The Definitive Guide to the Software & Services You Need to Start Selling Information Products – 2nd Edition

Are you looking for your perfect Tech Stack to start selling information products? Well, you have come to the right place!!

Just as we brought you the 1st edition of The Definitive Guide, this one will have all the same goodness, as well as updated pricing and some new software and services.

This guide will assist you in building the perfect Tech Stack for your growing business. You know that you need a website and an email platform, but we want to help you figure out what else you need to start selling and make it as simple as possible.

In this article, we compare dozens of options based on services we have provided for our clients to help them produce and market their digital products online.

We’ve helped them create millions of dollars in profits and have helped launch hundreds of programs. Over the years, we’ve learned the ins and outs of just about everything on the market. So today, we’re bringing you some pages from “Keith & Rachel’s $25K Consulting Playbook”, along with new information.

As we discussed in the 1st Edition, before you start choosing your software and services, you need to understand how the process of selling your e-learning product actually works. This is the ideal scenario that your customers will experience:

1. Reader Opt-In
   New prospects come to your website and will be enticed to subscribe to your email list in exchange for a cool incentive (e.g., e-book, worksheet, mini-course).
2. Marketing Funnel
   Those prospects will now get your marketing funnel emails, which provide helpful, educational information and lead up to the sale of your coaching program.
3. The Pitch! (Sales Funnel)
   Prospects are offered an opportunity to purchase your online course in a sales page. They fill out a payment form, and now they’re your students!
4. Become a Customer
   Students login to your membership site and begin taking the course within a password-protected portal. Your course will consist of some combination of written materials, audio files and video of you presenting course material.
5. Customer Support
   Throughout the course, your students can get customer support when they have questions or problems.
6. Lifecycle Emails
   Students will also receive a new course-related email funnel that helps them to get the most out of the experience. The funnel tells them when new lessons in their course are available and also cross-sells them a new course when they’re almost finished with their first one.
7. Cross-Sell
   In a perfect world, your students are so completely satisfied with the experience that they sign up again, and the cycle repeats.

Did you notice that every step of the customer experience requires at least one software or service? Those are the pieces of your Tech Stack puzzle.

Click on the links below to jump to a section in this article that may specifically relate to what you need.

Here are the basic categories:

1. Email
2. Opt-in offers
3. Website
4. Sales page
5. Shopping cart
6. Membership site
7. Video hosting
8. Customer service

Now that you understand the process, let’s talk about your options. We’ve selected software products that are solid choices for beginners, but we’ve also included a few that are better suited to growing businesses. Prices are accurate as of March 2016. Each product has pros and cons, so read carefully and pick the ones that sound right for you.

Yes, there are more options than what’s listed here, but if we listed every available option, this would be a million miles long. The secret of being successful is taking action, not getting stuck in the muck of researching every possible solution.

Find one product that will meet your biggest needs, and then get started using it. Make sure you’re getting your information product, online course, or mastermind program out the door. Ship it! Don’t split hairs and lose tons of time making your choices. Make an informed decision, then get to work building your online course and growing your business.

Okay. Let’s create your perfect Tech Stack!

Email

Email is the foundation of your marketing, and email addresses are the most valuable asset you own. At its most basic, your email service should be able to handle a high volume of messages, allow you to create multiple lists or use tags for the different phases of your marketing funnel, and provide analytic insights (showing you who’s opening what). We also recommend a service that lets you pre-schedule and automatically deploy your emails and includes pre-designed templates.

• MailChimp
  This cleanly designed, easy-to-use service is perfect for beginners. You can send 12,000 emails to up to 2,000 subscribers for free. After that, you’ll pay a monthly fee based on your number of subscribers and the amount of email you send. One of MailChimp’s drawbacks is that their user interface and autoresponder sequence has a few quirks to it, but their overall usability and slick design is a definite plus.
• AWeber
  If you need a little hand-holding, AWeber’s live chat support and toll-free service hotline might be right for you. They offer a $1 trial for your first month, and prices start at $19/month after that. Folks have complained about AWeber’s sometimes-clunky message editor, but its functionality is top notch. Plus, it offers pre-designed opt-in forms you can embed on your site and split testing and opt-in tracking for all those forms.
• Infusionsoft
  Infusionsoft is more than just email…it’s CRM software that offers contact management, marketing automation, sales automation, and e-commerce. You’ll pay quite a bit more than you will for MailChimp or AWeber (packages start at $199/month), but growing businesses will appreciate the range of services. Also, Infusionsoft is a “contact-centric” service, which gives you more segmenting power than AWeber or MailChimp.
• ONTRAPORT
  This CRM platform features contact management, marketing dashboards, partner programs, and API integrations in addition to a payment platform. We love their custom order forms, recurring billing feature, and abandoned cart follow-up. You can get the basic package starting at $79/month, but you won’t get the full ONTRAPORT platform…you’ll pay at least $297/month for that.
• Drip
  Drip comes with several opt-in form styles. The built-in form editor lets you customize the styling and choose where and when you want your forms to appear, all without writing a single line of code. Drip automatically tracks subscriber activity on your site/in your app along with a number of key performance metrics for opt-in forms and campaigns. Prices start at $49/month for the basic plan with a 3-week free trial with full access to Drip.
• ActiveCampaign
  This all in one marketing platform has great info for beginners and more advanced features for experienced marketers. You can create automations based on contact and behavioral data and trigger follow-up emails based on contacts’ actions, interests, or behaviors on your site. Not only that, you see where contacts interact with your campaign and where they live, so you can use that data for segmentation. For some advanced users, you may find this platform has a limited selection of tools and that might prevent you from running more sophisticated campaigns. The upside, you can begin your free 14-day trial with no credit card required, and the basic plan starts at $9/month.

Opt-in Offers

Once you have your email system up and running, you need to add subscribers to your list. You can do this with opt-in offers — nuggets of content that you give to people in exchange for their email address. We also call these lead magnets, or “carrots”, from the old adage about “the carrot and the stick” (You remember: some folks are trying to get a donkey to pull a cart, and they find that the only way it works is to dangle a carrot on a stick in front of his nose.). Give your audience a choice between multiple carrots, and you’ll see a great conversion rate.

• LeadPages
  This super-slick platform gives you three helpful tools to collect new subscribers. Create instant landing pages with LeadPages, pop-up windows with LeadBoxes, and one-click opt-ins with LeadLinks. Don’t worry…it integrates nicely with all major email providers, as well as WordPress. You can pay annually for $25/month for the standard plan.
• Embedded Opt-in Boxes
  If your email provider has an opt-in box feature, put it to use! Create an opt-in box within your email system’s parameters and embed it on your product website, sales page, or landing page to easily collect email addresses (All of the above email service providers support these!).
• Unbounce
  With Unbounce, you can quickly publish, test and optimize opt-in landing pages. No need for IT support…you can make your own A/B tests with their drag-and-drop landing page builder, learning what your prospects like and increasing conversions. Starter package is $49/month.
• Instapage
  Within minutes, you can build complex layouts with their drag and drop interface without touching a single line of code. Instapage lets you build and publish landing pages that work exactly like they’re part of your website. Instapage offers over 100 landing page templates to get you started. The mobile responsive templates are just the right fit for anything. Sign up for a 30-day free trial, and after that the price starts at $29/month paid annually.
• ClickFunnels
  ClickFunnels offers a wide range of robust services, giving you everything from page creation and hosting to upsells/downsells to funnel-building. It serves as a one-stop shop for most of your page-building, marketing, and testing needs. ClickFunnels offers a 14-day free trial, and after that their plans start at $97/month.

Website

Your website is your first impression, so make it a good one. If you’re just starting out, you might not have the budget for a team of UX specialists, designers, developers and copywriters to help create your site. Fortunately, there are plenty of do-it-yourself options available with contemporary templates, customizable design, and lots of plugged-in features for you to use.

Before you choose your website builder, you should decide whether you want to buy your own domain and have your site hosted there (www.YourProductName.com), or whether you’re okay with your website being hosted as a subdomain of another site, like WordPress (www.YourProductName.HostingSite.com). Using your own domain is the more professional choice, but if you’re concerned about cost, you can always start with a free subdomain and upgrade later.

• WordPress
  You can’t go wrong with a WordPress site. Perennial favorite WordPress lets you create a free site with hundreds of customizable templates (You can also upgrade to your own custom URL for an annual fee.). If you have some coding savvy, sign up with https://wordpress.org for more control over your site’s look and functionality. To get themes, head over to ThemeForest or Thrive Themes for some great themes to instantly drop into your WordPress site.
• Squarespace
  Squarespace’s claim to fame is its variety of ultra-modern templates. Definitely for the very hip among us! Squarespace sites are also built with commerce in mind, a nice change of pace from trying to shoehorn an information product site into a blog template. Prices start at $8/month to sell a single product, and top out at $24/month. Another nice bonus? You’ll get a free custom domain.
• Wix
  Wix has visually impressive layouts for small businesses, restaurants and online stores. It is optimized for mobile devices and has its own Wix App Market to spice up your layouts. Wix is free for as long as you need it, but if you require your own domain name you can choose from plans starting at $12.95/month.
• Populr
  If you’re looking for a single-page website, Populr is for you. The drag-and-drop functionality is easier to use than WordPress’ interface, but your options are slightly more limited. Pricing ranges from free (with Populr branding included on your page) to $50/month.

Some other website builders that could be useful for your business are Weebly, Jimbo, GoDaddy and IM Creator. Use this very simple to understand Website Builders Comparison Chart from Website Builder Expert to help you figure out what will work best for your business. It even has a short quiz you can take to get their recommendations.

Sales Page

Your sales page is where your customers are going to read information about your product and then decide whether or not to purchase. Essentially, it’s your storefront. Maybe it lives on your website, or maybe you’re creating multiple standalone sales pages that are targeted to different audiences. However you present it, your sales page needs to sell!

The most important part of your sales page is the message. Spend time talking to your potential customer in their own language, explaining that you understand their pain points and have a solution that will teach them what they need to know. It’s more important that you spend time perfecting your sales copy than perfecting your page design, which is why we recommend templated solutions like WordPress and LeadPages to create your sales or landing page (See descriptions above.).

Shopping Cart

Did you ever get a shopping cart with a busted wheel? It was so hard to push in the right direction, and so darn squeaky, that you left it right in the middle of the aisle and walked out of the store. The quality of your online shopping cart is even MORE important than the quality of a real-life shopping cart. It has to be intuitive, easy to use, and trustworthy (read about PCI compliance here) so you don’t lose customers in the middle of a sale.

• PayPal
  The king of simple, PayPal allows your customers to purchase your product with their credit card or, if they have one, their PayPal account. Because so many people use it and have their information saved at their fingertips, your customers will feel comfortable paying this way. The big drawback is that customers must leave your site and go to PayPal to complete their purchase.
• Stripe
  If you’re comfortable with PayPal but want to give your customers a better payment experience, Stripe is your choice. Stripe has elegant, customizable payment forms (mobile friendly!) that can live right on your site. No need for customers to click away.
• 1ShoppingCart
  With 1ShoppingCart, you can create an entire store, or simply allow your customers to make secure payments. They understand the world of online shopping, and they offer phone and email support to get you set up and answer questions (Watch out — they’ll make you pay extra for live chat.). E-commerce packages start at $34/month.
• Gumroad
  This purchase platform is aimed at creative types, and it’s also used by our good friend Nathan Barry. There’s no monthly fee or subscription plan, but you’ll pay 5% + 25 cents per transaction. One cool feature of Gumroad is its “pay what you want” option, a fun choice for introductory products you might otherwise give away for free.
• Shopify
  If you have a brick-and-mortar store in addition to your digital business, Shopify might be for you. They offer a sleek iPad POS system for in-store, and equally slick storefront sites for online. You can even accept credit cards through your smartphone at trade shows, conferences, and meetups. They offer a $9/month starter plan in addition to a per-transaction fee that you can try out for 14 days for free!
• SamCart
  If marketing is a key focus for you, then SamCart is a terrific choice for your shopping cart. Developed by internet marketers, it provides efficient and easy-to-use payment processing with extensive marketing tools to help you “sell as you sell”! You can get your first month for free and after that it is $99/month paid monthly or $66/month paid annually.

Membership Site

Your membership site is your classroom, a place where paying students can log in to learn. This portal should be optimized for your students’ success, easy to use and customized to reflect your brand…and the content should be protected for members only.

• WishList Member
  Turn your existing WordPress site into a password-protected classroom portal. The interface is great if you only have one product, but you still have to install and manage it on your own WordPress site.
• MemberMouse
  A solid option for WordPress users, and a step up from WishList Member in terms of features and usability.
• Kajabi
  Kajabi has most of what you’re looking for in a membership site: content delivery, drip, even built-in marketing pages. Cons: Kajabi is not 100% mobile-friendly and can’t drip content in courses with a limited registration window.
• Udemy
  If you’re feeling really great about yourself, and you’re ready to jump into a pool with your competitors, hop over to Udemy. They offer great tools for building your course, but you’re competing with thousands of other course instructors on their website. You’ll also pay fees for the students you register, including 50% of the revenue from students Udemy sends your way.
• Skillshare
  Skillshare is the online version of a downtown art studio with a spectrum of cool classes taught by your friends. It’s less about expertise than ideas, with teachers offering oddball projects and new perspectives. Downside: you don’t earn any money until you reach 300 students across two classes and join their revenue-share Partner Program.

Video Hosting

If you plan to teach your course through video (which we heartily recommend), then you need a good video hosting service on your side. Creating and distributing videos specifically for Internet users is a specialty all its own. There’s a certain art required to make sure your video plays beautifully on any device, on every operating system, and at any Internet connection speed. Here are just a few dedicated video hosting services that will do just that.

• YouTube
  YouTube is the video site of the people. It’s not hard to use, so it’s a great place to start out creating video for the first time. There are plenty of resources to help you get started, including YouTube’s own Creator Academy.
• Vimeo
  Vimeo is your go-to site for high quality video. What you see here will always look better than what you see on YouTube, and that’s its main selling point. Our favorite features: super privacy settings on your password protected videos, and no ads!
• Wistia
  Wistia is the video site for marketers, and it’s our personal favorite. You’ll get professional video hosting, marketing tools, and analytics…in addition to a treasure trove of resources to help you create the best videos possible. Wistia’s free plan is amazing, and it’s easy to upgrade when your business is ready.

Customer Service

Whether you have one customer or one million, customer service is the key to keeping them happy…and keeping your business in business. Here are a few options to explore; there are dozens more that we haven’t mentioned here.

• Zendesk
  Plans start at just $1/month for this customer service solution. Deal with inbound requests through email, web, phone, social, or chat. Give your students a self-service center full of information and resources. And gather insights about the students who are requesting your help.
• Freshdesk
  This support portal is all about customization and personalization. Integrate with your CRM, automate just about anything, and customize your service level targets. Its gamified helpdesk keeps customer service agents motivated and productive. Give it a try with their free plan.
• Help Scout
  We’re big fans of Help Scout. You’ll get your customer service basics covered, along with an abundance of clever features to make your life easier (Really, there are too many great features to list them all here.). Help Scout offers a single plan at a very affordable $15/month, although you can get a bare-bones free plan if you’re strapped for cash.
• Kayako
  Kayako is very simple to use. Everything is in one place no matter how large your business grows. With extensive email management features that include routing, workflows, conversation and deadline tracking, visitor monitoring and live chat, Kayako really provides a comprehensive solution for your support desk needs. It offers a 30-day free trial with a basic plan starting at $24/month billed annually.

That’s it!

We hope this 2nd Edition has been just as helpful as the 1st Edition! It’s always good to keep in mind that your needs may be different than someone else’s and your needs may change as your business grows…therefore everyone’s Tech Stack will be different. Pick the products that work best for you at this moment and move forward. As your needs change, your Tech Stack will change, and that’s okay. We hope that this information will be beneficial to you no matter what point you are at with your business.

Any of the options listed above is a safe bet, so go for it!

Have other recommendations for beginner Tech Stack products? Leave us a comment below.