see the benefits of selling her creations online through setting up shop on digital marketplaces like Creative Market, Etsy, Minted, Spoonflower, and so many others. One of the most important things that Claudia shares in her course the Beginner’s Guide to Passive Income is to choose a digital marketplace that is easy to setup and provides the best payouts. She reviews extensively each of these course platforms and which platforms the most inside of the course.
Here are just a few of the marketplaces Claudia has sold digital products and creations:
CreativeMarket
Etsy
Minted
Spoonflower
Redcircle
Shutterstock
Adobe Stock
Crella
Society6
Redbubble
Converting Your Designs Into Digital Products

An important part of creating digital products is to convert your designs and creative content into a digital template or product. Claudia shares about her step by step strategy involves coming up with inspirations organically as well as doing some market research online. Although her art focuses on packaging watercolor art for other graphic artists and creative designers online, her process of coming up with ideas and packaging them up as digital products can also be used for many digital entrepreneurs such as photographers, calligraphers, graphic designers, and other creative online business owners.
She shares about the three important steps you need to create a digital product from your creations includes:
1. Have a creative template or digital product to sell
2. Sell your digital product on online marketplaces
3. Create a simple automation so you do not need to do more work once you deliver your digital products.

Pricing Your Digital Art and Creations

Online artists and creatives thankfully have many places to submit their artwork to, but each marketplace has their own benefits and challenges. Claudia shares that pricing your digital art and creations on these marketplaces is part of an important selling strategy when trying to stay competitive. When it comes to pricing products, you’ll need to consider your average product pricing based on market research you’ve done on each of the platforms and consider ongoing trends through researching competitors and through social media channels.

Additional Training and Resources

Claudia is currently a student of the Wondrous Webinar program that helps course creators build confidence sharing about their online programs through online webinars. Claudia is hosting a free training called “How to Make More Money as a Creative Online Without Working Harder or Being Famous” a free training which will walk you through how to sell your digital creations without selling to friends or family or having to be famous, the best digital product idea for you, how to get started with passive income without creating a course or becoming a guru, and how to launch a digital collection in under 3 weeks even if you’re new to business. I highly recommend this training for graphic designers, artists, and other creative business owners who creates art online and want to scale their business with digital templates to sell on digital marketplaces!

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A Beginner's Guide to Passive Income by Claudia

If this article was interesting to you, Claudia goes into more depth about her process of how she’s made thousands selling digital creations through online marketplaces inside her course The Beginner’s Guide to Passive Income. Claudia’s course called The Beginners’ Guide to Passive Income is an in-depth course covering everything you need to know to start selling your creations over and over as digital downloads. You’ll learn how to start selling digital products and automate your process to work less and earn more. Claudia will share her personal experience with multiple marketplaces, with real stats and numbers so you can decide which ones to start with. She’ll also share her step by step process to create digital products and how you can adapt it to your own talents and business. And during 3 weeks on January 2021, Claudia will personally help you create your next digital product collection and publish it online so you can start getting sales on autopilot while you sleep.

Conclusion

No matter what type of online business you have, now is the perfect time to start creating passive income for your business with courses and digital products. Have an idea but need someone to walk you through the course creation process? Join me for a Strategic Course Framework call. During this time, we will discuss your ideas, come up with plan, and discuss what you can do to make and sell digital products to convert your ideas into a money making course!
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Course Creator, Marketing, Online Courses
How to Create an Affiliate Marketing Program
- December 1, 2020
Table of Contents

This post may include affiliate links. For more information, please review our disclaimers and privacy policy.

How to Be an Authentic Affiliate Marketer

Attracting the right students into your courses and digital products and programs requires that you show up to be more of yourself. Zoe Linda, who worked professionally for large organizations and brands building parternship programs, wanted to create something magical with her course The Affiliate Program Toolkit. Zoe emphasizes the importance of being yourself on the interview and hints that relating to your audience’s personal interests is far more important when building a personal brand. Beside’s Zoe’s impressive resume working for some of the most well known digital marketers for brands like Systems Saved Me, Summit in a Box, Casey Legal, and so many more, Zoe’s love for Harry Potter gifs, Brooklyn 99, and relatable personality won me over to become one of her biggest raving fans. Her emphasis on human connection makes her easily stand out from a loud digital marketing space.

I help them in a way where it's really focused on the human connections, it's much more focused on the one on one relationships that you have with people and seeing your affiliates as, as individuals, rather than seeing your affiliate team as people that are going to bring you money.

Zoe Linda Tweet

How to Create an Affiliate Program for Your Digital Product
“No one is really teaching the knitty gritty of this for digital product creators,” says Zoe. So she set out to build an affiliate marketing program for beginner’s with the digital course creator in mind all the while infusing her magical personality. Zoe shares that one of the main benefits of having a strong affiliate marketing program for your digital products and templates is that you can create a program that will refer you sales without having to pay up front – making it ideal for both parties involved. After working closely with 1:1 clients, she started to see a recurring theme. People needed help creating the many moving parts of creating an affiliate marketing program – the outreach templates, the tech setup and tutorials, and the overall timing and strategy. Zoe says that this approach is much more accessible for many digital product creators in that you can make more evergreen digital product sales.

Keep Track of Frequently Asked Questions
Wordsmithing is no doubt one of Zoe’s unique talents. Writing down and keeping track of frequently asked questions is one of Zoe’s methods to creating copy that converts into a sale. She recommends that it’s essential to write down these questions and incorporate them into your sales copywriting for your own products and speak to these questions with your copywriting for your affiliates as well. A self proclaimed Ravenclaw, Zoe is incredibly organized and methodical with her tutorials inside of the Affiliate Program Toolkit. Her growing library of ongoing resources such as email marketing swipe copy, affiliate marketing launch calendar, and her helpful responses in her growing online customer Facebook group make this by far one of my favorite investments in my business this year.

Find Great Affiliate Partners
Other tips Zoe shared that finding great affiliate partners starts with supporting your current students. These students will then recommend your products and services. This is the most logical first step in creating an affiliate program. By creating a program that supports, nurtures, and develops your existing customers you can create an evergreen ecosystem of referrals and affiliate sales. Other helpful recommendations include finding similar podcasts that your audience listens to and seeing if they can become an affiliate, connecting with people that have a similar audience, and even following and reaching out to people through Instagram that your audiences follows.

When someone signs up to a program, they don't want to spend hours digging around trying to find their links [or] promotional materials. So the main overarching theme is easy access, and easy access to somebody to talk to.

Zoe Linda Tweet

Provide Easy Access to Promotional Materials
Easy access was a main theme in my chat with Zoe Linda. Providing your affiliate partner with easy access to you, their affiliate links, essential information about the program, and promotional materials is a big essential. As someone who has personally used email swipe files from Zoe’s program – I can tell you having access to these materials is such a time saver – especially if you are simultaneously providing services while also creating digital products like myself. Marketing your courses with the help of an established affiliate, especially in the B2B space, can be a powerful way to not only generate more sales but impact the ongoing relationships with an potential customers. The most important part of an affiliate marketing program includes social media graphics, email marketing material, essential dates and program descriptions, as well as easy access to affiliate links. For some brands, such as the beauty industry, this can also include DM swipe copy if your audience communicates through instant messenger.

Advanced Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Some other advanced affiliate marketing strategies include creating JV webinars or creating social communities on Facebook or Slack to support your affiliates. Zoe says that the key is typically a one time setup and doesn’t require all the bells at whistles at first. “The affiliate program toolkit was created with digital product creators in mind. The initial idea was everything done for you, everything that’s done for you that can be done for you is and everything that isn’t there’s ongoing support the facebook group video tutorials. And I really just wanted to like the main kind of vision was I want people to stop spending so much time just learning about affiliate programs and give them the tools to actually implement,” says Zoe.

Conclusion

Zoe has an incredible amount of resources inside her Affiliate Program Toolkit and I personally recommend her course for anyone that wants to build a profitable affiliate program for their digital products and templates. If you decide to invest in the Affiliate Program Toolkit by using my referral link, I’ll give you a $200 credit to use for any of digital products or consultation calls. Just send a quick email or message me through my chat on this page if you have any questions. Zoe also shared some free resources like the Affiliate Program Starter Guide and other helpful resources like the Affiliate Program Starter Kit. Was this a helpful blog post? I’d love to know your thoughts about affiliate marketing!

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Marketing, Online Courses
How To Prepare for Black Friday as a Course Creator
- November 16, 2020
This post includes affiliate links in which I receive a small commission. I only promote products I’m genuinely passionate about or have used! For more information please see my disclaimer page.

Table of Contents

My Top Tech Tips for Selling Courses

When you cross the finish line as a course creator and finally hit publish, there is a big rush and sensation! But as you sit and wait for all the sales to come in, you might start to wonder. “Oh no! Is someone going to buy this course?” “How am I going to get people to purchase?” “Oh dear, did I just waste weeks/months of my time?” I know that selling your course might feel overwhelming. I know I did. I want to share with you my favorite ways to sell your course and prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond.

Run a Flash Sale

A flash sale is a short period of time in which certain products have a discount either as a percentage or a dollar amount off. I’ve recently started experimenting with Flash Sales and I’ve had a lot of fun. Currently, I’m a big fan of Elizabeth’s Goddard’s Make A Flash for It. During Halloween 2020, I ran a flash sale which I entitled “Spooky Spectacular,” which ended up being incredibly fun. I created a shop page with multiple different products with a limited time discount. I ran the sale for about 5 days and shared about this offer with affiliates which resulted in several sales and piqued some interest in my other products.

I also created a pop-up using Elementor Pro that allowed people to click from the home page and throughout the site to go to the salespage. Besides being incredibly cute, this pop-up also reminded potential buyers that there was a limited time to purchase with the discount by using a discount code due to the timer.
Here are some of the tech tools which I used to run a flash sale.
Hellobar – I used Hellobar to create a way to get people to click over to my latest Spooky Spectacular salespage. This bar resided on the top of my home page and throughout my site.
Elementor Pro – I used a timer with a hard deadline for Halloween. Elementor Pro has a timer with both an evergreen option and a hard deadline. Evergreen refers to an option in which the timer is customized based on the first time a customer sees the timer.
ThriveCart – Thrivecart is my ultimate favorite tool for selling courses. I created a very simplistic salespage and the buttons went straight to the cart checkout. It was a ton of fun, and much easier to set up than directing each person to the individual salespages.
Thrivecart offers advanced customization for coupons and discount codes.

Create a Discount Code

I love using Thrivecart because creating coupons are just so easy. To prepare for Black Friday, you need a tool that will allow you to create discount code or you’ll have to reduce the price manually. Once you choose the name of your coupon and the percentage off, you can easily email your customers to let them know about the coupon during your Black Friday or other holiday sale. I really like Thrivecart’s approach to coupon’s because you can create a deadline for your coupon so it can’t be used past a certain date. I also like that I can track affiliate coupon codes, if I wanted. For instance, I have in the past created a coupon code for an affiliate to see how many purchases were created from that affiliate. I have also created a special email markeing tag for an affiliate to track who has come into my world from that affiliate whether or not they have purchased anything.

The Uncomplicated, No Fear Way

To Sell Your Course With a Webinar

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Create an Affiliate Program

I’m a big fan of building networking relationships. As someone that doesn’t have an incredibly large audience, I rely on other’s to help me increase my visibility online. Besides making a new friend and acquaintance, building a solid affiliate program will also generate more sales. I have multiple affiliates for my program currently, and just earlier this year I purchased Zoe Linda’s Affiliate Program Toolkit which in my opinion is one of the most advanced and thorough trainings on the topic for course creators. You can grab the free Affiliate Program Starter Guide to learn more. I generally send my affiliates a brief description of what my sale is going to be about, email swipe files to send to their audience, as well as visual digital product mock-up graphics, and access to their unique affiliate link.

Create Your Holiday Salespage

Having a specific salespage for your holiday offers for Black Friday or Cyber Monday will make it so much easier for your audience to see what’s on sale in a visually appealing way. I recently came across Kimi Kinsey in my current group coaching program. She came up with this amazing Holiday Salespage Template for Black Friday and Christmas and I’m absolutely in love with it. I’m not a web designer, although I do know how to design website landing pages – it’s definitely not my favorite. I highly reccommend that you take a look at her salespage templates, especially if you are a WordPress and Elementor user. It’s not only beautifully designed, but can help you make more sales!

Other Resources

Black Friday sales don’t have to feel icky or overwhelming. People sometimes spend months planning them and trying to make a massive promotion. I think that’s awesome, but I’m less about this mega planning and launch and more about helping people see that it’s doable. Other courses I find particularly helpful on Black Friday include Elizabeth Goddard’s That Black Friday Feeling and Zoe Linda’s Black Friday Boost. I’m really excited about my Black Friday sale this month. I know that you’ll find it useful and helpful. How’s your planning going with your Black Friday and Holiday sale planning? Drop me a message in that pink box in the corner! I’d love to hear from you.
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Marketing, Online Courses
5 Mindset Shifts You Need to Make to Sell Your Course in a Webinar
- November 10, 2020
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anchor

Table of Contents

People Want What You Have

One of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve had to make in my business is to realize that people want what I have. In the past as primarily a service based business owner, I’ve had to come to terms with trading time for money. When someone paid for my service, I felt that a payment was justified. Yet this is not the reality. Trading time for money isn’t the only way you should get paid. People genuinely want your expertise, and your knowledge is just as valuable in a self study course, template, or group coaching program. The key thing that you need to remember is that people want what you have. Your expertise is valuable.

You Are An Expert

As you lean into your expertise and zone of genius, people are more likely to purchase and work with you one on one. Being a Course Creator means that you can lean into your uniqueness instead of shy away from it. As you continue to develop your ideas into a framework for your course and allow your passion to shine, the right people will be attrached to your ideas and more willing to continue to invest in your courses and programs. Lead from your strengths, don’t shy away from them.

I Can Serve and Sell

One of the key values in my business is generosity. I believe that being generous with my time, my talents, and serving others will help my community while also financially supporting my business. I can say the same thing when it comes to sales webinars. Serving others from a place that is genuine and authentic can transform into a sale because you’ve built a connection with your prospective students in which they know they can trust and learn from you in a safe environment. Promoting your course is offering people the opportunity to work with you in some capacity. You don’t need to be an extrovert to do a sales webinar. You can serve from a place that feels good to you without feeling like you need to change your personality and even if you feel like you’re not good on a camera.

If you're not promoting and selling your course, you're denying someone the ability to learn from you. The world needs your creative spark.

@mycourseconsult Tweet

Someone Is Waiting for You to Teach Them

I’m always flabbergasted (yes, that’s absolutely a word) when people find my website and want to work with me. I’ve worked with clients from all over the globe including Australia, Malaysia, Canada, and all across the United States. A major mindset shift that I’ve had to make is that someone is waiting for me to teach them. As I’ve grown, I’ve realized that if you step into your uniqueness and lean into it, money will follow. You don’t need to wait for others. Someone is waiting already for your next course or program. They want to learn from you. They need to hear your encouragement. They need to understand your methodology. This is the truth and reality that you need to shift into. As you shift into this reality, you’ll become more free to be yourself in your business and confident enough to sell.

I Can Be Myself And Be Wildy Successful

Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. I know that I don’t have a six-pack or know the best exercise routines to lose weight. I don’t pretend to know this. I am an introvert by nature. At times I can have extroverted tendencies, but I’m not trying to be an extrovert. In the same way, you shouldn’t feel the need to change your personality to run a sales webinar. Feeling confident in your personality is something that’s a learned skill. Think about it this way. If you were talking to a friend about your favorite recipe, favorite sweater, or something you really loved – you wouldn’t be concerned about trying to change the way you talked about it. You would feel so excited about what you wanted to share about your experience. You don’t have to be perfect. Showing up helps you build confidence. Being successful means that you become more of yourself instead of less you.

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Marketing, Online Courses
My Easy Sales Webinar Checklist
- November 4, 2020
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anchor

Table of Contents

What is a Sales Webinar

Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links.

Today, I’m feeling excited and giddy to talk a bit more about sales webinars. A sales webinar is usually a free training to or workshop developed with the intention to pitch a service or product at the end of a presentation. If you’ve been around the digital marketing space, you may have heard from Trevor (the imaginary and totally made up digital marketing guru) that sales webinars are all the rage and that it’s incredibly essential to have a high converting “funnel.” Trevor, of course is a ridiculously handsome, 6 pack Millenial who swears by energy drinks and sales webinars. 😓 If it seemed a bit *ick* before and not you’re style, don’t worry – I’m going to give you my personal take on this elusive marketing tactic. If you’re new to sales webinars, that’s great too! There’s going to be some golden gems I’ll be sharing for those that are completely new to the topic.

Simple Sales Webinar Checklist
Creating a free webinar is totally way easier than people make it out to be. Although it may seem like a massive to-do list, I’ve compiled a list of the essential things you need to actually develop your live webinar into an evergreen webinar. Here are some things that I think are essential to have when it comes to creating your webinar.
A free training topic. This is essentially a topic that will cover a step by step, how to, mistakes to avoid, or case studies to share about a specific pain point that your audience is interested in learning about. Your title should be compelling enough so someone would be interested in attending or learning more.
A sign-up page. This is a simple sign-up page or registration page in which someone will be able to register for the free live or pre-recorded webinar.
A webinar software – Don’t go overboard here. You can skip the fancy tech and use something simple like Zoom to record your webinar or pre-record your training with Loom. There are other softwares out there like WebinarJam or Demio which delivers a webinar experience for your audience complete with a chat window, but you really don’t need to go all out when it comes to the delivery of the webinar. The focus should be on the content itself.
A webinar/video host – The next thing you’ll need is a webinar or video host. Many people decide on investing in software such as EverWebinar or EasyWebinar to make the webinar appear to be live based on limiting sign-up windows to appear “just in time” for an interested potential buyer. This software mimics a live training environment complete with comments and chat windows. I personally don’t love this approach because A) the software is expensive B) many people (especially in the digital space) already know that the webinar isn’t actually live. I personally use Vimeo to host my pre-recorded webinars and host them on my website.
An automated countdown timer – Urgency is a key factor in digital marketing so having an automated countdown timer will help provide people a “limited time” approach. Creating an automated countdown timer can be accomplished through using software like Deadline Funnel, but there are many alternatives out there with similar features such as Elementor Pro (my personal favorite) and HurryTimer a WordPress Plugin.
An expired page – This last part does require a bit of tech setup. Once the automated countdown timer runs out, you’ll need an automated system to redirect visitors to your expired salespage. You can decide to still share the offer at an increased price or tell someone that the offer is unavailable for purchase until your next round begins.
Why I love Sales Webinars

I am absolutely in love with sales webinars because not only are they a great way to build your email list, but you can also presell courses or services you haven’t developed yet. Webinars also provide an easy way to explain the value in something versus having to hop on a sales or discovery call. Oh yes, and they are actually quite fun to deliver virtually. I often find people share with how valuable my trainings are when they are free, even if I do share about an offer at the end. Lastly, webinars are a perfect way to help affiliates promote a product without having lots of heavy lifting on the affiliate’s side.

How I Made $4k from Sales Webinars
One main reason why I love sales webinars is that you can actually make money from them in an absolutely authentic way. Not only does this work for courses, but it was one of the main ways that I’ve sold services as well. The actual tally is actually closer to over $6k in sales from webinars, but you can see my breakdown below. I’m not quite factoring in the last webinar since this service was for a similar but different service package which wasn’t promoted directly from the last training.
Here are just a few titles of free trainings in which I’ve delivered over the past two years.
12 Mistakes Course Creator’s Make and How to Fix Them – This was a modified version of a sales webinar that I had developed previously called 7 Mistakes New Course Creator’s Make which I launched in late 2019 before I even had a website. I used this webinar to send to prospective clients which was hosted privately on Youtube. I had no email sequences, and no fancy tech, and I still was able to get someone from brand new to my business to work with me 1:1 through the webinar.
Sold a freelance service for $1,200 based on a super simple webinar. This client went on to have me support another project which paid me about $2k.
The new and improved webinar sequence was developed with the intention of selling my Course Power Hour. Although I no longer offer this service, I made roughly $595 as a result from this webinar.
How to Make a Magical Offer That Sells Like Hotcakes –
This is a relatively new webinar that was developed to originally share about my CEO Course Creator Bundle.
Shared this webinar with an affiliate 1X and made a total gross revenue of $325 from selling the bundle. Although this wasn’t quite as high as I originally was hoping for, I was glad that people still loved the training and I still gained about 20 new email subscribers from this training. Plus, the conversion rate is roughly 20% which isn’t too bad all things considered.
3 Secrets to Launching a Successful Digital Product Without a Large Following (Retired Training) –
This was originally a Sales Webinar that I developed with the intention of selling consulting and freelance services.
I ended up adding over 50 new subscribers to my email list as a result of pre-recording the webinar.
1 person ended up purchasing over $2,500 worth of services from me as a result of the webinar.
Convertkit offers beautiful templates for webinar registrations

Setting Up Your Webinar Registration Page
To create a simple sign-up page, you can create a beautiful registration page on your website. I don’t reccomend using Zoom’s registration page because it won’t really connect with your email marketing platform seamlessly. Zoom’s webinar registration page is actually quite blah (in my professional opinion).
You can set up a registration webpage on your site using a few of the below options:
A landing page such as Converkit, Mailerlite, or Mailchimp instead of a designed page on your website.
A website landing page with a form feature designed on your site using a page builder such as Elementor, OptimizePress, Divi, or Beaverbuilder if you’re using some sort of WordPress website.
Kajabi has some features inbuilt such as Pipelines which allows you to customize templates based on a sales webinar format.
Authentic Webinar Marketing
Raise your digital hand if you’ve ever been approached by someone selling a product and you felt like the car salesman tactics was being piled on super thick? Yup! I’ve felt that way too and that’s why there’s a way to do this without feeling uncomfortable. You don’t have to sell your soul or make due with Trevor the digital marketing guru’s tactics if it doesn’t feel good to you. You can still share valuable tips and resources in your training while still providing opportunities for people to purchase using sales webinars.
Speak to your customer like an incredible and amazing human being instead of a wallet.
Engage with attendees during the webinar by getting people to respond in the comments. I promise you will feel way more excited to share about your offer when people engage instead of feeling awkward or nervous.
Share with people if the webinar is pre-recorded instead of pretending that it’s live.
If you feel comfortable, explain that you’ll be sharing a way to work with you at the end of the webinar before it even begins.
Acknowledge the fears and setbacks from your audience because they are real! Be yourself and don’t worry if you mess up a word here or there. People respond to humanness instead of a robot reading a sales script.
Last Thoughts

I really love sales webinars and I hope that this blog post gives you confidence to believe that you can absolutely share your services in a way that’s authentic and feels good. Webinars are an incredibly powerful tool to connect with potential audience members that like your teaching style. Not everyone is meant to purchase from a webinar. In fact, someone might watch a webinar and eventually purchase a different service or a product from you as an indirect result of the webinar. The main thing to think about is sharing people an opportunity to build your email list, share about your courses/services, and have fun doing it!

Conclusion

I’m kind of obsessed with having fun in my online business and I want you to feel the same way! If you liked this article, why not reach out and schedule a consultation call? I know that whether you’re a 6-7 figure business owner or completely brand new to the digital space, you have a great idea that can help make the world a much better place. That’s it for today.
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Marketing
ThriveCart Vs SamCart Review
- October 28, 2020
Table of Contents

Checkout Page Software

Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links. See our disclaimer and policies surrounding the topic.

Thrivecart and Samcart are great examples of a checkout page software. So whether you are selling a high ticket coaching program, a digital product (such as an ebook or course), or a consultation call both of these softwares have a massive impact on the way that people pay you! One main reason people decide to use this software is because of the easy way in which strangers can turn into customers through a simple cart checkout. That’s why in this article, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite features of this software. You can see an image below of the different types of sales I’ve made which show up in my email inbox.

Thrivecart Review
If you haven’t heard of Thrivecart, don’t fret! I’m going to share with you exactly why I love using Thrivecart. Thrivecart is a checkout software which allows you to receive payments for digital & physical products as well as for services. I’ve used Thrivecart personally to sell courses and digital downloads and it has been a super simple set-up.
Here is a non-comprehensive list of things I’ve sold with Thrivecart:
Digital Courses
Canva Templates
Consultation Calls
Website Templates & Tutorials
Services
Thrivecart lets you easily design your checkout page using templates and brand it according to your business.

Thrivecart Integrations
We’re going to get a bit geeky here! Thrivecart connects up easily with essential software you already have including email marketing platforms, Zapier, Course Platforms (like Podia, Thinkific, Teachable, and more), connect up Facebook pixels, Google analytics, and so much more. Easy integrations means that you can connect up all the dots when you are planning for your course launch. Thrivecart uses something called “behaviors” to setup what happens after someone purchases your products. I talk more about this in my Systematic Funnels training.
Here are just a few of the different integrations that I’ve used in the past to sell products and services.
Convertkit tag integrations for post purchase buyers
Zapier integration with Thinkific to enroll students in a course
Behavior rules let's you customize the types of messages people are sent via email after purchase

Thrivecart offers a visually appealing way to sell related trainings or products

Magical Upsells

Why stop at only selling one thing, when you can create multiple ways for people to purchase from you? You’re seriously leaving money on the table if you don’t have another product to create. With both Thrivecart and Samcart, you have the ability to offer special upsell trainings, courses, templates, services, and more. Upsells provides people with the opportunity to purchase valuable digital products or services that are on a discount or aren’t available for purchase anywhere on your site.

Samcart Review
Samcart is another amazing cart checkout software. The main differences between the two softwares is that Samcart offers some different integrations and has a really beautiful user interface for drag and drop checkout page design. One of my clients used Samcart to design his salespage and made over $3k for a 6 week group coaching program. Here are some of the main things I like about Samcart.
Easy to use user interface, especially checkout design pages (making it easier for less design savvy folks)
Much easier to integrate and track purchases with Convertkit (versus Thrivecart)
Has some integrations with other platforms such as Thinkific versus having to create a zapier (versus Thrivecart)
Beautiful Templates!

Samcart has improved over time and now includes tons of templates that are beautifully designed and simple to customize with an easy to use drag and drop interface. In my opinion, I think this is where Samcart has a much better templates. So if designing beautiful templates to sell your course, program, or service – I recommend Samcart.

Easy Drag and Drop interface

Table of Contents

Easy Affiliate Setup

Although I don’t currently use Samcart, I think that their affiliate setup is quite easy. I’m an affiliate of several creators who use Samcart and have actually told several people about how they can setup Samcart for their own programs. I personally believe that both Thrivecart and Samcart have an affiliate setup, there is a distinct difference in how their setup that might confuse people. Thrivecart’s affiliate setup takes a bit of time to get to understand how to set up, versus with Samcart – it appears to be a bit easier to create.

Overall Opinion

Both Thrivecart and Samcart are an investment, but they are definitely worth it if you are planning on selling anything virtually such as group coaching programs, courses, digital products, or services.
Thrivecart

Great lifetime investment
Perfect for those who want to not worry about recurring expenses and have more funds available upfront
Great for those that want to sell a digital courses or services
Perfect for those that don’t mind being a little tech-savvy

Samcart

Great month to month payment plan
Perfect for those that want a small investment upfront and don’t mind monthly payments
Great for those that want to sell courses or services
Perfect for those that are less tech-savvy and like a clean user interface with drag and drop functionality + beautiful templates
Conclusion

I personally have used both cart checkout softwares in the past to create a seamless solution for receiving payments and upselling other products or services.

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Course Creator, Podcast
How to Convert Your Email List into a Cash Flowing Party
- October 15, 2020
This email includes affiliate links. Click here to read my full disclaimer.

Email marketing doesn’t have to feel sleazy or unnatural. That’s why we’ve brought Liz Wilcox, an email marketing strategist and copywriter on to today’s show.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anchor

Table of Contents

Welcome to the course consultants show I am super super excited to have Liz Wilcox here with me today. Liz is a super cool person and human being. And just a little bit about her, Liz is an online entrepreneur and copywriter who specializes in email marketing. She helps freelancers and professionals alike package up their magic and turn it into emails that convert. In a previous life, Liz was actually an education major and like many before her never actually got a teaching job. Instead, she found her way to the online space and fell in love with sales and strategy.
Today, she helps people build online relationships to attract their ideal buyers. She actually is part of a mastermind group that I’m a part of, and she brings so much to the table and I was so excited to have her on the show because if you do not know Liz, you seriously are missing out because she has so much interesting cool stuff to do and tell you about. When she’s not bringing in high ticket sales she likes to run, yes, actually for fun, eat steak, and hang out at a local beach in Destin, Florida. Listen to the podcast for the funny story on how we met and our first introductions.

How to Convert Your Email List into a Cash Flowing Party

Liz is an expert copywriter and email conversion person, so naturally the first question that I jumped into was, What is important to include in emails when it comes to actually converting into sales? Followed by, How do you start that process?
A common theme that Liz was reading or listening to was the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs made, that they didn’t take their email list seriously. Liz found that a lot of them were saying, if they would have just started selling to their email list or using their email list to get ideas for a course, or a product, etc, that they would have succeeded much earlier. So as a person who hates waste and is very efficient person. Liz took that as, she just needed to focus on email and do that really well. She decided not to create free content and worry about Pinterest or slide up into everybody’s dm. Her focus was just emails because that’s what the gurus were saying, the money’s in the list……

Convert Followers to Friends

Liz quickly realized the money’s not really in the list, it’s in the relationship and effort put into that email list. Her three part framework, is really simple, but it really works. first you have a follower, somebody that joins your list. Then you turn them into a friend and not your best friend, someone that you’re chit chatting with and you’re writing basically love letters to, and your weekly newsletter. No, who has time for that? Once you turn them into a friend, like someone friendly, then you can turn them into a customer. She found this framework because she realized and learned that people buy from people they trust. And if you can gain that trust, if you can create a sort of friendship, a friendly thing in their inbox, then they’re much more easily converted to customer. Follower, friend, customer.
Email Welcome Sequence
How do you turn them into a friend? With a solid like a rock solid welcome sequence. If you don’t have a welcome sequence here’s what happens. After two to three years of business, where you’re doing all the things – you’ve created your course, you’re buying ads, you’re posting on Instagram, you’ve got a Facebook group, you’re listening to this podcast – and then you go to sell from an an awesome affiliate program or you finally create your course with guidance from The Course Consultant, and it’s just crickets and a really low open rate. Then, it’s completely sunk to the bottom because everybody’s leaving your list like they’re running out of a burning building. It leaves you wondering because everybody said the money was in the list.

If you don’t have that solid foundation, if you don’t welcome them in the right way, if you don’t turn that follower into a friend first, it’s so hard to convert them into a customer. They don’t trust you. So with a welcome sequence make sure you can get people to reply to you in those first few emails. They’re never going to be more engaged than those first couple of emails. And then, you set expectations.
If you create mostly free content, and then suddenly ask people to buy something from you, it can be a little abrasive, like there’s a disconnect. It’s like, you’re just trying to jump through this hoop that is just too high. But if you set the expectation right up front in your welcome sequence That you’re going to offer free and paid products or free and paid advice or free services and paid services, then they know upfront. So when you get into that sales mode later on for your course launch, they already know you’re a business. Even if you don’t have your course created yet, even if you have no idea. if you are going to create a course or an ebook, or whatever your digital product is, that you don’t even know yet, in your welcome sequence, you need to tell people you have paid services or products.

Just a side note, when you get nervous about selling your product, you just think like you have a stomach and your stomach deserves to eat. So you need to sell like, that just puts it in simplest form.

Liz Wilcox

What is a Nurture sequence

Liz’s welcome sequence is just four emails in four days, it’s super simple. Check it out below, but remember she also gives it to you for free in her swipe file, check Guest Resources below.

Email 1 - The Freebie

That first email, you just want to give them the freebie, the biggest mistake I see people make is the first email they like, just throw everything but the kitchen sink at people, nobody actually cares. They just, they just want their freebie or whatever it is they’ve signed up for.
Here’s Liz’s:
“Hey, congrats on getting this mega swipe file. I’m so excited. You’re getting your email crap together. By the way, my name is Liz. And the biggest thing you’ve got to know about me is I love to laugh. So you know, if you don’t have a sense of humor, I don’t know what to tell you. PS, hit reply, whatever question I asked.”

Email 2 and 3 - Great Content, Set Expectations

The second email is kind of best content, give them a little more flavor of who you are. And then that third email is, when you set those expectations. Tell your readers this is who I am, this is what I stand for, and this is what I have to offer. Liz suggests using quick bullet points.

Email 4 -The Invitation

Then in the fourth email, you can kind of mix up and talk a little bit about more about why you’re passionate, why you do what you do. And then invite them wherever you are on social media, or just invite them to reply again, to your emails because once you can get people to reply that is basically like the number one thing you want. then that is we’ll get to out of spam. It’s all this domino effect.

When you create a welcome sequence and subsequent newsletters where you’re writing every week sharing information, those subscribers go from the front of the table to looking at what you have to offer. they’re behind you in your stuff, they want to know more, they want to be a part of it. And that is so powerful. That’s when it becomes so much easier, so much simpler.

Show Up As An Expert

So one thing I really want to just point out for people, is to consider how easy it is to sell your courses and your digital products and your services, when you start to think of yourself as a bona fide professional, as a bona fide expert. New entrepreneurs especially feel like they don’t want to sell to people because that feels crummy or not authentic when you want to serve. what I think we often fall into the trap of is finding out that we have to get stuck on getting out new email blog posts, or getting out new blog posts, or getting out the new video, or getting out the new podcast. When in reality, when we are doing those activities, the point of those activities is to drive people to share with them to work with you in a closer fashion. So whether that’s an course, a one on one service, an intensive, any type of thing that you’re selling, It’s going to help them see the value add that you will be able to provide to them.
I think when entrepreneurs say I’ve got to have 10,000 email list subscribers, run Facebook ads, Or I’ve got to have a following amount XYZ They’re disqualifying themselves from all the sales that they could be making if they actually put themselves out there. It is a lot of work, yes, but there’s a way to do it without being sleazy, without being one of those marketers, there’s totally a way to do it.

Show Up As Yourself

I really liked that Liz provide ways to be funny and show up like yourself. When you’re thinking about who it is that you want to work with, you have to show up in a way that’s true to yourself. That’s true to your personality, that’s true to your core values. And when you do that, and you show up in email, the people that actually vibe with you, are the people that will buy from you. And that makes it so much easier to work with people. What I’ve noticed before is I would try to sound like this person or sound like that person or add in more gifts, and there’s nothing wrong with gifts. It’s just, is that true to who I am? Does that speak to me? Does that speak to what I’m about? And honestly, sometimes it hasn’t been. And so what I’ve noticed, too, is just am I attracting the buyers that I love to me. In the reality I’ve seen, I haven’t really been showing up like myself. So I really just love that about Liz, is that she does attract those people to her. She’s so fun and so friendly and so by the time someone buys, they’ll say, I feel like I already know her and feel like best friends.

Guest Resources

Join Liz’s inbox party if you’re looking for late 90s feel. She makes a lot of MC Hammer, NSync, and Fresh Prince jokes, so if you’re into that go to lizwilcox.com and scroll until you see join the inbox crew.
Also grab her mega newsletter swipe file, where you’ll get her welcome sequence to plug in your personality and niche, and also three newsletters and video explanations for each.
For you folks that want something “done for you” I highly recommend checking out Liz’s email marketing membership!

The Course Consultant Resources

Join us LIVE in the Facebook Group for more awesome content and guest interviews: http://www.facebook.com/groups/inspiredcourses

Leave us a comment below and let us know your biggest takeaway from this episode?
Missed the last episode, check it out here.

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Online Courses
My Anti-Launch Approach to Selling
- October 14, 2020
Table of Contents

What is a Launch

Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links.

Over the last few months I’ve spent working with clients to develop amazing group coaching programs and digital courses. I personally love the work that I do, but I have seen a bit of a repeating pattern that I want to address. In the online digital space, people often have this idea that “launching” a digital product, course, or group coaching program has to be a massively time consuming, emotionally draining, and dramatic process in which you spend months/years prepping for this huge event. For those that are new to the digital course industry, “launching” refers to a process in which you are actively promoting or selling a digital course or program. And while I believe that digital courses are incredibly important part of educating your customers and audience members, I don’t really think that it has to entail one large, massive to-do list or launch.

My Anti-Launch Approach
If you’re new to “The Course Consultant,” welcome! I’m really ecstatic that you are here. I want to tell you about my anti-launch approach when it comes to creating digital products. Now, let’s talk about the current state in which we review and analyze what the gurus are saying. Here are just a few of the more ridiculous things that I’ve heard people say when it comes to marketing or promoting your digital products or courses.
You have to have a massive email list to launch a digital product or course. (It’s certainly helpful, but no-you don’t need a big email list to launch a course.)
You have to spend about 3-6 months gearing up for your course launch. (It might be helpful if you’re selling a big ticket offer, but not incredibly essential if you’re selling a low priced offer.)
You need to use Facebook ads. Um…no.
You need to spend 3-6 months preparing a perfect course. (Please definitely don’t do this.)
Why Fast Launching Is So Much Better

I believe that you don’t need to wait 6 months to make money. You just need a strategy, some willpower, and lots of creative energy around your subject. If you love to teach and instruct, then there’s no need to spend months worrying about your “launch” strategy. You should focus on what your students want and need and what you love. So here’s just a few ways that you can use my anti-launch approach to selling digital courses and programs online quickly.

Sell Something You Already Have
If you’re a service based provider such as a coach, consultant, or freelancer, this is probably one of the easiest methods that you can use to create a digital product. Let’s say that you are a social media manager or copywriter, you can create a template based on a deliverable you have created for a client. For instance, I’ve written out tons of email sequences over the last few months and so I decided that I would create a template in Google Docs based on my email sequences. It was so much easier to sell because I knew this was something that I’ve used in the past or have sold to clients in the past. Here is a list of several examples that you can use today to create a digital product.
Create a template based on a spreadsheet you already use in your business/personal life
Create a template from a Canva Design and remove all of the content from this design that was pertinent to a project or to your business
Take a Facebook Live that is instructional in nature and remove it from your Facebook group and use this as part of a course / masterclass
Right now, I’m personally a big fan of Elizabeth Goddard’s the “Fast Guide to Launching” and her other course the “Quick Start Guide to Profitable Live Trainings” I’ve been using both approaches recently to the way I’ve been doing business lately and I will tell you that I find it so much more enjoyable to “launch” things into the world now.
Create a Low Price Workshop
One main reason people launch a massive course or group coaching program into the world is because the incentive to make money is so much higher than smaller digital products or courses. And while it’s definitely amazing to make $500 to $600 more, you’ll find that most people won’t be interested in your high ticket service or group coaching program until they’ve purchased some sort of smaller product or course from you to test the waters. Why not capitalize on people who are interested in your topic or niche and start with a lower priced workshop? Low-priced workshops can be so much easier to create because they are generally contained within a 60-90 minute time period. I’ve launched two workshops over the last two months using this approach and it’s been so fun to create these trainings! Plus, I didn’t have to wait months to get paid. I made money up-front and now have a digital course to sell! Whoopee!
Systematic Funnels Workshop – Curate your offers and get your digital product up and running to make more sales online. I originally presold this workshop at $47 with an affiliate. Later, I sold this as part of a bundle. And finally, I increased the price to $97 after the live training was delivered.
Sweet Service Success – A quick & actionable training that helps you book high ticket dream clients who don’t blink twice at your five figure rates. I originally delivered this training at $97 and presold this training as part of a bundle offering for $127. I later increased this product to $127 individually.
Skip the Salespage
I’m a big fan of beautiful salespages. For those that are new to “salespages,” these are specific website landing pages that are geared towards showcasing the value of a certain digital product or program. I love them and while they certainly have their place, I really love when people skip the whole salespage and create a quick and dirty landing page using some simple tech setups. Here’s a few ways you can use tech to get paid with your digital product or service.

Set up a simple cart check out page using ThriveCart. Add a few testimonials and include a digital mockup of what you will be offering and add your payment processor!

Create a salespage using Samcart. I really love the easy drag and drop interface for this tool!

Create a form using Paperform for consultations and get paid using their payment feature.

Schedule and sell a workshop using Calendly and get paid through this Pro feature and version.
Grab my free course outline

To Develop and Launch Your Course

Get The Free Outline

Do A Beta Round

Beta rounds are one of my favorite ways to test the waters when it comes to a new course or digital product. I especially love testing a product by offering it at a discounted price or rate. For instance, if you wanted to charge a higher priced consultation fee, you could (in theory) run the consultations for free or at a much higher discounted rate at first, then gain testimonials and build your salespage / cart checkout software like Thrivecart and Samcart and then share this with the world!

Conclusion

Making digital products and courses should feel fun and exciting. Entering into a space of creativity and where your energy flows easily is where I want you to be. I love learning and taking part in the ideas that other people share with the world. If this article sounded interesting, why not reach out and schedule a consultation call? It’s a totally fun way to connect, spread ideas, and build the course or digital product that you’ve been itching to create!
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Service
5 Easy Ways to Pivot Into a High Ticket Service
- September 28, 2020
Table of Contents

What are High Ticket Services

In a world filled with tiny digital product offers and low-priced services, it can be challenging to find clients that are willing to pay the high price tag for services. In this blog post, I’m going to share what are high ticket services, high ticket services and product examples, and how to sell ticket consulting services. When it comes to high ticket services, these refer to pricing generally between $2k – $100k. As you can see there is a huge range in pricing for what is considered “high ticket”, but needless to say it is essential to consider that anything over $1k would be considered on the higher end of the pricing scale.

How to Sell High Ticket Consulting Services

If you’re a solo based business owner, agency, or startup organization, it can be a real asset to your business revenue to consider adding a high ticket consulting package or product to your organization’s roster of services and product lineup. But, even if you understand this, you might be wondering how to actually sell people on a new product or service before you’ve had time tested data, feedback, or testimonials. I’m going to share a few examples of ways that you can start this process, even if you’re new to consulting or you’ve been in the online business space for several years.

Create an Application Form

One of the biggest problems that I see is that people try to cater to every single prospective client that seems interested in their services. This can often lead to frustration when a potential client hops on a phone call with a sales representative or you (if you’re a solo business owner) and they instantly lose interest once a quote is provided. Sometimes you need to find the right fit for your service or business, instead of trying to make your service or product “fit the client”. One way to minimize this constant cycle of low conversion sales processes is to create an application form in which the prospective client provides essential information to determine if they are a good candidate for your services. This application form will deter those who are merely curious, to those who are very serious about your program therefore increasing the likelihood of converting your prospective client into a buying customer. One of my favorite types of embeddable forms is Paperform, but there are several out there that offer comparable customization options like Airtable. The main benefit for using these types of software is that it allows you to create custom redirects to another part of yoru website as well as create an email summary immediately sent to your and the prospective’s email.

Application
Create an application form for your salespage so only those prospective clients who are seriously interested in your packages will book a consultation or application.

Make Your Services or Product by Invite Only
If you’re just starting out packaging your service or high ticket product, like a certification program or group coaching program, you may want to offer a limited time and exclusive beta testing price to those who have shown an interest in your services or products. You can send an email or personal email message to your “short list” of potential buyers. This short list will include those who have worked with you in the past and are willing to provide feedback in return for exclusive first-time access to a high ticket coaching program, digital product, or 1:1 coaching experience.
This should not be available or marketed to everyone, only those that have shown an interest before based off of criteria such as:
Signing up for a waitlist for said product or service
Past purchase history with similar related products
Interest in related products, services, or free content
Someone that has personally engaged with you via social media or email
Increase Your Service or Product Pricing

As a busy online business owner, you’ll find that if your month is booked by clients, there might not be space enough to add any additional 1:1 work or a intensive support for high end products like a coaching program. In cases like these, you’ll want to consider increasing your service or product pricing. Raising your rates between 30-50% more than your current rates will allow you to not only work with a dedicated group of individuals, but you’ll be able to finance more business administrative support and outsource tasks you might not have time for such as social media engagement, email management, and customer service. Always review the market estimates to see what competitors are charging. That being said, I wouldn’t hesitate to charge higher than your competitors if you know you offer something unique.

Require a Large Down Payment

Don’t be afraid of requiring large down payments between 50 – 60 % of the total balance due up front. Having a larger down payment will help you create a big buffer room for hiring on additional support or prepare for business investments you’ll need to deliver a superior experience for your clients. Larger investments typically indicate that a client is serious about achieving a certain goal and in confidence in you to support achieving that goal. Ultimately, this down payment will serve as a “good faith” amount towards supporting this endeavor and so the right candidate will often find a way to work with you even if it means dipping into savings.
Alternatively, you can offer a larger monthly payment plan for those who can’t afford the one time or two month payment plan. I personally provide payment plans for all of my clients. This is a great way to spread funds over a longer period of time. For recurring payments you can use a payment cart checkout software like Thrivecart or Samcart. I discuss different course platforms for digital products in this post.

Create an Exclusive Training

Selling high ticket services or group coaching programs can also include creating free workshops or webinars. These trainings help to provide the overall framework for accomplishing your ideal client’s goals, but don’t always provide the complete step by step process. One of the easiest ways to provide an exclusive training is to record yourself presenting on a topic that you are familiar on and share the best tips and strategies that you have on the subject. During the training, you can then pivot to different solutions that you have to offer such as a paid product, such as an online course – certification program – or high ticket coaching program, or service such as customized work.

Conclusion

Creating a high ticket service can help you bring in more highly engaged potential clients that are more than willing to pay higher ticket pricing. You can build engagement with prospective clients by reaching out to your short list through your email list, social media, and network of professionals. Consider creating an increased price based off of market research, overhead expenses, and what you need to support a higher touch point program, product, or service. There are many ways that you can create engaged interest and sell your high-ticket services. What’s left is building your confidence in your pricing so that you can actually get your idea into the market.
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Marketing, Podcast
How to Design Creative Templates to Sell on Creative Market
- September 25, 2020
A lot of people don’t actually know what it looks like to create an online business and have passive income generating products. So in this episode, I would love to introduce you to Diane Pascual and her business on Creative Market.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anchor

Table of Contents

Diane has experience as a graphic designer, worked for a lot of corporate companies, and then four years ago, started an online business on Creative Market. She has a creative market shop that is now successful. She just creates products every month, and it continues to generate passive income for her. So that’s kind of the gist of it.

Running a business with a family

Diane not only has a lot of online products, but also has a family. I asked her to tell us what it’s like to actually run her business because she has a little one; I think it’s just one. Diane shared, actually, he’s not so little anymore. He just turned 18. He is a really creative kid. Six months ago, when the pandemic hit, he started helping her upload some products on a lot of the different platform that she sells on. So the main platform is Creative Market, and then she also has a shop on Design Bundles and Shopify as well. She trains him to help out because it’s a lot of work. As a parent, she’s also making sure the bills are paid on time, she’s also chef at home, and you know, just like the day to day, all the things that you have to do with your kid. She shared that it’s a lot easier now that he’s so much older. She doesn’t think she could do this with a small kid at home.

Creating a Digitial Product

As a graphic designer, Diane has been in the industry for over a decade. She’s had many jobs, lots of random jobs and biotech tech, and worked at a lot of really cool companies, and also freelanced on her own in the last couple years. For Diane, that produced a lot of burnout as far as like, keeping up with doing all the work for clients. Then at the end of the day, it just made her feel like she spent that energy creating work for them. She decided to create work for herself, as an artist and creative person. She believes you want to not only create things to make money, but also create things because it brings you joy.
When she first got started on Creative market, she had a good friend, who had immediate success on it back in 2015. That was when she first heard about creative market. Her friend was testing out all these like, spiritual products, vector sets, that kind of thing. She told her to find something that she really enjoyed and is really passionate about. At that time, Diane had a shop on Society Six, creating patterns to print on yoga pants, or pillowcases, throw pillows, that kind of thing, for herself. Then, she started building a kind of a tie dye pattern shop and was like, “oh, this is kind of fun”.

Market Needs

But she realized it was just taking too long to make patterns. She asked herself, how could she make the pattern-making process even quicker. She started creating her own Photoshop brushes, tie-dye Photoshop brushes, and that’s when she really saw a need in the market. It was like this really specific niche that nobody else was like tapping into. She decided to create Photoshop brushes that were tie dye shapes so that people can use to create patterns of their own, use it for print and digital products. It took her two months to make her first tie-dye Photoshop brush set. She was just testing the market out to see how people would respond. And mind you, she had applied for a creative market shop and got denied, like three times. She would always ask her friend for feedback about what she did wrong. Her friend gave her specific and helpful comments about like, “maybe you should do this first and how about you try that”. Then pretty soon, the last time she applied, maybe the third time she got approved. That’s when she hit the ground running. In the first two months, she was making, $100 here, $150 there. That was enough validation for her to actually think of something that people could use that they find helpful. It took her a while, probably like another eight months to really start seeing more than just $300 coming into her bank account.
I wanted her to go back to the part where she talked about how you saw that there was a need in the market and stepped into that, that is so amazing and magical. I want to applaud Diane for that one and then to share with people who are listening to the podcast, or watching the replay of this video, when you’re creating a digital product, that is truly what it’s all about, you see a need in the market, you’ve stepped into that and you analyze your zone of genius, and you package it for the world to see and share. And over time, eventually more people get to see it, you consistently share about it and you grow your knowledge, you grow your skills, and then you grow your income. And so, you know, a lot of people feel like there’s just only one way to make money. But it sounds like Diane has really diversified a lot of her business, you know, you had your site up, first on Society Six, then she was like, hey, this Creative Market sounds cool. Let’s try this out. And so I love that she kind of shared about that. So I asked Diane to tell us a little bit more about creative market for people who aren’t familiar with creative market and to tell us a little bit more about how she finally set her shop up on creative.

Market Research

Diane She did a lot of research on tie dye stuff and didn’t want to make something just to make money. She wanted to make something that people could use like something useful, right. Why put your energy into something if you don’t think it’s going to be something that other people can use?
So just to backtrack a little bit, Diane has a background in concept art, illustration. So that 2d animation background, she painted a lot of backgrounds in Photoshop, in the last couple years and did a lot of digital painting, for illustrations with past clients. And so when she was looking and researching in the marketplace, like okay, tie dye, she saw that people were making it. People were making videos on how to create tie dye in Photoshop, but it was like really generic looking and tie dye is so specific. You can tell if it’s a natural dyed shirt versus something that was digitally made. She wanted to merge those two elements together. She started painting the tie dye shapes that she would sell as Photoshop brushes. So that’s kind of like how she got into it.

Trial and Error

Then setting up her shop on Creative market was kind of a trial and error of like, learn as you go kind of process. When she first released her Photoshop brushes as her very first product, they put her on their blog as ‘new products this week’ or something like that. She thought it was really cool and guessed that nobody else was making them. Then from there, she started making little background sets and things like that. Then she also started testing different kinds of things like vector sets, quotes, and seeing what would make money. She learned early on some of the older products that she would publish, wouldn’t get a lot of traction because they weren’t really products that people can reuse over and over. So she thinks that some of the things that work really well on Creative Market are templates, things that people can use for the business, and tools like fonts are really good products to sell as well.

Zone of Genius

One thing that other people might not realize is that, Diane stepped into this zone of genius where she felt confident and capable and it wasn’t like she was trying to validate it by somebody tapping her on the shoulder saying, you know, you should do this. She saw that it was there and kept working, adding, kept tweaking it. And that’s what I really feel like, is so special and I also really love the fact that she kind of saw her experience as a way to kind of make that pivot. So there’s a lot of things that are just so exciting about what Diane’s doing because honestly, I remember for those people who are just watching or listening, I actually watched her video on YouTube, sent her an email and said, Diane, I need to chat with you. Can you please hop on a call? I never really expected that she would ever respond. She was always sweet and said, yes, let’s hop on a call. I was like, Oh my gosh, this woman is amazing. I was super excited and stoked about that.

Scaling Your Business

I asked Diane to tell us more about the process of scaling her business; she now has multiple shops on different platforms. I also wanted her to tell us more about her expansion of products and the evolution of her business over time, because she’s been doing this for a while now.
Diane started in 2016. Four years ago, she started with making Photoshop brushes and then she expanded onto creating vector sets. Then she did background sets and things like that. Now expanding she would say maybe like a year ago was when she started to see a need for procreate. So she started making procreate brushes. It took her a while to figure out how to convert Photoshop brushes into procreate. she did a bunch of research and looked at how people were doing things and she even bought products that were procreate-like brushes, just to see how, they set theirs up and see if there’s something that she can learn from that and put it into her own product. And so sometimes she’ll do that to do some product research as well. procreate app is really cool Because it’s so mobile, everyone’s on their iPad, so it’s kind of like that mobile experience, like designing as you go or wherever you feel inspired, going. She saw all of these artists and shop owners making a killing on procreate brushes. Plus, a bunch of people emailed her that bought her Photoshop brushes and asked her for a way to convert them to procreate. She didn’t rule out the possibility, she would always email them and say she didn’t know how to do that yet and needed to do some research. Seeing a need like that and learning from customers that purchased her stuff on Creative market and having people email her for their next brush set, she thought that was cool and loved the feedback. She loves when people email her because there’s certainly things that she hasn’t thought of, that she would love to explore. People getting her attention like that helps her to kind of evolve and expand as well.

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So procreate brushes is something she started making. Then themed tie dye stuff and Halloween tie dye stuff are taking off in her shop right now. Seamless patterns, something she already knew how to do she saw people make this and asked herself, “why am I not doing this?” and so she started doing that. They’re repeatable patterns that anybody can use on digital, print, or fabric. So that’s where she sees herself expanding. She made one font last year and found it was hard. It was a learning process. She feels like anything she can do, she’ll start doing research and learn a little bit more about it and take her time and ask, “How can I market this thing? Can people use it? Is this going to be useful?” Those are some of the things she always thinks about when making new products like.

Feedback

I really love the fact that she pointed out a really great process. Feedback. Somebody asked if she could do something and she was honest and said, she didn’t, but she didn’t leave it there. Diane said I don’t know how to do that yet. so when people are first starting the process of creating digital products, it’s constantly this learning process where you’re figuring out what people need, what people want, and what people are willing to fork over money for. When I actually started doing my digital products and courses, I noticed that people would actually send me an email or I would see a question come up in my Facebook group, and there would be a lot of questions that would say, I could use more examples on XYZ, or I really don’t know how to do this part. And I would go to myself and think, oh, I don’t know how to do that, either. So I didn’t let that stop me. I love that we are just constantly learning and it’s about that process of feedback, understanding how to accomplish something, and then delivering on that promise, that feedback, and creating new and helpful tips and tools.
I asked Diane to walk us behind the scenes of her day of creating a product, putting it all together, then getting it on the shop. Also what’s the process of when you get paid, what happens when the magical sale occurs and the whole process?

Diane's Creative Market Process

Diane shared that creating one product from start to finish is probably anywhere from 10 to 15 hours, no matter how spread out those hours are. She could probably do four hours in one sitting and then take a break. She thinks it’s important to take a break to not burn yourself out. She starts off doing research by going on creative market and seeing if that products already out there. If it is she asks herself, what kind of unique flair or unique way can she design that product that people can use? Then from there, she would say the bulk of time is creating in Photoshop. She gives herself time to create because that’s the important part because you’ll start on something and then test it out by approaching it in different ways, whether it’s composition, design, or color.

Research and Mockups

How many different ways can I do this? Is it going to look good? What can they use it on? – Are questions that she likes to ask. For the products, specifically patterns, she thinks about what are they going to put this on, like for apparel, t shirts, swimsuits, that kind of thing. She’ll do that for a couple of hours and create all of the different variations she can with that product, whether it’s a different color style, or two different color ways, like a pink and a purple. Then she’ll do some more research on Google just looking at mockup files, because on Creative market, your shop images, sell your product. You have to make sure that the shop images look good, and they’re kind of illustrating what they can use it on. So if your product is good for specific things, mock it up and show them like, here’s what you can do with it. That’s really helpful for people wanting to figure out if they can use your product. Then from there, she gets the shop images together, that takes anywhere from one hour to three hours depending on how specific she wants to get. Then once she’s got it up, she publishes it. She publishes it at night, super early in the morning, or midday. The last product that she really saw success on was a product she created a month ago and it was one of her newest Photoshop brush sets. She saw that once she uploaded that product, she had made a sale within two hours which was validation that she’s actually going the right path and that people are looking for this. It also helps to like watch the trends and see how that product is so specific to that trend and how they can use it to make specific things.
Mockups are a really important part of having a digital product, no matter if it’s a course, or if it’s a template. And so one thing that I talk a lot about in, in my new training, which I’m super excited about, I talk a little bit more about the sales process and what that actually looks like for people to come across your product, be completely product unaware, and then converting into a sale. There’s so much that goes into it, like visualization and product research. A lot of people when they’re actually making their first product, they’re not thinking like a shop owner. They’re thinking like an online influencer. But you can’t just put something up and not do any work. It is a lot of work setting it up. After the fact it is more passive and of course if you’re doing promotions, you might change things up, you might do more things. But starting first with the product research, doing all the groundwork, working smarter, not harder, because our working is just looking and tweaking and making it better. And then kind of building up to the part where you’re actually generating sales.

Her Most Successful Product on Creative Market

I asked Diane to tell us more about her most successful product and what she’s most proud of. She said it’s a Photoshop brush set. She’s made a lot of different Photoshop brushes over the years. It was the second Photoshop set that she ever made. The reason why it continues to sell to this day is that it’s got a variety of shapes. So it’s really the true tie dye like spirals, all of the little sunburst. She tries to vary the shapes so that they would blend together and test it out before putting it up on her shop. She also provides a template for actually creating an actual tie dye pattern, so they can look at it step by step. She provides a Photoshop template, so they can see how to organize their layers because people also want to learn. For new people who maybe they’re a small business owner and they have a manufacturing company, and they need to create a tie dye design, but can’t afford to pay a designer, you want to outline the steps for them. And she’s now started creating guidebooks, like PDF guidebooks included with the product just so that she outline how to install this Photoshop brush in your Photoshop version, and outline the process of creating the pattern, how to use the product. She hasn’t updated that product in like a year, but it just continues to sell and people have pinned it on Pinterest several times. It’s kind of interesting, once someone sees it, they just repin it, and then it gets traffic from Pinterest all the time.
I love that she thinks through the steps of the customer. She does all the backend work to get it up. Even before she publishes, she’s doing the process steps in her head of what questions are they going to ask me when they get this product? So she builds in an onboarding sequence to help them get acclimated to their whole step by step journey. For those people who have never made a course or you’ve already made a course its super important to have an onboarding sequence for digital courses specifically, for templates, you already have the instructions.

Conclusion

So you guys heard it first here. Diane’s shared all of her success about creating passive income products and she’s made money while working from home. She actually got laid off because of the pandemic but was still working on this on the side. When she focused on her shop she said she needs to create these products because she’s seeing a trend. And for me, earlier this year, tie dye was trending because people were staying home and crafting. So that was one of those things she couldn’t believe it. Before this year, she was barely even making a grand. But now she’s built up her shop to the point where she’s making enough to pay rent and all my bills. It’s kind of a dream come true.
I think that just having the ability to just pursue your dreams and making that pivot you just have to make it work. There’s just no question. Diane would say don’t even wait on your dreams. Do it now. Do it now you guys.

Guest Resources

Diane’s Website: http://www.gypsygoddess.com/
Diane’s Creative Market Shop: https://creativemarket.com/thegypsygoddess
Diane’s Shopify Store: https://the-gypsy-goddess-tie-dye.myshopify.com/
Diane’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/dianepascual_thegypsygoddess

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