Physical, or Digital Products & Services?
One the very first things I created and sold was a Physical Product, a herbal tea, I worked over a summer with creating this small business, creating and designing the packages, website etc
Right now I have a few businesses in which working with the hands is involved 🙂 and it’s very different to sitting in front of the computer screen all day
Pros:
- Creating stuff with your hands is fun 🙂
- It’s more simple, down to earth, creating something with your hands than creating something digital… but if you’re stuck in the city, the digital might be the means back to the natural over time
“Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands” – 1 Thessalonians 4:11
Cons:
- Have to keep stock
- Have to run to the post office
- Have to create bags etc, production cost & work
- Customer service/returns is not as easy as with digital products
But those are all tasks which can be very enjoyable as well 🙂
Tools:
– Well, there are sooo many types of things under the label “Physical Product” so I can’t really put any specific tools here..
– When I sold tea for example, I had to get zip bags, label stickers, boxes, things like that, with the business selling prints of paintings it’s different, with this business, crating the manuals for PLF it’s different and with the business dealing with custom clothes it’s different again
But all these things, what you need is pretty self evident depending on what you do in your business
– A website with a real online store(we’ll talk about this more in Step 2) Product Packaging: Someone who I don’t remember the name of said:
“Good products are simple on the outside and powerful on the inside”
Product Design:
Da Vinci said:
“Simplicity is the highest level of sophistication”
Design Elements to Consider:
– Simplicity
– Repetition, tying together
– Contrast
– Alignment
– Look & Feel
– Visual Framework, easy to follow
– Flow
– Text, bold headlines, bullet lists etc, being easy to read – Images
About sales & discounts on physical products:
Sales and discounts if done rightly can be used to generate quick income surges on demand
Frequent sales and discounts however, over time kill the perceived value of your work, devalues your products, people see the pattern and learn to not buy at the normal price and instead simply wait for the frequent recurring discounts
This is more dangerous with physical products than with digital products, as there is no production cost with digital stuff
Next: Digital Products