The answer you keep giving

The problem you have solved before

Your first product is not a new idea. It is an old answer.

Think about the question people keep asking you. You have answered it many times. You know where people go wrong. You know what to say first. That is the thing to sell.

Sellers who got going describe it the same way: one small problem you understand, that someone is trying to fix right now. Small is good. Right now is better. It means someone is looking for this today.

Broad does not sell. “A healthy eating guide” is a shelf, not a product. “Meal plans for shift workers” is a product. The second one has a person inside it. It also has an end, so you can finish it.

Ask yourself three things. Have I solved this for a real person? Have I solved it more than once? Could I explain it in a short document?

Three yeses, and you have your first product.

The person, and whether you can reach them

Now name one person. Not a group. One person, at one moment.

Anna’s person: a parent on the Sunday morning after the puppy arrived, no sleep, standing in the kitchen at six o’clock.

Write it the way they would say it. Not “new pet owners”. More like “we pick him up on Saturday and I have no idea what I am doing”.

Then do the ten test. Can you name ten real people who have this exact problem right now? Not ten thousand followers. Ten names. Beside each name, write how you would reach that person this week.

Look at what you already have. Past clients. A group you are in. Your newsletter. The place where people ask you questions. People who send others to you.

If you cannot name ten, do not go away and build an audience first. Pick a buyer you can already reach, and write for them instead. The first place to sell it is the place where you already answer the question.

What they get

Say what the thing is, plainly. The format. The length. What is inside. Then say what the buyer does with it in the first ten minutes.

That last part matters most. Sellers hear one worry again and again: the file just sits in a downloads folder. Almost nobody says a guide was too short. They say nothing happened after they opened it.

So make something they use. A checklist they tick. A page they print. A filled-in example they copy. One step they can take today.

Then write one line about what it is not for. It feels like giving something away. It is not. It tells the right buyer they are in the right place, and it saves you refunds later.

In Jinty: a product is a file or a link, uploaded once.

What changes for them

People do not buy pages. They buy a different Monday.

Write two short pictures. The first is life when the problem is solved. The second is life when it is not. Your buyer already feels both. Say both, plainly and kindly.

Name the result, not the method. One seller found that “a second opinion before a big decision” sold when “validation” did not. Same thing, twice. Only one of them is in the buyer’s language.

If the problem has a date on it, lead with the date. A deadline. A tax return. A puppy arriving on Saturday. Then say how fast your resource helps. “Read it in twenty minutes, before they arrive” is a promise about your guide. It is not a promise about their life.

The price

There is no formula. Sellers say so themselves. Here is what the evidence supports, and what it does not.

Start between $9 and $29. That is roughly £7 to £23, or €8 to €27. A large outside analysis of listings on the Gumroad store found that single templates and short guides usually sat in that band. It is an estimate, not Gumroad’s own figures.

Do not go under $10 by default. In that same analysis, items under $10 were about a third of all products but under one percent of all the money spent. The $30 to $49 band sold better than the cheap end did.

Do not go free by default either. The same analysis found that letting people pay what they want brought slightly more buyers, and cut the average amount paid by about two thirds.

A price ending in 9 is worth a try. A 2003 study found that a price ending in 9 sold more in a live test. That test was not digital products, so treat it as a hint.

Your first price is a test. A common rule of thumb says sell about ten, then look again. It is a rule of thumb, not a finding.

No reviews yet? That is a trust worry, not a price worry. Cutting the price will not fix it. Saying exactly what is inside, and exactly who it is for, does.

One more thing. Tax rules can apply when you sell to people in other countries. Your own country’s guidance is the place to check.

In Jinty: a price in GBP, EUR or USD; buyers pay through your own Stripe account.

The words

Four small pieces of writing sell your product. A title. One line. Three bullets. A “not for” line. Write them once here, then paste them wherever you sell.

The title names the result or the moment, not the genre. “200 tips for dog owners” is a genre. Anybody can make one. A title that belongs to you says who it is for and when they need it.

The one line says what changes. The three bullets say what is inside, with real numbers: how many pages, how many templates, what format.

Read yours out loud. If you would not say it to a friend, change it.

In Jinty: the title, one line and description are the product page.

Delivery and the first thirty seconds

The buyer pays. The next thirty seconds decide what they think of you.

Send it at once. A file or a link, straight away, no waiting. Name the file properly: “first-week-with-your-puppy.pdf”, never “final-v3.pdf”. Put a start here page at the front. One page, three lines: what this is, what to do first, how to reach you.

Then plan for the email that says it never arrived. It happens to everyone. Keep the file where you can find it, and send it again yourself the same day.

Give one piece away as well. Take one small part of the same problem and solve it for free, for an email address. Anna gives away the day one shopping list. It is useful on its own. It also makes the paid guide the obvious next step. Give a slice, never the whole thing.

Last, ask the buyer for one thing. One line at the end: “Reply and tell me what you still want to know.” Those replies are where your second product comes from. Plenty of people will not reply. That is normal.

In Jinty: the buyer gets their own download link by email the moment they pay, and you can resend it. A free product asks for an email address and delivers the file or link.

Finish it small

The 12 page thing that exists beats the 60 page thing you are still writing.

A short, finished resource can be bought today. A long, unfinished one cannot be bought at all. You can always write the bigger one later, once real buyers have told you what is missing.

So cut. Take your plan and remove everything that is not the first week, the first step, or the first decision. If a part is interesting but not needed, it belongs in your second product. Nothing is lost. It is just later.

Then set a date. Write it down. Tell one person the date out loud, so it is real. A short deadline works better than a long one. Two weeks is plenty for a first product. If it needs six months, you have not cut enough yet.

Done is a decision, not a feeling. Pick the date, then decide.