Ep 2 - How to Start Making Money from Digital Guides and E-books

Have you ever thought about turning the resources you already use in your business into digital products?

Then you absolutely should! (If you don’t, you might be leaving money on the table – oops!)

Digital guides and e-books are a fantastic way to generate passive income (ie money coming in, even when you’re fast asleep).

And at the same time, they offer your audience valuable solutions to help fix their burning problems. 

Whether you’re a dietitian, nutritionist, or another health professional, let me share this simple, low-risk way to test ideas, help your clients, and earn yourself extra income. 

(All by repurposing content you probably have already! Easy peasy.)

In this blog, I’ll share with you:

• Exactly why digital products are a brilliant addition to your business right now
• How you can easily create professional e-books and e-guides
• My winning tips for selling and marketing your digital products (so they earn you money whilst you put your feet up!)

Why Create Digital Products?

Great question!

Digital products are affordable, super quick to create, and have the potential to sell on repeat – which makes them a true passive income stream. 

Once you’ve done the initial work, these products can keep money flowing into your business with little ongoing effort. (Doesn’t that sound handy?)

They’re also an easy “yes” for your audience. 

Priced typically between £5–£30, digital guides are accessible for most people and help solve specific problems – offering your audience quick but powerful wins (that they’ll love you for).

You’ll soon be building trust with potential clients…

And turning first-time buyers into loyal customers who are more likely to happily invest in your higher-ticket services later on.

Digital products also allow you to test ideas. Before you throw yourself into launching a comprehensive course or program, a guide or e-book can help you road-test your idea, check if your audience actually wants it and tweak your concept. (More clarity. Less time wasted!)

Now, I’m not saying you’ll jet off into the sunset based on your e-book sales alone.

But quite honestly, they can be a fantastic supplementary income stream, and their scalability means the more you promote them, the more you can earn.

What’s the Difference Between an E-book and an E-guide?

E-books

An e-book is essentially a “how-to” guide – but don’t overthink it! It doesn’t need to be long or complex.

Think about resources you already use, such as client handouts, diet sheets, or worksheets. With a few tweaks, these can be packaged into an e-book. 

For example:

• Add an eye-catching front cover
• Write a short intro about you and your business
• Include a back cover with a call to action, for example booking a consultation or joining your email list

Keep it snappy. 

People pay for solutions, not heaps of pages. 

A 30-page potty-training guide can sell for the same price as a 134-page guide on managing IBS symptoms. The key is solving a specific problem.

One of my clients, Priya, created a 38-page eating disorder recovery workbook. Priced at £9.99, it provides nutritional advice and practical strategies for those waiting to access specialist care. It’s affordable, impactful, and accessible. Yay, Priya!

E-guides

An e-guide is simply a smaller, more focused version of an e-book.

When I started my business in 2017, I noticed parents in my community repeatedly asking the same question: “How do I know if my baby is eating enough?”

As a dietitian, I created portion size guides for weaning babies to address this concern. Originally a freebie, these guides were downloaded over 5,000 times in the first month! I decided to charge for them, and now, priced at £9.99, they bring in £400–£800 per month. Not bad, hey?!

What made these guides successful was their specificity. They solved a real problem for my ideal clients and provided an instant, tangible win.

How to Make Your Digital Products Look Professional

Presentation matters. Nobody wants to pay for something that looks thrown together. 

Here’s how to create polished, professional products:

• Use Design Software: Canva is user-friendly and offers templates specifically for e-books and guides
• Add Visuals: Use high-quality, unlicensed images or graphics to break up text and make your product visually appealing
• Create Fillable PDFs: Tools like PDF Escape allow you to add interactive fields to your documents, turning them into workbooks

If design isn’t your strength, outsource it to a virtual assistant. 

For around £30 an hour, they can transform your content into a beautiful, ready-to-sell product.

Where to Sell and How to Market Your Digital Products

You can sell your products on your website or use platforms like Etsy, Shopify, or Gumroad. These platforms handle payments and deliver the digital file for you.

However, creating your product is only half the battle—you also need to market it!

• Promote to Your Audience: Talk about your product regularly on social media, in your email newsletters, and during live events
• Leverage Collaborations: When guest-speaking or collaborating with others, mention your product if it’s relevant to their audience
• Build Momentum: Consistent promotion leads to consistent sales. For example, my portion size guide sales fluctuate depending on how often I talk about them

Key Takeaways

• Digital guides and e-books are an easy, low-risk way to add passive income to your business
• They help your audience solve specific problems while building trust with you (making them more likely to buy from you again)
• Presentation is key—use tools like Canva or hire help to make your product shine
• Don’t forget to market your product regularly to bring in those glorious sales!

Your Next Step

What digital product could you add to your business? Start brainstorming ideas today (starting with content you already have) and you could have a new income stream in no time!

For more tips, listen or watch the full episode of Beyond the Clinic via the players above. 

Grab The Master Plan!

Ready to build the business you’ve always dreamed of?

This step-by-step workbook will walk you through exactly what you need to focus on and when. You'll get my expert knowledge as a health business strategist.

This guide really is your master plan to business success! Grab your free copy, right here…https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

Connect with me here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansinbusiness/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

Episode transcription:

Beyond the Clinic EP02

[00:00:00] Sarah Almond Bushell: Welcome along. In this episode, I'm going to share with you how you can start to make money online by selling digital products, including eBooks and eGuides. I'm also going to give you my top tips for making these look really professional and also how to go about selling them. So I absolutely love the concept of creating and selling digital products because they're quick, they're easy and they're a very cheap way of dipping your toe into selling your knowledge online.

[00:00:31] Sarah Almond Bushell: They're also a true passive income product because you only need to do the work once and then you will earn for as long as you choose to sell it. Digital products are also an easy way to help your audience achieve a result or a quick win. And I say easy because digital goods are often a lower cost than working with you directly, which means that it's easy for your audience to say yes, without having to think too much about spending money.

[00:01:00] Sarah Almond Bushell: Digital products are also a great way to validate your ideas. Before you decide, you might want to go all in and create something that requires more of your time and energy, like setting up a specialist service or creating an online course. They essentially allow you to test your idea and see whether there's a demand for it.

[00:01:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: And they're also a great low risk way for someone new to become a customer, and existing customers are more likely to become repeat customers and buy your next level offer if they like what you've provided for them at a lower cost. How much money can you make from selling digital products? Typically, these do not cost a lot to buy.

[00:01:47] Sarah Almond Bushell: They might range from 5 to 30, and they're often sold directly on your website or via social media. Or via your email list. So it's fair to say that you're never going to retire on your digital product sales, unless you've got a whopping great audience of raving fans. But they can provide a nice supplementary income stream alongside other products and services that you might offer.

[00:02:16] Sarah Almond Bushell: And like I said earlier, they are truly a passive income product. Okay, let's talk about e books and e guides. So an e book. I'm not talking about a novel here or a textbook. This isn't something that you're going to get your clients to download onto their Kindle. This is much smaller and much simpler.

[00:02:39] Sarah Almond Bushell: I don't want you to overthink this. If you're a dietitian like me, there are bound to be diet sheets or handouts that you use often with your clients. It could be an exercise sheet or a fill in the blanks workbook or something instructional for people to follow along with. Think of it as a how to guide.

[00:03:01] Sarah Almond Bushell: You'll likely already have this information, albeit in a different format, somewhere in your business. You've just got to package it up. You need to make it look beautiful with a front cover, an introduction to you and your business, who you are and how you help people, and a back cover that might suggest where they can go to get more help and more information.

[00:03:24] Sarah Almond Bushell: So if you're stuck for an idea for your digital product, go and ask your ideal client what is it that they want. You need to find a small problem that you can solve for them. Think about the questions that you're frequently asked, because often these make perfect digital products. Now, ebooks don't have to be long.

[00:03:45] Sarah Almond Bushell: In fact, people will pay more for quick wins. So make it as long as it needs to be, but no more than that. I've seen colleagues selling 134 page e books on IBS for 27, and another selling a 30 page potty training guide for 29. So the length, honestly, it really doesn't matter. My client Priya, she created a 38 page eating disorder recovery workbook that she sells on her website for 9.

[00:04:18] Sarah Almond Bushell: 99. It outlines nutritional advice, some practical strategies, and it also provides a holistic approach for her potential clients to access, while they might be sitting on long NHS waiting lists for access to an eating disorder dietitian, or to just use alongside their therapy. E guides, on the other hand, now they are just a smaller version of an e book, and I can give you an example of an e guide from my own business, The Children's Nutritionist.

[00:04:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: So when I first started out in the online space back in 2017, my niche was in weaning babies. I'd been writing books for Annabelle Carmel, providing consultancy to her business. And so it made sense to continue in this area. I joined various mummy focused Facebook groups and forums and I created my own Instagram account and I started to grow an audience.

[00:05:14] Sarah Almond Bushell: And one of the things that I did every single week was a weaning Wednesday Q& A session. And I began to notice a pattern. Many of the questions that were being asked, both to me and also in these Facebook groups were related to parents not knowing whether their baby had eaten enough. Mums were really quite anxious about this.

[00:05:36] Sarah Almond Bushell: And despite reassurances about their babies having good weight gain and appropriate growth and feeding well and lots of wet nappies and bundles of energy and, these parents, they still wanted something else. They wanted something more tangible that they could measure. So as a dietitian, I went to the literature and I discovered that actually there wasn't any portion size guides for weaning babies, but there was some research on how you could go about using your clinical judgment as a dietitian to go about creating your own.

[00:06:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: And so that's exactly what I did. So as a bit of a side note here actually, there was a bit of backlash from other pediatric nutrition professionals about how babies don't need portion sizes and parents shouldn't be so fixated on this and I totally agree, all babies are so very different. Some take to weaning really quickly and can be on three meals a day by the end of that first week and others just take teeny tiny amount gradually getting there before their first birthday.

[00:06:41] Sarah Almond Bushell: But, nevertheless, these parents still wanted help, and so the caveat that came with my guides was that this information and suggested portions were helpful support for parents to know how much food to cook and offer. So originally back in 2017, those portion size guides were a freebie. But with over 5, 000 downloads within the first month of putting it on my website, I realized that I could charge for them. And I've been selling these food portion size guides since 2018 for 9. 99. They're short, they're five pages, which includes the front and the back cover.

[00:07:23] Sarah Almond Bushell: But what makes them highly valuable is that they solve a very specific problem for my ideal clients, giving them an instant quick win. So like I said earlier, I'm not going to be able to retire on the money I make from selling these, but they bring in somewhere between 400 to 800 pounds a month, depending on how much they get promoted.

[00:07:44] Sarah Almond Bushell: Once you've got your idea for your e book or your e guide, you need to make them look professional. When you're selling something, it has to look professional. You can't just type something up on an A4 Word document and be done with it. People expect more when they're parting with their hard earned cash.

[00:08:04] Sarah Almond Bushell: So you need to use a design software tool, something like Canva, for example. If Canva is new for you, it's a very easy to use online graphic design software with templates, specifically for eBooks and guides, making the whole process really easy. You could also use PowerPoint or Keynote or even Google Slides.

[00:08:26] Sarah Almond Bushell: You just won't have the same degree of flexibility and the tools that you have with Canva. Ebooks, they need to have quite a lot of images and graphics, but make sure that you find pictures that are unlicensed because you're going to be using them for commercial use. Don't use images that you've just found on a Google search unless you obtain and pay for a proper commercial use license.

[00:08:51] Sarah Almond Bushell: If your digital product is something that you want people to be able to type directly into, like a workbook, for example, check out PDF Escape. That's a free web based tool that allows you to create fillable forms in a PDF document. Now, one thing that is worth a mention, if you're not a creative or you don't have the time to go and learn a new computer program to make your ebook or your e guide look absolutely beautiful, this is something that can be outsourced very easily.

[00:09:25] Sarah Almond Bushell: A virtual assistant will charge you about 30 an hour to do this kind of work, and often you'll find that they can knock something up for you within the hour Whereas if you're like me, you could spend an entire day doing the same thing. Okay. So once you've created your e book or your e guide, you need somewhere to sell it.

[00:09:46] Sarah Almond Bushell: If you've got a website, you could sell it there. If not, you're going to need an e commerce platform. So one of the simplest and often overlooked platforms is the marketplace Etsy. But there's loads of others like Shopify or Gumroad or Sandow. These sites, they tend to take payment and deliver the digital good for you, but you will need to integrate square or stripe so that people can pay with their debit card or their credit card.

[00:10:15] Sarah Almond Bushell: And if you want, you can integrate PayPal as well. And this is all really easy to do. So don't let that be something that puts you off. And then finally, you're going to need to market that digital product because people Believe it or not, don't just stumble across your website or your Etsy shop and decide to buy.

[00:10:34] Sarah Almond Bushell: You need to be talking about it often to your audience, to other people's audiences, so if you're a guest anywhere, you could ask the host about whether you can talk about your e book, especially if you believe that their audience would really benefit from knowing about it as well. So momentum is the key when you're marketing your e book or your e guide.

[00:10:57] Sarah Almond Bushell: When I mentioned earlier that my sales from my portion size guides can vary between 400 to 800 pound a month, that is a hundred percent reflective of how much I've actually spent time speaking about it that month. Okay, so now you know why I love digital guides as a passive income stream. To add to your product suite of offers, you now know two quick and easy types that we as clinicians can create without having to do a lot of work.

[00:11:28] Sarah Almond Bushell: I've shared with you how you can make them look professional, where to sell them and how to get potential clients interested in buying them. All that's left for me to ask you is what digital product could you add to your business today? Join me next time when we are going to be talking about my favorite type of alternative income, how to turn your professional expertise into an online course.

[00:11:56] Sarah Almond Bushell: It's actually so much easier than you think.

[00:11:58] Sarah Almond Bushell: Before we wrap up today's episode, I've got something extra special for you. If you're a healthcare professional, like me, and you love helping clients, but perhaps something is niggling away at the back of your mind, making you wonder whether you're actually working on the right parts of your business at the right time and in the right order.

[00:12:21] Sarah Almond Bushell: When you set yourself up in business, you probably quickly realise that we never got trained in marketing. And so you're likely struggling to be 100 percent sure about what to work on a day to day basis to make sure that your business grows. And if this continues, you might find that you spend too much time on social media or blogging and actually it doesn't have the impact that you really hoped it would have, and you might end up wasting a lot of time hunting and pecking around the internet looking for guidance.

[00:12:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: And in the long run, it means your business doesn't grow. But it really doesn't have to be this way. So to help you overcome the indecision and get certainty and take decisive action, you can download my free resource called the Master Plan. This step by step Sequential workbook is designed to walk you through exactly what you need to focus on and when so that you can build a business that you've always dreamed of.

[00:13:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: You'll get my expert knowledge as a health business strategist from the foundational steps so you can check you haven't missed any to the advanced strategies for when you're optimizing and scaling. This guide really is your master plan to business success. So if you're ready to take your expertise to the next level and build your dream business, head over to sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan, and you can download your free copy. Thanks for tuning in. Bye for now.