Make your first digital product useful.

1. Choose one narrow outcome

Begin with a task you can explain accurately. A useful product helps a reader do something concrete: organise an appointment, plan a short project, or follow a repeatable process. Avoid promising income or outcomes you cannot control.

2. Outline before decorating

Write the reader’s starting point, the steps they need, and what completion looks like. Add a worked example and a short checklist. Design comes after the instructions make sense. Keep the language direct and test every instruction yourself.

3. Create original, lawful material

Use writing and visuals you own or have permission to use. Check licenses for templates, fonts, stock media, and commercial distribution. Verify factual claims, proofread carefully, and avoid copying a seller’s example product.

4. Test with a reader

Give the draft to someone in your intended audience. Ask them to complete the task and tell you what is missing. Check readability on a phone and a computer. Make links descriptive and provide usable text rather than embedding every instruction in an image.

5. Plan delivery and support

Decide what the buyer receives, how files will be delivered, and how you will handle questions. Explain file types, prerequisites, and relevant purchase terms clearly. Only then consider whether specialist document software, such as Sqribble, would save enough time to justify its cost.