What Is a Digital Creator? Everything You Need to Know to Become an Entrepreneur in the Digital Market

Working on the internet has become one of the most sought-after alternatives for people who want to make money. The possibility of working from home and the ease that digital tools offer are some of the advantages attracting more and more people to the digital market.

Various options are available for those who wish to invest in this market: some professionals decide to open online stores or bring brick and mortar businesses into the digital world. 

Still, others prefer to share their knowledge and skills with the world through online courses or digital products. These people are called digital creators!

If you have a skill and wish to share it with more people, becoming a creator is a great option to start an online business.

But what does it take to become a creator? How do you create a digital product from scratch? How do you choose a niche? And how do you start selling?

We’ve prepared this complete guide to help you answer all of these questions. You’ll discover the main skills a creator needs to have, how to choose a niche, how to create a digital product, and how to start selling!

Use the table of contents below to browse through the text easily:

What is a digital creator?

A digital creator is someone who turns a skill or knowledge into a digital product, such as an online course, an ebook, or video lessons.

To make it easier to understand, here’s an example:

Imagine a woman named Marina. She worked for years as a cook in several restaurants, has always enjoyed cooking, and, above all, enjoys teaching what she knows to friends and family.

To help more people learn to cook, Marina decided to create an ebook with her favorite recipes and sell it online.

She is now a creator: someone who creates and sells digital content! 

A digital creator’s work involves more than just creating a digital book or an online course. To create a product that offers the right solution, they need to know who their target audience is, their interests, and their pain points.

In addition, it’s also necessary to have a certain familiarity with sales techniques, online tools, and digital marketing.

Who can become a digital creator?

As we said at the beginning of this post, anyone who has a lot of knowledge about a subject that can be taught to others can become a digital creator.

For example, if you’re a teacher, you can increase your classes’ reach by creating online courses.

A digital influencer can use their skills to gain followers or share their expertise regarding brand partnerships in ebook format.

A YouTuber, who already knows how to record videos, can create courses that teach everything from how to be less shy when recording to how to edit videos.

A tailor, who knows everything about making clothes, can create content that teaches people how to make minor repairs on their clothing.

Meanwhile, a biometric access control company can write niche content to become a benchmark in their market.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Just think about what you do that people around you always ask you to teach them.

What types of digital products can you create?

You can sell two types of digital content, and we’ll talk a bit about each one below.

Downloadable files:

This type of digital content refers to any computer file that can be downloaded via the internet for later use. Among the most common types produced by digital creators are:

• E-books in PDF or EPUB format;
• Miscellaneous documents (.doc, .rtf);
• Audiobooks and music (mp3, wma);
• Video lessons;
• Talks and screencasts (MPEG, FLV, MOV, WMV);
• Software (.exe,.msi);
• Images and infographics;
• Scripts.

Subscriptions to membership websites:

Membership sites, also known as subscription clubs, are business models in which creators sell their products on a recurring basis. You simply charge a subscription fee so that people who buy your product have access to all the content you make available.

(Read our post that explains everything about subscription clubs)

For this business model, you can offer the following:

• Private clubs;
• Websites with content restricted to members;
• Coaching clubs.

When creating this type of product, creators might decide to integrate their website’s registration system with a DE platform to dedicate more time to content creation.

The platform will be able to take care of all the other processes, such as automatically releasing or blocking registrations, receiving payments, and hosting the course.

In what niches can a creator work?

You can publish products in any niche. But ideally, you should line up topics that you’re an expert on and that are in demand on the internet.

Think about what you know the most about and what people usually come to you when they need help.

For example:

Although you’re not a renowned chef, let alone work as a chef, you know everything about cooking. So whenever a friend or family member needs tips on quick and practical recipes, they call you.

Cooking is a great niche, but make no mistake: just like you, other people know a lot about food too.

Therefore, after defining your niche, study your competitors and see what they’re doing. After this analysis, think about smaller areas within your chosen niche and try to do what other people aren’t doing yet.

Let’s continue with the cooking example to make it clearer.

You’ve noticed that there’s a significant demand for recipes, but that the internet also has many online courses on the subject. So, how about creating a course on easy-meal preparation for people who live alone?

By choosing a more specific niche, you can narrow down your audience and also do something different from what everyone else on the market is doing.

(If you haven’t defined your niche yet, check out this post and learn how to choose your area of expertise).

How does publishing/hosting a digital product work?

Now that you’ve learned that you can become a digital creator, let us show you how you can get started on this journey.

Once you’ve chosen your niche and have prepared the material for your digital product, your next step as a creator is to choose a digital platform to publish your content.

Hotmart is a platform for digital creators. So, we’ll teach you how you can host your product with us.

It’s straightforward and intuitive since our interface is user-friendly. After your product is ready, you can publish it in just 3 steps:

1. Describe your product and add pictures.
2. Define your product’s business model. In this step, you’ll decide things like whether affiliates can sell your product and the commission that affiliates will earn for each affiliate’s sale.
3. Publish your product’s content. Here, you’ll add the files that make up your product (if the content is a downloadable file) or define the membership site settings (if the content is buyer access to a membership site). In the case of downloadable files, they can be of any type, each file can be up to 200 MB, and you can add up to 20 files.

Completing your registration

After completing the product configuration, you need to finalize your registration. You can only finalize your registration after confirming your personal and financial info on the platform. To do so, click on the My Account option on the top menu and then on the Personal and Financial Info tab.

By completing your registration, you confirm that you have read our Terms of Use.

How to create a sales page

Creating a sales page for your product is very simple and can be done in a few minutes. Just fill in the form fields, and your page will be ready in no time.

You and your affiliates will use this page to sell your product. The easier you make it for affiliates, the more affiliates you’ll be able to attract, and the more your sales volume will increase!

It’s also essential to ensure that all buyer-relevant information is on your sales page. This is one of the items checked in the review. Make sure that your product’s main features are explained on this page.

Besides your product’s features, be transparent and include all company information.

Advanced sales pages

Hotmart has 2 types of sales pages, default and external. The creator decides which one to use.

1. Default template:

Hotmart’s default template. If creators don’t change the settings, this will be the template used.

The default template provides options to display a product header containing the main information and buttons for promotions on social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Creators can also change the background.

At the bottom of this page, there are recommendations of other products that affiliates promote. The links for these recommendations redirect to the Affiliate Hotlink. Therefore, affiliates will be paid their commission if any sales are made from these recommendations.

2. External sales page:

Creators can choose to sell on their own websites.

In this mode, the Affiliate Hotlinks will redirect buyers to the creator’s website, and the Buy button on that website needs to redirect to the Hotmart checkout page. That way, affiliates are also paid their commissions.

What does a hosting platform need to have?

Using a digital platform like Hotmart to host your products provides many advantages for creators:

• You won’t have to worry about storing your product on the internet. Hotmart will provide the necessary infrastructure for your product to be stored as safely as possible.
• We’ll process all of your sales, i.e., you won’t have to worry about processing payments or checking whether buyer payments have been confirmed. We’ll take care of that for you.
• Hotmart will automatically deliver your product to your customers when our system confirms payment. You don’t have to worry about delivery, and your customers will be happy to receive your product in a timely fashion.
• We guarantee the reliability of the transaction. There’s no risk of the product not being delivered after a successful purchase and no risk of customers receiving your product if the payment hasn’t been confirmed.
• You can start selling your product immediately through your direct sales link or sales page.
• You can easily and quickly customize your product’s entire sales page as if you were typing an email. Hotmart immediately makes this page available for every product you publish.
• And don’t worry; you won’t need to manage your affiliates! Hotmart will process the commission split immediately. With each completed sale, the creator’s and the affiliate’s commissions are deposited into their Hotmart accounts!
• Your account at Hotmart is FREE. No investment is required to get started, no monthly fees, and no limits or restrictions on usage. Just like you and your affiliates, Hotmart will receive a small commission on each sale, but Hotmart only gets paid if you get paid!

Best practices for creators

When publishing and selling your content through Hotmart, it’s important to pay attention not to violate the platform’s Terms of Use.

Besides agreeing to the terms, good creator practices include avoiding spamming, claiming that the product achieves unrealistic results, or conditioning affiliate approval on the purchase of the product.

Besides not being transparent, which conflict with Hotmart’s rules, these practices can harm your business and cause your audience to view you and your products negatively.

To learn more about what you can and cannot do, be sure to check out the best practices of the digital product marketplace, so you don’t make any mistakes when promoting or selling with Hotmart.

As you might have realized, being a digital creator is a great way to work on the internet.

Did you enjoy learning more about this ecosystem and want to learn how Hotmart works? Find out more in this article!

This post was originally published in July 2017 and has since been updated to contain more complete and accurate information.