The TRUTH about selling digital products

Digital Products, Marketing, Podcast

You hear all the hype over low-ticket digital products, how they’re super scalable, and super lucrative.

But are digital products really worth it?

I am almost a month into selling my first low-ticket mini course and here to tell you the truth behind a low-ticket launch.

Should you sell a digital product?

Every time I open my phone, I see an Instagram post selling people on this dream of making millions from a digital product or low-ticket product (like an e-book, PDF, mini course etc).

To be fair, online learning is a multi-billion-dollar industry! The global digital education market is projected to reach hundreds of billions by 2032.

There’s no doubt that there’s money to be made. But here’s what’s not being said… You need massive visibility to make any kind of real money by creating a low-ticket digital product.

Let’s do some quick math:

Say, your goal is to make $1k.

You build a $20 digital product there’s a strong market for, and write it a banging sales page for it.

Now you only need 50 people to buy it to hit your goal.

But your job is NOT to find 50 people to sell this to.

Because, conservatively speaking, only about a 5% of the people who see your sales page will buy it– that’s a pretty normal low-ticket conversion rate.

If we dust off our calculators we see that you need to find 1000 people to sell this to, to hopefully sell to 50 people!

Not every lead buys; Even when the offer is cheap.

**A major misconception in digital products is, that when your offer is cheap, it’s easy to sell.**

That’s not how marketing works. You need to promote the heck out of everything you sell, no matter the price point. I knew this in theory– but still thought I’d be the exception to the rule.

When I first launched Testimonials That Sell, I secretly thought, “This mini course is SO valuable my followers are going to jump to get it for such a low price”.

So #NAIVE. 🤦🏼‍♀️

And it wasn’t the first time I’ve made this mistake.

A couple of years ago I hosted a live workshop, and charged $197. My goal was that when people came they would be sold on my high ticket offer. I would use this “low ticket” thing to give them value and then they would want to join my program.

The first time I did this, 100% of the people who came to the workshop upsold into my program.

The second time I did this, I couldn’t sell tickets to it. It was like pulling teeth. All of my current clients were invited for free, and there ended up being only 2 paying guests.

Why didn’t this offer sell as well as the first one?

Because of the topic of the workshop. I had accidentally chosen a topic that my clients knew was important, but my leads didn’t.

Stay with me here.

You have something called The Curse of Knowledge (and so do your clients). If your clients are telling you that they want something, but they’re already educated on what you do, they are going to want different things than what your cold audience wants.

A “cold” audience of people who haven’t worked with you yet are not in the same mental place.

That was the mistake. I hosted the live training and my clients loved it, but strangers did not come, and I learned my lesson.

Trying to meet these 2 criteria delayed launching my first digital product for a YEAR.

When trying to choose a digital product topic, I had 2 criteria.

#1 – I only wanted to sell something that’s in alignment with my values.

For instance, I could easily sell a list of content ideas. It would probably fly off the shelves. I know you want it, but I also know it won’t help you with your messaging, content strategy, or getting clients.

It’s really important to me that my offers aren’t band-aids; I want you to get long term value not quick fixes that will be outdated in a few months.

My coach actually suggested that I sell B-roll ideas– 37 ideas for $37 or something like that. That didn’t quite fit my values-based-offers requirement so I started giving B-roll ideas away for free on instagram, instead and they popped off!

I have hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of views on all of these B Roll videos… Giving it away for free brought more clients and visibility to my business than charging for it would have.

Not every idea needs to be monetized in order to grow your business.

#2 – The topic had to be something my ideal clients knew they wanted, cross-referenced with something I knew they needed without taking away from my bigger offers.

For my inaugural mini offer, I decided to teach folks how to collect, share, and use testimonials in their marketing.

Anyone who’s ever gotten a testimonial from a client and went, “Uh-oh, how do I use this? How do I show people this?” knows it’s a huge pain.

Most small business owners know they’re “supposed” to use social proof, but have no idea how to use it.

I have a solution for allll of that: A crystal clear workflow for getting your clients to give you glowing feedback, organizing it in airtable, and posting it in ways followers actually pay attention to.

That’s how Testimonials That Sell was born. Testimonials may not be the thing I’m most excited to talk about, but it does solve a problem my ideal clients actually have. A problem they are hyper aware of. They’re reminded of this problem every time they get a completely useless testimonial like one that says “she was great!”

This applies to your paid offers, freebies, and low ticket digital products.

They must be something that your ideal client actively wants.

Sometimes, as the expert, you’re gonna wanna give them what they need but that’s a rookie mistake. As they say, Sell them what they want, give them what they need (and also what they paid for)

The lie: “Low ticket = passive.”

The truth: selling digital products requires constant promotion.

Because the minute you decide to sell a low-ticket offer, you’re signing up for a reality that a lot of people don’t say out loud:

You’ll need way more eyeballs
You’ll need to talk about it ALL the time
You’ll need a social media marketing strategy so you know what to post to keep new leads coming in, trusting you, hearing about the product, and hearing you invite them to buy it *without* you getting bored of selling it

This is where I see people hit the wall.

So here’s what I learned quickly:

If you want low-ticket to work, you need a repeatable visibility + selling system that can handle the days where Instagram feels like a chore.

If you want an Instagram strategy that helps you consistently sell and enjoy the process, that’s where Magic Marketing Machine comes in.

How to sell a low ticket digital products (aka: what worked and I’d do again)

1) Treat the low-ticket offer like a BIG DEAL.

You need to hype this thing up like you just released the bestseller of the year. Promote it just as much as you’d promote a $1000 offer and make it exciting.

Post about it on Instagram every day for a week, tell your friends, e-mail your list, talk about it in your Stories, tell your current clients about it, talk about it on Podcasts and any audience you can get yourself in front of.

The energy of the launch makes people excited to get in on the fun.

2) Sell them a clear result, then over-deliver once they’re inside.

Clarity is crucial in your messaging. Instead of trying to make your digital product seem ‘more valuable’ by adding more to it– choose one clear result that’s inherently valuable.

Like: Get more testimonials, and use them to get more clients.

Like: Know exactly what to post for your business on Instagram Stories for a week

Like: 50 fill-in-the-blank reels hooks designed specifically for service based businesses

These are all mini offers I’ve sold hundreds of times. On the outside they’re simple, then when you get inside I over-deliver like crazy.

Because the ultimate goal isn’t that you buy a $50 product; It’s that you get a clear result and I earn your trust and you’ll want to work with me in Magic Marketing Machine.

3) Have a bigger plan.

Your low-ticket customers can become your biggest clients, but only if you continue to sell them offers. Know what the logical next step for them is, after they get your product, and have promotions in place to sell it to them.

This can be as simple as follow-up emails that have the energy of “if you liked that, you’ll love this!”

The part nobody wants to hear: low-ticket won’t save a business.

And if you don’t have an audience yet, it’s probably not for you.

So… is it worth it to sell low ticket digital products?

Here’s my honest answer:

It’s worth it if you’re willing to treat it like a real offer, build for volume, and stop pretending you can “post a few times” and watch Stripe do backflips.

And it’s worth it if you choose a topic that people already recognize as a problem (not something you have to educate them into caring about).

If that’s you, selling a low-ticket digital product can be one of the smartest moves you make.

If it’s not… you’ll spend 30 days wondering why you have a “great product” but no sales.

And I don’t want that for you.

If you want to check out Testimonials that Sell, it’s the mini course where I show you how to collect testimonials, organize them, and actually use them in your marketing (without screenshots living in 14 different places on your phone).

And if you’re reading this thinking, “Cool, but I need the system that makes all of this easier…” — you already know where to find me.

— Jenna