Ep 112 Common Mistakes That Kill Digital Product Sales - Part 1

Have you ever spent days (or even weeks) creating a digital product that you were convinced would be a success… only to hear nothing but crickets when you launched it?

If you have, you're certainly not the only one.

I know exactly how that feels because I've done it myself.

Years ago, I created a beautiful online course that I was incredibly proud of. It was evidence based, professionally designed and packed with practical advice. On paper it looked like the perfect offer.

Eighteen months later, I'd sold just 24 copies.

That experience taught me something I'll never forget.

Creating a great digital product isn't enough.

If you want to create and sell digital goods successfully, you need to understand what people are actually willing to buy before you ever start designing your offer.

In this article, I'm sharing four of the biggest mistakes I see dietitians and other health professionals make when creating digital products, along with the lessons I wish someone had taught me years ago.

 

Mistake 1: Creating Before You Validate

This is by far the biggest mistake.

Most of us have an idea that feels brilliant.

We know our profession inside out. We know our clients. We know what they should know.

So we start creating.

But here's the problem.

Your audience doesn't buy what they should need.

They buy solutions to problems they're actively trying to solve today.

Before creating any digital product, I always ask three simple questions.

 

Is there genuine demand?

Are people already asking about this problem?

Are they searching for answers?

Are the same questions appearing repeatedly in Facebook groups, forums, consultations or Google searches?

If the answer is yes, you're onto something.

 

Is the audience large enough?

Sometimes there is demand, but the audience is simply too small.

Spend time exploring your niche.

Look at how active communities are, how frequently questions appear and whether new people continue entering that market.

 

Are people already paying for solutions?

Interest isn't the same as buying intent.

Someone saving your Instagram post doesn't automatically mean they'll spend money.

Look for evidence that people are already investing.

Are similar products selling?

Are businesses running adverts to those offers?

If companies are paying to advertise them, that's usually a very good sign there's demand.

Think of this as evidence-based business.

As healthcare professionals, we rely on evidence before making clinical recommendations.

Our businesses deserve exactly the same approach.

 

Mistake 2: Giving Away Too Much for Too Little

I love low-cost digital products.

They're one of the easiest ways for someone to experience your expertise without making a huge investment.

But I often see clinicians making the same mistake.

They package years of knowledge into a £7 resource.

It feels generous.

Unfortunately, it can also reduce the perceived value of everything else you offer.

My own portion size guide is intentionally simple.

It delivers one clear win.

It isn't designed to teach everything I know.

That's exactly why it works.

When your entry-level offer becomes too comprehensive, people naturally begin wondering why they should ever invest in your higher-ticket programmes or services.

Keep your lower-priced digital products focused on solving one specific problem exceptionally well.

Leave the deeper transformation for your premium offers.

Your future self (and your bank balance) will thank you.

 

Mistake 3: Discounting Every Time Sales Slow Down

This one catches so many business owners out.

Sales feel slow.

Panic sets in.

So you reduce the price.

Sales increase temporarily.

Then they slow again.

So you discount again.

Before long, you've unintentionally trained your audience to wait.

Why buy today if another sale is probably just around the corner?

There's nothing wrong with strategic promotions.

Black Friday.

Launch bonuses.

Limited-time offers.

They're all perfectly sensible.

The problem comes when discounting becomes your default response.

If your digital product isn't selling, lowering the price is rarely the real solution.

Usually one of three things is happening.

The wrong people are seeing it.

Your messaging isn't connecting.

Or not enough people know it exists.

None of those problems are solved by charging less.

 

Mistake 4: Selling Information Instead of Transformation

Healthcare professionals naturally love teaching.

It's what we're trained to do.

But people don't buy information.

They buy outcomes.

Imagine these two offers.

 

Offer one:

A 47-page guide covering IBS, the gut microbiome and the low FODMAP diet.

Technically excellent.

Clinically accurate.

But emotionally?

Not especially compelling.

Now compare it with this.

 

Offer two:

Three simple ways to calm an IBS flare-up, even when you don't know what's caused it.

Same expertise.

Completely different positioning.

One focuses on information.

The other focuses on the result someone desperately wants.

That's what sells.

Every time you create a digital product, ask yourself one question.

"What transformation is this helping someone achieve?"

If you can answer that clearly, your marketing becomes infinitely easier.

 

A Simple Exercise for Your Own Digital Product

Whether you've already created a digital product or you're still planning one, spend ten minutes asking yourself these questions.

• Have I properly validated this idea?
• Is there genuine demand?
• Am I solving an urgent problem?
• Does my pricing reflect the amount of expertise I'm delivering?
• Am I relying on discounts instead of improving my messaging?
• Does my product promise a clear outcome rather than simply delivering information?

You might be surprised by your answers.

Small changes in positioning often lead to much bigger improvements in sales than rewriting the product itself.

 

Final Thoughts

Building digital products can completely transform your business.

They create additional income.

They help more people.

They allow you to stop trading time for money.

But only if they're built around what your audience genuinely wants.

You don't need to create something bigger.

You need to create something people are already looking for.

Start there.

Everything else becomes much easier.

 

Ready to Create and Sell Digital Goods?

If you'd like my step-by-step framework for creating low-cost digital products that people genuinely want to buy, take a look at my Create & Sell Digital Goods training.

I'll show you exactly how to validate your idea, price it confidently and position it so it attracts the right buyers from day one.

I'd love to help you bring your next digital product to life.

The Master Plan:

Helping you build the business of your dreams. Get your 22 point step-by step workbook here: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

Connect with me:

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/

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

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

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondtheclinicbusiness

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

 

Episode transcription:

Sarah Bushell (00:00)
Have you ever created a low cost digital product that you genuinely believed in, genuinely thought would help people and genuinely thought had the potential to sell really, really well, only for it to be a massive flop? I know just how deflating that feeling is because I have very much been there as well. Maybe you've created a digital product that on paper makes perfect sense for your audience. It solves a real problem.

Maybe you've added it to your website and posted about it quite a bit on social media, but it's just not selling the way you expect it to. And you've got no blooming idea why. There's actually a handful of really common mistakes that kill digital product sales before the selling has even properly started. And I'm going to share four key mistakes with you today. Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that this has never happened to me. That would be a big fat lie.

Every single mistake that I'm going to share with you today, I've actually made myself in the early days of building my nutrition business. Some of them multiple times, actually. I wanted to record this episode because I genuinely wish someone had sat me down years ago and explained these things to me earlier. It would have saved me so much time and energy creating things that looked great, felt useful and made complete sense in my head, but just did not translate.

into actual sales when I put them out into the world. Now this episode is actually part one of two parts. Today we're focusing on the foundational mistakes, so the things you want to get right before you start selling your offer. And then next week we'll talk about the mistakes in your sales process. So basically the things you're doing or not doing when it comes to actually selling your digital offer. That can stop people from buying

even when the offer itself is brilliant. Okay, mistake number one is creating something without validating. And I'm going to explain what that means exactly. So let's say you've got a really great idea for a digital product, something you think your audience would find super useful. So you go straight into creating it, you get the content together for it, you write it all up, you design it, you price it,

You make it look and feel really professional and it's all ready to start selling. But before you did all of that, you didn't validate your idea first. That means you've got no concrete evidence that people will actually want this enough to pay for it or that it's something they're already actively looking for help with. I always tell my clients that before you create anything in your business, there are three simple things that you need to understand.

The first is you need to know, is there actually a demand for this? So in other words, are people already talking about this problem? Are they asking questions about it? Are they searching for solutions? There's lots of different ways you can find this information. For instance, you could go into Facebook groups or forums where your ideal clients are hanging out already and see what they're repeatedly asking and what conversations keep coming up over and over and over again.

Secondly, you need to know, there enough volume in that audience? Because you can absolutely have a niche where people are actively looking for help to solve their problem. But if there's only a very small number of them, going to very quickly hit a ceiling.

So again, you just need to do a bit of simple digging. Look at things like how many people are in those Facebook groups that you're in, how active those groups actually are, how often new questions come up, how many people are engaging with the same type of content, or even how much content already exists around that topic. Because if you can't see a steady stream of new people entering that space or consistently talking about that problem,

It's usually a sign that the audience might be more limited than it first appears.

And then third, you need to know are people actually willing to pay for a solution? Now, this is where a lot of people get caught out because it's really easy to mistake interest for buying intent.

Just because people are engaging with your content, commenting on your social media, saving your posts and asking questions, it doesn't mean they'll actually buy from you. It can feel like demand and it can feel like people are ready to buy, but in reality, those people could just be looking for free information or reassurance or quick answers and not necessarily wanting a paid for solution. So when creating your digital product, we need to be asking ourselves questions like,

Are people already spending money in this space? Are there existing products or services similar to yours that are already selling? And are they selling well? You might be wondering how you can tell. And usually a digital product that sells well will have ads running to it or to a lead magnet on the same topic. And that's because, well, why wouldn't you want to make more money from it if you could? Essentially,

you need to know are people actively investing in solutions to this problem, not just talking about it. So let me give you a real example of a big mistake that I made in my nutrition business in the early days. So a few years ago now, almost 10 years ago actually, I created a course called Baby Nutrition. You might have heard this story before. It was based on my clinical experience, my years of working in pediatrics and something actually I was genuinely passionate about.

And on paper, made sense because I had a big audience, I had credibility, I was associated with Annabel Carmel, who at the time was the queen of baby food, and I had a really well-built product. But 18 months later, it had only sold 24 times. Now, the reason wasn't that the digital product itself was bad, it was that I built something that I wanted to teach and not something that my audience wanted to buy.

The people who were finding me were coming through really specific immediate problems, things like worries around weaning, like my baby is constipated since starting solids, my baby doesn't seem interested in food at all, or questions like, you know what, Sarah, is my baby actually eating enough? Or they've stopped drinking milk altogether since starting solids, should I be worried? All very concerning, all urgent questions.

And when I eventually created products that match that level of urgency, like the simple portion size guides, because you've heard me talk about those before, those were the things that actually took off because they met people exactly where they were. So the lesson is actually pretty simple. Don't just build something that you think people should want. Build something that they're already actively looking for help with. This is your evidence base.

And just like we practice evidence-based medicine, you also need to practice evidence-based business if you want it to work.

Okay, now mistake number two, and this one is really important to get right because it can actually influence how people perceive your entire business. And that is how much you end up giving away in your digital product for the price point you set. Now,

My 9.99 portion size guide is intentionally simple. It's so intentionally low priced. It doesn't include lots of my clinical expertise or deeper frameworks. It's a pretty simple offer. It's five pages, including the front and the back cover. It's just giving people helpful, clear stepping stone. But what I see a lot of people doing when they create a low price digital product,

is giving away lots of their clinical knowledge at a price point that just doesn't reflect that level of depth. And ironically, that's when a simple entry level office stops feeling simple at all. The reason why getting this right is important because if something is priced at seven pound or 10 pound and it contains a huge amount of your clinical expertise, it can actually start to dilute the perceived value of what you do, even if the content itself is brilliant.

And you can end up feeling resentful if you spent time and energy promoting a £7 offer and make 10 sales. That's just 70 quid. It doesn't seem like enough for the level of expertise and incredible value that you're giving. But if you priced it at £47 and made 10 sales, £470 feels so much more worthwhile. So essentially what I'm saying is, yes, create low priced offers.

And yes, make them a no brainer price, but don't accidentally shrink the value of your expertise in the process. Focus on keeping these low price digital offers super simple and focused with one clear, tangible win for people and price accordingly. And don't be tempted to squeeze in everything you know.

Okay. Mistake number three now, and this is the one a lot of people fall into without even realize they're doing it. And that's discounting your digital products at the first response when sales seem slow. If sales aren't quite where you want them to be, a lot of people's immediate instinct is right. Let's put on an offer. So you drop the price. Maybe you drop it by 20 % or 30 % or maybe even half price, just to really pump up the sales.

and it might work for a bit. You might get a little spike in sales and things might feel like they're picking up again, but then the offer ends and it goes back to being full price and sales slow down again. And so then you decide I'll run a discount again. And this is where the problem starts because without meaning to, you've now trained your audience to wait. So this is when they'll see a post or an email about something you're selling and they're not thinking, I need this right now.

They're thinking, you know what, I'm just going to wait for the next offer because there's always got a discount on this. Because if there's always a promotion or a discount around the corner, there's no urgency for anyone to buy when they need it, when it's at full price. So this is especially important when we're talking about digital products, because there's never really any issue of availability. It's not something that people can miss out on or you run out of. Now, to be clear, discounting itself isn't the issue here.

big difference between strategic discounting and panic discounting. If you have a 48-hour or 72-hour flash sale offer inside a launch sequence, it's a strategy. People on the outside can't see this. It's not public. A seasonal promotion like Black Friday, it's also a strategy. And this one is public and it's expected by people. The issue is when it becomes your default reaction.

every time sales feel slow because that's not strategic, it's just reactionary. If something isn't selling well, the answer almost never is make it cheaper. It's usually one of three things. Either the wrong people are seeing it, you've got an audience mismatch issue or the message isn't landing. You've got a communication issue or not enough people are seeing it in the first place. You've got a volume issue.

and none of these things are fixed by dropping the price.

Now, mistake number four is creating a digital product around information instead of creating it around a specific outcome. And this is another big mistake that I see healthcare professionals make when they're creating their digital offer all the time. Their goal is often to educate, to provide knowledge, to guide people through the overwhelming volume of information online. But guess what? People do not buy information.

They buy the outcome of implementing that information and what that gives them. So dietitians, they're often thinking about what topics to cover, how to cut through the online noise and what they should teach when actually you need to be asking yourself what specific result or outcome is this going to help someone achieve? Otherwise, what ends up happening is the offer becomes very feature heavy and information heavy, which your potential client reads like

Blah, blah, blah. You create something really solid and evidence-based and well thought out and genuinely useful because you're thinking like a clinician while you're creating it. You naturally structure it more like education than transformation. And what gets lost is the core promise of that offer, the actual end result that someone is desperately hoping that this will help them with. So let me give you a quick example so you can see the difference.

Instead of creating and positioning a low price offer around a 47 page evidence-based guide to IBS management covering the low FODMAP diet and the gut microbiome and stress management strategies, which is accurate, but very informational, you'd be much better creating and positioning it around something like three things to soothe an IBS flare up, even when you've got no idea what's triggered it. Can you see the difference?

One is centered around the information, the other is centered around the emotional outcome and the transformation that somebody actually wants. That outcome needs to be in the back of your mind, both when you're creating your offer and also when you're selling it.

So there you have it. Those are the four biggest mistakes I see health professionals making when they're creating digital products that have a huge impact on their sales. So remember, validate before you create. Make sure there's demand, volume, and that people are actually willing to pay for your offer and do this before you do anything. Number two, be mindful of how much you're giving away for the price point. Low cost digital products can be brilliant entry points to your business.

but when you start packing them with too much clinical depth and expertise for a seven to 10 pound price point, that can unintentionally dilute how your work is perceived. Number three, don't fall into the habit of constantly discounting. Strategic offers are one thing, but repeatedly dropping your prices trains people to wait instead of buy. And then number four, create your digital product around a clear outcome, not just information.

People will buy your product because what they believe it will help them do or feel or change in their life. Now here's a little action step for you. Go and look at your current digital product or the one that you're planning to create and just ask yourself honestly, have I validated this? Am I giving away the right amount for the price point? Am I relying on discounting or lowering my prices to try and get sales instead of moving the messaging and positioning?

And is this built around a clear outcome and not just information?

And if nobody ever taught you how to position and validate and price and sell your offers properly, you do not want to miss my live create and sell digital goods masterclass this Wednesday, 1st of July at 12 noon. You will learn exactly how to create a simple low cost offer that's actually based on demand, positioned properly and built to convert. And as it's live, you'll be able to ask questions and get direct feedback and guidance on your own digital product ideas.

specifically for your niche. Just DM me Masterclass on Instagram for the details or reserve your seat using the link in the show notes of this episode. And don't forget to join me next week where we're going to be unpacking more mistakes that people make in the sales part of selling their digital goods. Bye for now.