Sign inJoin
4
3 Comments

What's a Good Pre-Order Sales Strategy for a digital product?

by MW

Hey guys,

I'm writing an E-book for the data sector (for beginners/people interested in getting into or knowing more about the data field/becoming data literate).

I've already validated the idea with free content for people who have asked, which they gained value from so hopefully I'm on the right track.

Questions I've been asking myself since I've started writing though are:

  1. I need to start doing pre-sales/orders while I work on it- How do I go about this?

  2. How can I get this in front of people pre and post launch? On what channels?

I'm a newbie with all the sales/marketing stuff so please do steer me in the right direction if you've got experience in digital product launch etc.

Thanks :)

MW's avatarMW
on August 7, 2020
Say something nice to miawolf…
Post Comment
  1. 1

    Hi @miawolf

    I'm currently writing The Engineering Manager's Survival Guide.

    My strategy was the following one:

    • 4 weeks ago, when I had ~50% of the content ready, I published a page with a pre-order mode on Gumroad.
    • I made clear when the first chapters will be available by committing on a date, I also explained the benefits of pre-ordering (early access to first chapters, lower price, + supporting me during the writing).
    • I started to communicate on Twitter, quickly got a first pre-order and I continued to publically share the progress on the writing, and sharing my Sales stats as a weekly tweet.
    • I engaged by email with the 10 people who pre-ordered, discussing what they'd like to see covered by this guide.
    • For now, I didn't share any content for free, only the plan of the book. I may try to share a chapter for free later. I would do this either to improve the SEO or if I encounter some refund asks (not the case for now) to allow the readers to preview what they're paying for.

    Starting to sell before to have everything ready is an interesting strategy. First, it validates the interest of the audience, people are ready to pay for it. It also allows you to nurture a pre-launch momentum, being able to easily do content marketing by talking about your current progress. Last but not least, it helps to create a strong connection with the early adopters, to benefit from their feedback before to do a big launch.

    Don't hesitate if you need any further info or if you have any questions.
    Best,

    nidup's avatar nidup
    ·
    6 years ago
    ·
    Reply
    1. 1

      This is so helpful, I can't thank you enough!

      I'm hearing a lot about Twitter and it seems a lot of success and sales come from having that niche audience on Twitter - do you think this is credible or not really? If you didn't have Twitter what platform might you have used?

      It's because I don't have one at the moment but I'm definitely open to starting one - just thinking whether it would help with sales being so new or if I'm better off placing my focus elsewhere.

      MW's avatar MW
      ·
      6 years ago
      ·
      Reply
      1. 1

        Welcome! For my book, 8 pre-orders (out of 10) came from Twitter.
        If I didn't have Twitter... good question. In fact, I'm using Twitter to learn and share for almost 10 years now. So, I didn't think too much about it when I started to talk about what I was writing, good part of my contacts may be interested. Btw, I'm talking about it in a "non-pushy way", just sharing the progress and what I'm learning on the way. In the case of my book, LinkedIn could have worked too, it's a professional development guide.
        Maybe you should continue to refine who could be interested by your ebook, where do they look for information when they try to learn about this field. They probably use Twitter, in that case, you can start to discuss and engage with them, for the purpose of better understanding your potential audience.
        Maybe they're reading on Dev.to or other, in that case you may share here. Another approach could be to create and rank a niche website, but It can be very long before to get organic traffic on it.

        nidup's avatar nidup
        ·
        6 years ago
        ·
        Reply