27: How to Sell Digital Products on Squarespace
Ready to ditch feast-or-famine cycles and unlock passive income streams? Then buckle up, because this week's podcast episode is all about mastering the art of selling digital downloads on Squarespace!
Think ebooks, printables, courses, stock photos - the possibilities are endless! In this episode, we'll dive deep into the secret strategies and hidden features that can turn your digital creations into recurring revenue rockets. I'll be spilling the beans on some personal tips and tricks I've learned from my own journey selling digital downloads on Squarespace. You won't want to miss these golden nuggets!
So, whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur with a treasure trove of digital assets or a budding creator testing the waters, this episode is your passport to recurring revenue paradise. ️
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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 secret.
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 Harpain, Squarespace expert and creator of InsidetheSquare.co
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 Insidethesquare.co/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 , so that will be at insidethesquare.co/podcast/27
One last thing to mention before we dive in the term.
Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace, Inc. This content is not affiliated with Squarespace, Inc.
Let's kick things off by defining a digital product.
A digital product is a nontangible 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.
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.
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 ripped 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 eleven 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.
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 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.
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 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 here is the exact text on my auto email hey there,
Squarespacer.
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 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
support@insidethesquare.co 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 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, 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Non 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.
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 different ideas for digital products you can offer
and how I would recommend adding them to Squarespace.
You can grab this free guide in the show notes for this episode at Insidethesquare.co
Podcast this is the th episode, so again, insidethesquare.co/podcast/27
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.
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.
Insidethesququare.co/shop/p/cheatsheet-for- 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 insidethesquare.co/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.
Insidethesquare.co/css 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 recap time, my friend.
We covered a lot.
If you're selling a course or a membership, you should create a member area in Squarespace.
This area will have its own setup, 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, 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 in the show.
Notes I put a lot of work into this freebie, so I had to bring it up one last time.
insidethesquare.co/podcast/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 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.
