Kristen Doyle 0:00
You’ve probably heard me talk a lot in the past about diversifying your income in terms of where you sell your digital products, and maybe even things like creating a course or a membership, and you know I am all about helping you build that scalable, sustainable passive income.
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But what if you took it a step further? What if you expanded from digital products to offering actual services? A lot of you have reached out to me and asked questions about starting to offer services to other people. So today, we are diving in to whether or not offering services is a good move for you.
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We’ll talk about what’s involved in kind of transitioning a little bit or adding some services to your offers, how it’s different from selling products, and how to know if it’s a good fit for where you are right now in your business and in your life.
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Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like teachers pay teachers, Etsy or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller.
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I’m Kristen Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff, tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let’s get started y’all.
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Okay, so why would you even consider adding services to your business? If you’re anything like me, you probably started selling digital products because they are flexible and they can create some passive income, but adding a service can offer some really great benefits too.
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First of all, is a great way to diversify your income. When you start offering services, you can introduce a higher value offer, which means you can charge a lot more for the services that you’re doing than you might be able to for a product. This can really boost your overall business income in a pretty big way when you start working with clients, not to mention it is super rewarding to work with great clients.
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It gives you a chance to connect with people, get that one on one interaction, and really see how the work you’re doing is helping someone on a personal or professional level. One really cool thing is, as a digital product seller already, you’re probably already using a ton of skills in your business that other people need help with, whether it’s marketing, design, creating products.
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You have a ton of skills that you could use to help other people. So why not consider sharing those skills in a way that goes beyond just selling your own digital products? Lots of digital sellers like yourself have gotten into providing services to clients for a variety of reasons.
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It could be that they’ve gotten a little bored with creating digital products. Maybe their passion isn’t in those products that they were creating anymore, and they still want a way to support their families. For some people, their digital product business is doing okay, but it’s not bringing in the income that they want, and so adding that service offer can give you a really great way to grow your income.
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There are lots of reasons that you might consider making the leap into providing services for other people, but before you jump in and start offering services, let’s talk about the big question. You really do need to think about whether or not adding a service to your offers is really the right move for you, or is it going to end up distracting you and taking you off course, away from your main business.
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One thing to keep in mind is that when you add a service to your offers, this is going to require you to shift focus a little bit. Services usually require more one on one time, and they might move you away from the more passive income you’re getting from digital products. You’ll be working directly with your clients, whether you’re providing something that you create for them, or you’re doing something more along the lines of coaching with them.
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Regardless, your business starts to feel a little more hands on and a little less on autopilot. You really do have to think about what you’re really looking for, and if this is the right move for your business. Are you excited to start interacting with people and you’re ready to add that new revenue stream? Or do you really value the flexibility that comes with selling products instead of working with clients?
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Maybe you are at a point where your products are selling, but you need to add something else, and you’re looking to move away from products and into something new and different. Either way, you just really need to think through what you are looking for and what’s going to fit into your life and what’s going to help you grow your business.
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Let’s talk about how working with clients is different from selling digital products. So first of all, if you have only ever sold digital products, that shift to services can be a big change. Client management becomes a really big part of your business. With digital products, you’re running your own business. You set things up, you let them sell or not, but services are a lot more active, so when you’re working in real time, you have to be able to manage timelines to keep your clients up to date on things and deliver whatever you’ve promised to them.
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A big piece of that puzzle is communication with your clients. When you’re offering a service or coaching or anything like that, you really do need to be super clear with your clients about expectations. They’ll want to know what to expect, when to expect it, and how things are going to go along the way. So it’s not just about doing the work. It really is also about building a great relationship with each and every one of your clients.
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You’ll also want to think through what types of services you might want to offer, I would recommend starting with something that feels like a really good, natural fit with your current skills and something you really enjoy doing. So if you are great at a certain part of your own business, that might be where you want to go to look for something that you might add as a service, if you’re really good at design, for example, then maybe you offer to redesign products for other people, or to create social media posts or other content that needs to be designed.
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If you’re a pro at actually creating resources, then maybe you can coach other people through how to build their own digital products and make them better. My advice is to start with just one service that you feel like you can offer at first, especially if you’re new to working one on one with clients.
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A lot of people will feel like they need to offer everything, but really, what typically happens then is you’re working in all these different skill areas, and you’re really not that great at all of them. Typically, we are really good at certain things and maybe just kind of okay at others. So focus in on the things that you do really, really well instead of trying to do everything for everyone.
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Sometimes what you really need to do is just try it out and see what feels good before you start expanding your offers or trying to get tons of clients. So I definitely recommend starting small with something that feels doable and feels exciting to you.
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Once you know what you want to offer, you have to decide how you want to structure it. Is this something that you’re going to offer as a one time service, or something that you would do on a recurring basis, on a weekly or monthly basis for people. If you’re thinking about adding something like a coaching offer, then maybe what you want to start with is a one time session, a strategy call, or a single consulting call.
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It’s a great way to introduce clients to your expertise without having that huge commitment. And it’s really easy to manage your time with those because you schedule them when you’re available. If you’re thinking of offering services, then instead of starting out offering monthly retainer packages, maybe you want to start with offering a single service. Like maybe you’ll offer to write and schedule out one month’s worth of emails for people, and there’s that singular service with an easy end date.
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That way you can ease into offering services. You can see how long things are going to take you before you start offering longer term packages or retainer or recurring support. On the flip side, once you get a little more settled doing that, recurring support, things like monthly coaching or consistent email scheduling, things like that, can create some really great, consistent income for you and build stronger relationships.
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So that is one of the better ways to grow the service side of your business, but it does require a regular time commitment. So you want to think about whether or not that fits into your schedule and how many clients you really can handle if you’re going to do those longer term plans. A great way to get started is just with that single project or a single call, because that lets you see how well you work together with a client before you dive into something long term, with someone who maybe isn’t a great fit, and it also lets you really evaluate your time and scheduling before you get too far into things.
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So how do you know if you’re ready to add services to your business? Maybe you’ve been thinking about it. Maybe you’ve tested the. Waters a little bit. Here are some signs that you might be a great fit for adding services. First of all, if you really miss working directly with people, maybe you left a full time job to work your product based business and you really just miss working with people, that’s a big, big hint.
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Digital products can be great, but they can also feel a bit isolating because you’re working on your own business by yourself all the time. So adding some services working with some clients can really help you to find those connections and to work with people again.
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Another great sign is if there is something you’re really skilled at that you keep seeing people asking for help with. That tells you that there are people out there who need something that you are really great at, and that means there is a lot of room for you as a service provider.
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Maybe people keep reaching out and asking you to help with something or asking advice on something specific, because they trust you. This one is really kind of how I got started in designing websites. It actually happened because a friend of mine saw the site that I had DIY for myself, and she asked me to help create her website.
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And it really just grew from there. She’s the one who said, you know, you really should do this for other people. And it turns out, I found that I really loved designing websites, and so I’ve kept that on as a big part of my business ever since. Sometimes it’s just as simple as noticing that people keep asking you for help on things.
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Maybe you are looking for a change of pace, or you’re looking for a new income stream, and you want something that can get you high impact results, high income results, for the amount of time you’re offering, then services might be exactly what you need to make that change.
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So if you are seriously thinking about adding some services to what you offer, here are five very practical things you need to think about to make that transition a little smoother. First things first, think about your capacity and your time. Services do require more direct involvement from you, so think about how much time you actually have. It’s a different pace from products as well, because you have to deliver on the services you’ve promised in a timeline that works for your clients, as opposed to working on your own time and not really having anyone to tell you when you need to deliver things.
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So you want to make sure that that lines up with your availability and any other commitments that you might have, and that you’re not going to take away so much time from your digital product business that that starts to suffer as a result.For me personally, I only offered web design services as kind of an extra thing. I called it my side side hustle for quite a long time, and my focus was on growing my TPT store business, because that is where I was making the bulk of my money. And I still had a lot of work to do to grow that business.
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But over time, that business kind of got to the point that I don’t have a lot of new things I want to create right now, and the business is rolling along really well without me putting a lot of time into it. So that has freed me up to be able to spend more time working on my web design clients projects and working with my coaching clients.
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So make sure you’re thinking about your capacity and time, especially as it relates to the season you’re in with your digital products. Another thing to put a lot of thought into is your pricing. Pricing services is quite a bit different than pricing products. So you want to make sure that you really are valuing your time and expertise, and that when you’re giving quotes that you are estimating appropriately how much time it’s going to take you to do things.
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I really recommend, no matter what you have quoted to your clients, whether they’re paying you for a package or they are paying you hourly, I really recommend that you track your time, especially early on, so that you’re learning how much you can get done in different amounts of time, so that that way, when you are quoting things for clients down the road, you’re pricing your services appropriately, so that you don’t find yourself in a situation like I did early on as a web designer, where I felt like I was getting paid less than minimum wage to build these websites because I had quoted a price too low for how much time it was taking.
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Speaking of those deliverables and quoting things you want to make sure that you are very carefully defining exactly what your service includes and what it doesn’t. See, having those clear deliverables, as we call them, is one of the most important things when it comes to keeping your clients happy and preventing misunderstandings. Most of the time, when a client is unhappy with the work that is done, it’s because there was some miscommunication about what you’re actually going to deliver compared to what they thought you were going to deliver.
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So having that laid out really clearly goes a long way to keeping your clients happy. And of course, anytime that you’re working with clients, it is important to set boundaries early on. Once you’ve laid out those deliverables and you’ve defined what’s included in your service, you need to stick to it if you are constantly delivering more than what you have outlined without increasing the quote or the amount you’re charging for that project, you are going to end up getting in that position where you feel resentful of the work that you’re doing because you don’t feel like you’re being paid enough for it.
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So those clear boundaries around what’s included really are super important. And it’s easy to go back to the client if they are asking for more, and just say something simple, like, Sure, I’ll be glad to do that for you, but it wasn’t included in our initial quote. So since we’re changing the scope of this project, here’s the updated quote for the work that’s being done.
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Sometimes it can feel difficult for us to do that with our own clients, but if you think back to anytime you have hired a contractor for something, they would have done the exact same thing. Anytime you want to add things to the project that you hired them for, they’re going to put out what they call a change order, and they’re going to update your price quote, and it’s probably going to increase based on the things you’re asking them to do that are outside the scope of what you originally agreed on.
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One really good way to define those boundaries is to create packages or a structure around the projects that you’re doing, like VIP dates or VIP weeks, because that can help set some really clear expectations around when we’re going to work, when the project is going to be done, and all of those kinds of things. You’ll also need to set boundaries around communication in terms of when you’re available to clients to communicate back and forth with them, and where or how you want to do that communication.
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Another thing to consider is your systems. You’ll probably need some systems in place for basic things like invoicing, scheduling, how you communicate with clients. Currently, I am using an all in one system called Moxie for my client management. It’s great and I absolutely love it, but if you’re just starting out, you probably don’t need to go into a paid subscription tool like that.
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You can start with some free things like using Stripe or PayPal for your invoicing and a free Calendly account to book appointments that can get you going without a big financial commitment. If today’s episode got you excited or thinking about adding some services, then you’ll want to make sure to tune in next week, because I am bringing in a special guest for a conversation all about delivering an amazing client experience through VIP days, which is how I work with almost all of my clients.
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We’re going to talk about why VIP days work so well for both you and the client, and how they can be a really great starting point if you’re thinking about adding services to your business. Even if you are not thinking about adding services, you’ll want to check out this episode if you’ve ever thought about hiring someone who works in VIP days, because we are talking all about why you will love it as a client as well.
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Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. If you loved it, I would love for you to share it with a friend who might also be thinking about adding some services to the things that they offer. Talk to you soon!
