How can you turn your weaknesses into a source of income?

Many people have been through a tough situation that was a turning point for them to develop their personal or professional lives. If you stop and think for a moment, you will probably be able to think of some situation you had to get over in order to keep going forward. Maybe it was shyness, or the inability to communicate with others well, or even being overly anxious.

The interesting thing is that, while you are reading this text, many people are trying to get over the same difficulty you once had. And this is where you come in.

In today’s post, we are going to talk about how you can create a source of income out of your personal experiences, helping other people who are in a similar situation you once encountered, through digital products. So, read on!

What are digital products?

Digital products, or infoproducts, as they are sometimes referred to, are materials produced in digital format to be distributed online. They contain educational content with the objective to transmit knowledge to a certain audience. The advantage of working with digital products is that it is easy to create and distribute this kind of material. It is also advantageous to the final consumer, since they receive the product instantaneously to enjoy what they have purchased whenever they want, using the device they choose.

There are many different types of digital products that can be sold, the most common ones being ebooks, video lessons, podcasts, and screencasts. What will define the best format for a digital product is the topic it will cover. A digital product on “Financial control for couples”, for example, can be better explained in an ebook, with calculations and spreadsheets, than in a video lesson. However, a material on “How to train your dog” would be better suited for video lessons, so that the practice can be shown instructively.

This is a very broad universe, with space for all kinds of people and products, in which many entrepreneurs are dedicated full-time to working online. To learn more about this universe, read our complete post on digital products.

How can a weakness become a source of income?

Your experience of life and even those tough moments you’ve been through can turn the tables in your favor. As I said above, many people are going through the exact thing at this very moment.

Roni, who owns a blog called “Roni’s Weigh”, for example, started blogging to leave behind a life of diets, lose weight healthily and gain confidence. And she ended up inspiring a lot of people who identified with her story.

Roni’s Weigh

I myself have written on Hotmart blog about the hard time I had choosing a career that made me happy, and I tried, somehow, to show other people a possible way of finding out what their true passions are. Some of them have identified with I wrote and felt relieved to find someone who has been through the same situation. And, well, you can do exactly the same thing, and even better, you can turn your content into a source of income.

Why not, then, teach these people how to overcome their problems by using the same resources that helped you before? When you provide relevant content to an audience, it becomes even easier to connect to an audience that is willing to purchase the solution they need. This is one of the most rewarding ways of doing business: helping others.

And don’t you worry, digital entrepreneurship is open to everyone who is willing to dedicate themselves and achieve interesting results. 

Advantages of turning your weaknesses into digital products

• You are your own persona: even though you are the example of one case among thousands of others, you know exactly how people who are going through the same problem are feeling. This way, you will know how to deal with your audience, what their main needs are, and most important aspects to be approached.
• The possibility of helping thousands of people: with digital products, you can reach people all over the world. And as it is an online business, there is a possibility of scaling not only the reach of your material but also the profits.
• Work with a genuine cause: you have already been through the situation with which you will help others, then you genuinely know how important it was to overcome that moment in your life. This will provide you with more motivation to help other people to evolve as well.
• Become better and better: it is natural that those who teach, learn even more. You possibly have a lot to learn and improve, and the more you study about a subject, and then share this knowledge with others, you automatically absorb more knowledge yourself.

How do you prepare your digital product?

Moving on to the practical part, let’s understand how you can use your experiences in your favor.

1. Study even more about the subject

If you are new at this, believe me: creating a digital product may be simpler than you imagine. There are some basic steps you should follow to create a professional digital product that people will want to buy. Basically, you will need:

2. Create your product

If you are new at this, believe me: creating a digital product may be simpler than you imagine. There are some basic steps you should follow to create a professional digital product that people will want to buy. Basically, you will need:

• Define the topic of the material;
• Define the format (ebook, video lessons, podcasts);
• Write a draft of what you will cover;
• Hands-on: create the material;
• Edit and revise.

To better understand all this process, read our post “From the creation of your digital product to the first sale”, where we talk further about these and other essential steps to create and sell a digital product.

3. Price your product

The price of your product must be defined according to some aspects in the market and the creation of the material. Take into account all the production cost, as well as the hours spent. Moreover, analyze the market and check if there are other products that are similar to yours. This way, you will be able to compare the prices from the competition to set your own.

Contrary to what many digital producers who are just starting think, the lowest price is not always the best one. When the price of the product is below market average, it can even be looked down by the audience. Read our post which teaches, very instructively, about pricing your digital product.

4. Host your product

This is an especially important step, since a digital products platform will automate all your sales process. It will be responsible for storing your product in an online server, receive payment from customers, deliver the material automatically to each buyer, provide customer support if clients have any problems accessing the product, deposit the earnings in your bank account, among other essential functions to your business. To start your research, understand how Hotmart works, then you will have a parameter in order to choose the best platform for your business.

5. Promote your product

Another essential step is to promote your digital product to the world. To do so, you can use a variety of Digital Marketing techniques to allow your audience to find you. Among them you have social media, blog, email marketing, and paid ads, which are the main ones to achieve an effective online sales strategy. Again, don’t worry, because after you have learned these techniques, you will see that your product will get an excellent reach. Hotmart Academy also covers this subject, if you are not yet familiar with the digital universe.

6. Bonus tip: use storytelling

Storytelling is a way of telling stories that have value to a specific audience. Your story is relevant and carries a lot of weight for those who are going through some difficulties that you can help with. So, regardless of the strategy you decide to use to promote your product, take advantage of your experience to build empathy and attract people who have a profile similar to yours. Hotmart, for instance, uses success cases to show other people how working with digital products changed the life of our users.

Click here to see our series of videos Digital Makers and understand how storytelling is done.

If you got this far, you now understand the opportunity you have in your hands. If you liked this post, or still have any doubts, leave a comment in the section below so we can help you the best way we can!