Summary

Christina Piccoli is documenting her journey of creating and selling digital products, including an ebook and a newsletter, to fund her basement flooring project and demonstrating the process's simplicity to encourage others.

Abstract

Christina Piccoli, an author and digital product creator, has been experimenting with creating paid digital products to finance new basement flooring. She has made 16 sales totaling $352 from her first product, an experience she finds rewarding and somewhat addictive. Her first product, "Medium Money: The Simple Guide to Writing Articles That Pay You," is available on Gumroad. Piccoli is now working on her second product, an ebook about creating a Mini Email Newsletter (MEN), which she plans to release by February 16th. Additionally, she is exploring Jamie Northrup's Medium-Newsletter-Book Framework for her third product, which involves writing Medium articles that contribute to a book and promoting both through a newsletter. Piccoli shares her progress to hold herself accountable, demonstrate the ease of the process, and inspire others to create their own products.

Opinions

Piccoli finds the process of creating and selling digital products to be both enjoyable and addictive, especially when seeing sales notifications.
She believes that the upfront effort in creating a digital product pays off over time through repeated sales.
Piccoli is enthusiastic about learning new skills, such as setting up an email sequence and creating graphics for her products.
She is excited about the potential of creating a KDP book as part of her third product experiment.
Piccoli emphasizes the importance of just starting and not being afraid to create one's own products, as she has found the process to be simpler than initially thought.
By sharing her experiences, she aims to motivate others to embark on similar ventures and maintain a presence on Medium.

They’re Coming…Paid Product Experiments #2 and #3

This is kind of addicting…

In case you missed it, I decided to experiment with creating a paid product to help pay for new basement floors.

You can see what I learned from that experiment (and the mistakes I made) in this article.

In my last update, I had made 8 sales for a gross amount of $176. (There’s a 10% fee taken out from Gumroad, and some of those sales were affiliate sales, so the net amount is smaller.)

Today, we’re up to 16 sales for a gross total of $352.

That’s not too shabby! I can see why people like creating their own products. You put the time and effort in upfront, and then you can sell it over and over again.

It’s kind of addicting seeing these notifications:

It was also fun learning new things:

Creating a Gumroad landing page with a paid product
Writing copy on the landing page
Creating graphics

Gathering a couple of testimonials to post
Setting up an email sequence to trigger at a certain time after the product was purchased

Check it out here → Medium Money: The Simple Guide to Writing Articles That Pay You

I still have a long way to go to get that basement flooring, but I’m happy with the results so far.

Plus, I have something else up my sleeve…

Paid Product Experiment #2

I started working on my next paid product this morning. It’s step 2 of my simple 2-step system.

In this ebook, I’ll be talking about creating a Mini Email Newsletter, or MEN for short. (Funny, right? I’m not sure if I’ll keep it, but I kind of like talking about how to promote your MEN. lol)

These are the chapters so far (but this could all change):

In case you can’t read the image, the chapters are:

Chapter 1: What’s a MEN?
Chapter 2: Isn’t it better to send out a long newsletter?
Chapter 3: Picking an ESP
Chapter 4: Setting up your MEN
Chapter 5: Creating a landing page
Chapter 6: Connecting your landing page and your ESP
Chapter 7: How to schedule your MEN
Chapter 8: The simple way to get subscribers
Chapter 9: How often should you send your newsletter?
Chapter 10: Examples of promoting your MEN on Medium and vice versa

My goal is to have this up on Gumroad and for sale by no later than next Friday, February 16th.

I’ll provide an update when it’s up and ready!

Paid Product Experiment #3

The next paid product experiment I’ll be working on is a challenge by Jamie Northrup - Minimalist Hustler in his Minimalist Hustler HQ community. (Come join us, it’s so much fun there! — aff. link)

It’s his Medium-Newsletter-Book Framework.

I don’t want to give away all the secrets (although Jamie gives them away here), but the general idea is to:

come up with a book idea and an outline
break the outline up into sections
each section becomes an article to post on Medium
compile everything into a book
promote the book and the Medium articles in the newsletter (and vice versa)

I am really excited about this particular experiment because I’ve been itching to learn how to create a KDP book.

I’m not going to put a deadline on this one for now. It’s probably going to take me some time. But I’ll keep you posted on it!

Final Thoughts

The reason I am posting about these experiments is for a few main reasons:

I am holding myself accountable. Once I put these goals out into the Universe in writing, I have to complete them.
I want to show you how easy the process is and encourage you to try it too.
I get another Medium article out of it! (The more you write, the more you stay on Medium’s “mind”.)

I truly hope these posts help you in some way. I spent years afraid to create my own product to sell. Then when I did it, I discovered…it was pretty simple.

The hardest step is the first one. Like my friend Matt Brady says, “Just start.”

About the Author

Hey! I’m Christina, an introverted book nerd on the outside, and a raging metalhead on the inside. 🤘 I’m a married mom to two teenagers (and 3 cats and a dog). I love Vegas 🎰, the band Chevelle 🎸, and murder mysteries 📖.

I also love creating short, daily lists of resources and ideas to help you boost your online income. 👈 Click that astonishingly long link to sign up for free.