I genuinely believe that anyone can earn some extra income with a quality digital product. From ebooks to online courses, images and templates. You can turn your passion into profit by selling digital goods on your Squarespace website. In this episode of Think Inside the Square, I'm going to share my tips on how I create digital products to sell using the Squarespace platform. There are some creative workarounds that I've introduced to make it easy for me to get my content into the hands of people who need it, and in this episode, I'll be sharing my secrets.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Think Inside the Square, a podcast full of tips and tricks to help you create a Squarespace website that you're proud of. I'm your host, becca Hartpain, squarespace expert and creator of InsideTheSquareco. In this episode, I am spilling the beans on the number one revenue generator for my business digital products. Before we get into anything, I want you to know that I made you something extra special to go with this episode. Visit the show notes at InsideTheSquareco forward slash podcast to grab my free guide on digital products that you can sell using Squarespace. In that guide, I created a list of digital product ideas for any business, with information on how to create and deliver that product in an epic way using the Squarespace platform. There's a checklist in there for you. You're welcome Again. You'll find that in the show notes for this episode. This is episode 27. So that will be at InsideTheSquareco forward slash podcast forward slash 27. One last thing to mention before we dive in. The term Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace Incorporated. This content is not affiliated with Squarespace Incorporated.
Speaker 1:Let's kick things off by defining a digital product. A digital product is a non-tangible item that's created, sold and distributed entirely electronically. Unlike physical goods, these digital products are delivered online and don't have any physical form, unless it's a PDF that you decide to print, but you're not selling the printer. You're not selling the paper. It's a digital product. These can be downloaded or accessed through the internet, usually right after a purchase. Some examples include ebooks, audio files, online courses, website templates, even videos that you buy on a streaming service. That's a digital product.
Speaker 1:Now there are some pros and some cons to offering these. It's easy to create a digital product and it's scalable. Once you've uploaded it, you can sell a limitless number with very little upkeep. It's also really efficient as far as business space is concerned. There's no inventory to stock and store, nothing to actually ship, no packaging supplies or anything along those lines. Everything is done online. Now you might have to pay for the space to hold the product. Like, let's say, you're offering paid videos, you'll need a place to host those videos, but we're not talking about actual inventory here, so it's a little more efficient. That also makes it efficient for a profit margin, since you're not requiring additional supplies to make additional products. The initial investment is kind of the only investment, which is pretty great.
Speaker 1:There is a downside to digital products, however. One of the biggest ones is copycats. Because it's a digital product, it's very easy for someone to purchase access to it and then rip off your content and sell it as their own. It's super sleazy and usually it's pretty obvious when someone's being that sketchy online, but it is definitely a fear of everyone selling a digital product, myself included. One of the other cons is when you need to update something. One of the main digital products that I sell is my Squarespace CSS cheat sheet. I've been doing this for almost four years now. Actually, I think it might be over four years. Regardless, squarespace has made some changes, to say the very least. I was on version 11 of my PDF before I started offering it as a Notion database. So when you have content that you're selling that might need to be updated, that can be a little difficult for a digital product, but those cons definitely don't outweigh the pros, and I strongly recommend that anyone with a Squarespace website create some form of digital product to increase their revenue for their business.
Speaker 1:To be clear, I am well aware that Squarespace is not the only platform for selling digital goods. There are a lot of different programs out there that make it easy for you to share different types of digital content with the people who want to purchase it from you. But I use Squarespace. I use Squarespace for my website, I use Squarespace for purchasing domains, I use Squarespace campaigns for communicating with my customers. I have everything under one digital roof, and I do think it's easy and possible to sell digital goods using a Squarespace website, and that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. Now, is Squarespace perfect? No, not at all. There is definitely a lot of room to grow, but it does a lot of things right. I want to share a high level overview of how you can set up a digital product in your Squarespace website, along with some tips that I learned the hard way so you don't have to.
Speaker 1:So let's start with the product itself. The digital good that I sell is a Notion database and it used to be a PDF. Technically it's still a PDF. The way Squarespace is set up, I need to upload some kind of file for the program to sell. The file I upload is a single page with information about the product and the entire page is a link to the Notion database. This is one of the workarounds I was talking about Using Squarespace. You have to have some kind of file that's shown and emailed to the person who purchases the product. Back when my product was a PDF, that was super easy, but now that it's a link to something else, it takes a little extra work. That's the extra step Not ideal, but it works for me. I would use the same technique for other digital goods, like audio files, canva templates, anything. You need to provide a link to Create a single page PDF the whole page will be a link to the digital good that you're offering and add that PDF as your digital product.
Speaker 1:Don't forget to add a note in the auto email for digital products on your Squarespace site that the PDF is a link to the thing. It's super important to update this auto email, because that PDF itself will expire in 24 hours. Squarespace makes a unique link for every purchase and that link will not work forever, so you need to update your auto email. If you take away nothing else from this episode, remember this. You're going to find the auto email for your digital downloads under selling, selling tools, customer notifications, general orders, digital downloads. Again, that's selling selling tools, customer notifications, general orders, digital downloads.
Speaker 1:Here is the exact text on my auto email. Hey there, squarespace. Sir, thank you so much for your order. Here's what you need to know. You'll find a PDF link below. Click anywhere on that PDF to access the digital content you ordered. Now this part of text is in bold this PDF link expires in 24 hours, so please download it ASAP. Bookmark the link to your database so you have access to the most up to date version of your order. If you need any support with your order, send an email to support it inside the squareco and I'll do my best to respond as soon as possible. Thanks again for your purchase and, most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website. Then, underneath that, squarespace automatically adds the link to the PDF, but again, I made this part bold in my email. This PDF link expires in 24 hours, so please download it ASAP. You'll still get a few emails of people saying they bought something months ago and the link is broken, but updating that auto email will drastically reduce the number of complaints that you'll get like that Again.
Speaker 1:You're going to find this under selling, selling tools, customer notifications, general orders, digital downloads, and this is specifically for those of you that want to sell a PDF, an image, a single file, upload that directly to Squarespace. Or, if you want to link to something else, like a template or a database, create a single page PDF and make sure that the main page, that one page, the whole thing, is a link to that template or that database. Now, all that to say, digital products are not just links or PDFs. Online courses and memberships are a very popular digital product and you can sell those on Squarespace too. In Squarespace, you have the option to create member areas and you also have the option to create a course. Now this course feature. It's an interesting one. You can require people to pay to access the course, but, to be totally honest, I think that everyone creating an online course in Squarespace should create a member area and add a course to that member area, and here's why A course itself is limited to the actual course page and then the lessons inside that course.
Speaker 1:That's the only content you can have there, and for every online course I've ever created or taken, I've always needed additional resources, extra information, and that's something that you can add technically to a page section at the bottom or the top of the lessons in your course. I don't think it's a good layout. I don't think it's a lot of flexibility. I like to have more content available to the people who have purchased my course. So I create a member area in my Squarespace website and inside that member area I have the course and then any additional resources they're going to need. Now these additional resources could be a single page. It could be a portfolio with projects inside of that portfolio. There's all kinds of different options. But again, even if you're creating an online course, create a member area and add a course to it.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about setting up a membership site using Squarespace. I was recently consulting a fitness trainer and they wanted to release a new workout series every single week for people who are in their membership. They created a member area. They had a portfolio of projects in that member area and that portfolio showed different breakdowns for different exercises so people would do them correctly. It was a series of videos in there, but to release a brand new series. So they got a new challenge every single week.
Speaker 1:We created a blog in the member area. This way she was able to add the content for that week and schedule that blog post to launch on a specific date. So when members logged in they got access to the latest and greatest. Now it is technically a blog. That is the type of page. But this blog itself didn't have to look like a blog. It didn't need tags and categories. It didn't even need to display the date or the author. It was a list of all the exercises, the order and the frequency that those needed to be done for that week's workout.
Speaker 1:So again, she has a member area. People sign up for this membership and inside that membership they have access to her video library so they understand how to do the exercises. And then every single week they have a scheduled blog post that goes live so they can see what exercises they need to do that week. That was a great workaround to use some of the features built into Squarespace to create a time released membership site for her fitness clients. She also wanted to offer these one-on-one sessions for people that were in this membership, so we added a schedule link inside the members area. You could only access that link to schedule a one-on-one session with her. If you had a membership, all of her members couldn't access that scheduling link. So again, member area. You can put so much content in there, even if you're just creating an online course. I strongly recommend it. But for memberships themselves, you can get really creative using Squarespace features inside a member area.
Speaker 1:Digital products, online courses, memberships those are just a few ideas of many. Don't forget to grab the guide that I created for this episode. I've listed 17 different ideas for digital products you can offer and how I would recommend adding them to Squarespace. You can grab this free guide and the show notes for this episode at insidethesquareco forward slash podcast. Forward slash 27. This is the 27th episode. So again, insidethesquareco forward slash podcast. Forward slash 27.
Speaker 1:Before you head over there to check that out, I do want to mention one more important thing when it comes to selling digital goods on Squarespace, and that is your sales page. I strongly recommend creating an individual sales page for your digital product. Your sales page has one main goal have people who are on this page buy your product. I like to use the digital product content block to list the product on that page and then I'll add other sections like FAQs and testimonials. There's a lot more design flexibility using this landing page feature or sales page versus a product listing.
Speaker 1:Now, when you list a product in a store on Squarespace, even a digital one like a PDF, your URL can end up being a really long one Inside the squareco forward slash shop, forward slash p. Forward slash cheat sheet. Dash forward dash Squarespace. That is a long URL. Right, that is the URL for my main product, but instead of sending people there, I like to send them to inside the squareco forward slash CSS. That is the simple, quick, easy to remember URL that sends people to my sales page. Now, again, the sales page has one main goal have people purchase this product and that sales page. I can list that easy to remember URL on every tutorial, on every social media post, in my email signature inside the square dot co forward slash CSS.
Speaker 1:So when you're creating your digital product, I want you to create a sales page for it, a sales page that focuses on selling the thing. If you have to be extra creative and sell multiple variations of your product. That's fine, but you should still make a sales page to have flexibility on the design so you can add other sections and make a super easy to remember URL. Now, this sales page can be in your main navigation or the not linked section of your site. Just make sure you give it an easy to remember URL. Okay, it's a recap time, my friend. Take over the lot.
Speaker 1:If you're selling a course or a membership, you should create a member area In Squarespace. This area will have its own set of options for pricing and all that magic. Then you can add any page you want to the member area, including a resources section and a course, if you want to. You can even offer time-delayed content by creating a blog with scheduled posts. If you're selling a digital product, an image or a PDF, you can add this product to a store on your Squarespace site. If you need to send people to a product link, like I do, create a one-page PDF that has the link on the entire page and be sure to mention that in your auto email. Customize your customer notification email under Selling, selling Tools, customer Notifications, general Orders, digital Downloads, and no matter what you sell.
Speaker 1:Make a sales page. This can be in your main navigation or the not-linked section of your site. Use product blocks so people can buy what you're selling, and use page sections to add all the information they'll need information about the product and who it's, for testimonials, previews, faqs. Creating a single sales page is a great way to do it, and if you want all of this information, along with other ideas on what you can sell, grab the guide and the show notes. I put a lot of work into this freebie so I had to bring it up one last time. Insidethesquareco forward slash podcast forward slash 27. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Inside the Square. I hope you found it informational and inspirational. I have a lot more to teach you about making Squarespace uniquely yours, so be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you happen to be listening to this episode. Thanks again for listening and, most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website. Bye for now.