How to Make an Extra $3,000 a Month Selling a $7 Digital Side-Hustle Product

Too many articles are about how to strictly make money using the Medium Partner Program.

I get it — it's a valuable platform that any Tom, Dick, and Harry can use to generate thousands of dollars using the right strategy and the power of their storytelling. I mean, hell — the platform sees almost 100 million unique users every month and keeps growing year after year.

I'm guilty of writing stories about how I've found my pot of gold using the platform.

But what if you could use the platform as a launchpad for something more? What if you could use the platform and generate another 30% or more earnings on top of what you already generate with the platform?

That's something you'd be interested in, right?

In this article, we'll go over how you can further expand upon using the Medium Partner Program to help generate an extra $1,000 a month off the sale of your digital product.

let's take a look…

How to set up the side hustle system

It was noted in the introduction of this article, adequate traffic generation of your content is necessary for this to work.

What does that exactly mean?

Well, the utilization of Medium's Partner Program will aid in this for one.

There's a misnomer in the blogging and online content world that just because you've written something and you believe it's good — it doesn't mean that it will perform well with an audience.

Everything you create in terms of your content should serve your audience. They are always thinking,

"What's in it for me?"

When considering your article. And they should be.

While there are some recreational and therapeutic purposes for personal work, it doesn't necessarily apply when we're considering this strategy.

Sorry.

So what exactly should you be concerned with?

Well first, everything you create for this to work should be in service of your audience. For everything to work in conducting business (which is what this is) considered the audience (customer). Everything should be focused on solving your audience's problems.

Like it's highlighted in his book, "Copywriting Secrets" Jim Edwards outlines the top 10 reasons people buy is because they want to:

• Make money
• Save money
• Save time
• Avoid effort
• Escape mental or physical pain
• Get more comfort
• Achieve greater cleanliness or hygiene to attain better health
• Gain praise
• Feel more loved
• Increase their social status (Edwards, Jim. (2018). Copywriting Secrets. Powell, OH: Author Academy Elite).

The same can apply if we take out "buy" in the top 10 reasons and replace it with "click into your article." Refer to this list whenever you're constructing your article as to what motivations you're going to trigger with your audience and I promise you you'll see an increase in viewership.

Now that we've uncovered how to generate more traffic with your content, let's actually get into the construction of your digital product. After that, we'll note how you're going to automatically sell the product.

How to create your $7 digital product

It's about time I am straight with you and give you a little bit of proof as to the whole idea of this article.

It's one thing to talk about theoretical business ideas, it's another to actually illustrate practical implementation.

Below you will see a snippet of my Thrivecart earnings. Extrapolated out, you will see that it is $3,000 in earnings selling a $7 digital product.

(Fig 1.1 Thrivecart Earnings of $3,283 for the Month)

What's the digital product that we're going to put under the microscope in this guide?

An ebook.

Why have we selected an ebook? We've selected an ebook because of the low barriers of actually getting the ebook written, designed, created, and uploaded to a digital storefront.

All of this can be done completely free if you're willing to put in the work. However, you can expedite the process for just a few dollars if you would prefer the skip the design phase of the creation of the ebook and opt for design services using Fiverr or Upwork.

Furthermore, we're going to be using an ebook because the industry has been growing over the past several years. Statista notes that in 2017, 266 million ebooks were sold — a jump from 221 million in 2016. Of that 266 million, 24% of the sales were from indie-published ebooks (you would fall into the indie category in this case).

The industry keeps growing and the barriers to entry keep lowering with advances in modern technology.

Product creation step 1: Consider the end goal

In terms of the creation of the ebook, consider within your niche a problem that plagues your audience. For instance, if you write about dating and relationships for young me, what low-level problem can you solve for your audience?

• "How to Approach 15 Women and Secure 15 First Dates Next Month (Even if You have Crippling Social Anxiety)"

Can you write an ebook that goes over the psychology of "The Approach" and how to flirt with women? Can you give daily or weekly assignments the user can apply in their life so they actually can achieve the goal?

You always want to be serving your audience and considering how you can help them elevate their current status.

Once you've identified what goal you're helping the user accomplish, you're going to want to write out the book.

Product creation step 2: Write out the ebook

Writing the ebook is relatively straight forward.

There is one thing to consider if you're going to attempt to design and create the ebook on your own for free.

Now you can write up the ebook using a free document service like GoogleDocs. However, once you've written out the book. In order to get it ready for design and be positioned to be created as a PDF, you're going to want to copy and paste everything into GoogleSlides and change the page setup to 8.5 X 11 inches (just like a sheet of paper). See fig 2.1 below.

(Fig 2.1 ebook formatted to 8.5x11 using GoogleSlides)

There is nothing that leaves a poor taste in your mouth like buying a guide or ebook from a blog or online entrepreneur and receive an unformatted and undesigned PDF.

You can see there are blue borders on the top and bottom of the page. This can simply be added by adding colored blocks and stretching them to fit the page.

Next, you're going to want to create the cover page and download the presentation as a PDF.

Product creation step 3: Creating the cover for the ebook

In order to create our cover, we're going to use a free service: Canva.

Canva is a free-to-use platform with hundreds of pre-made templates to help create digital content. With Canva, we can use the "ebook" template and select a design.

You will see in fig. 2.2 a basic blueprint for your cover.

(Fig 2.2 our ebook cover)

Next, you're going to want to save this file as a .png. Once you've done that, you can add it to the first page of your GooglePresentation.

From there, you're going to want to "save as" and save the file as a PDF.

Now you're ready to add the ebook to your digital storefront.

Product creation step 4: Storefront upload and auto sale

Okay, so you have your digital product.

Now, as the saying goes,

"There's many ways to skin a cat"

When it comes to this next step.

In this article, I'm going to attempt to simplify it as much as possible. There are a few things we need in order to accomplish it.

It's important to be diligent in following along here.

The first thing you need to do is select and set up an email service provider (ESP). You need this in order for the automated drip campaign to be in place. There are several options you can choose from. Mailchimp allows you to set up a free automated campaign but quite frankly, I believe Mailchimp is garbage. Instead, I use Convertkit (I'm not going to include any links — you can Google them and set up your own accounts).

Furthermore, in this article, we're going to assume you're using Convertkit seeing as they release Convertkit Commerce which allows you to sell digital products directly through the ESP.

Once you secure your email service provider, you're going to want to set up an automated campaign that "pitches" the ebook in a series of emails. You can use this resource to help you out. You're also going to want to upload your product with Convertkit Commerce — you can use this resource to help you with that.

Now, once you've uploaded your product and created your campaign sequence (that commences once someone opts into your email list) you're going to need to get them to opt-in!

The opt-in will trigger the automation of the email sequence that will be "pitching" the digital product.

We'll tackle that in the next step.

Product creation step 5: Creating the opt-in

Have you ever wondered why countless "Elite" writers on Medium, Quora, and Linkedin have article footers and CTAs (calls to action) at the end of their articles?

I'll tell you it isn't a coincidence — it's a complete strategy.

And kudos to all of them. Because not only are they making thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars with their Medium stories through the metered paywall, but they're also generating around an extra 30% in earnings with their email list and email sales campaigns (I use 30% as a reference because that is give-or-take what I see as a monthly added bonus).

How should you construct your CTA?

Think about an even smaller problem you can solve for your readers:

"Want to upgrade your confidence in the dating arena? Get my 10 Point Confidence Checklist to help you achieve just that!"

And of course link over to a landing page that exchanges a different PDF that your reader can gain access to with the exchange of their email.

The most important part to consider with all of this is that you're actually providing value to your audience.

A lot of people rag on this practice because there are a lot of foul-players out there preying on peoples' ignorance.

The only antidote for that is for people like you to actually use these tools and provide value for the audience looking to improve the status of their lives with the help of your solutions.

Summing it all up

An automated extra $3,000 in automated side hustle earnings is possible with the right strategy.

You can use already established platforms and catapult extra earnings on top of the content you're already creating. It doesn't have to be over complicated.

The process of the automated side hustle formula looks like this:

Create actionable and guided content towards an audience > Create a digital product for a low-ish price ($7 is the example in this article) > Upload the product into a storefront ( example: Convertkit Commerce) and enact the pitch with an email sale sequence > start the email sale sequence with CTAs and opt ins

From there, you can:

• Test the price point
• Test the email sales sequence
• Test the CTA
• Test the product (upgrade to online course)
• Test the content you're producing

Everything in this game should be considered with testing.

You can always get better.

Sometimes before you get better — you just need to start. This article is acting as your starting point.

Ready to Make More?

If you want to excel and earn more than what you’re currently making by doing what you love, check out my guide.

Click here to get the guide now!