Are you tired of trading time for money in your sport science or nutrition career?

Some individuals have cracked it.

Believe it or not, their expertise generates income 24/7, even while they sleep.

It's not a dream - it's the power of digital products.

Digital products are freeing sport science and nutrition operators from their hourly rate.

From PDF guides to advanced online courses, these tools can transform your business model and significantly boost your income.

Keep reading to access the pninsider database packed with over 30 inspirational product ideas made by people just like you!

There are different levels of difficulty with digital products:

Let's explore how to create your first digital product: a PDF guide.

It's the perfect starting point for beginners and can yield impressive results.

Take TheFightDietitian's e-guide as an example. They identified a common problem for athletes: making weight for a 24-hour weigh-in.

Their solution? A simple £59 guide that sells around the clock, providing valuable information to athletes and a steady income stream for the creator.

Here's your step-by-step blueprint to create your own:

Step 1: Identify the problem you're solving.

This is crucial.

Your guide needs to address a specific issue your audience faces.

What do your clients struggle with most?

What questions do they ask repeatedly?

That's your golden opportunity.

Remember, people pay for solutions.

The more pressing the problem, the more valuable your guide becomes.

TheFightDietitian answers a very painful problem for athletes trying to most effectively rehydrate and refuel the body in time to compete.

Step 2: Design your guide

Don't worry if you're not a design expert. You've got several options depending on budget:

Low budget (<£10)

Moderate budget (£30+)

High budget (£400+)

Step 3: Choose a platform to sell your guide.

This is where many beginners stumble, but it's simpler than you might think.

While TheFightDietitian uses Shopify, there are more budget-friendly options that we’ll explore later on.

The key is to make it easy for customers to buy your guide and receive it automatically.

Shopify is a safe bet. It is also reasonably priced for beginners selling digital products.

Gymshark use it… they’re doing fine.

After a successful payment, customers are automatically emailed a download link and the order is marked as fulfilled.

You can always upgrade your design or selling platform as your business grows.

But PDF guides are just the beginning of your digital product journey. The real magic happens when you start exploring more advanced strategies. For instance:

These advanced digital products have the power to revolutionise your business, multiplying your income while freeing up your time.

But how exactly do you create and distribute them?

In the next section, you'll discover:

Plus, you'll gain access to a database of over 30 digital product examples that you can learn from.

If you have content you’ve amassed from your own private practice, or during university, it’s likely that it would solve a problem for someone a few steps behind you.

Teachers do this very well.

It’s called teacherspayteachers - where they package up and sell their classroom resources, and aspiring teachers can sell their resources to each other.

It’s a good earner.

Some coaches are already selling their own templates on Etsy as well.

Let’s dive into how to package your own resources into sharable templates:

Step 1: Identify the Problem You're Solving

Just like with PDF guides, successful templates address specific pain points.

For nutrition coaches, a common challenge is creating visually appealing, informative handouts for clients.

Your solution? A customisable Canva template for nutrition fact sheets.

For strength coaches, tracking athlete progress across multiple metrics can be time-consuming.

Your answer? A comprehensive Notion template for athlete performance tracking.

Remember, the best templates simplify complex tasks or save significant time for your clients.

Step 2: Design Your Template

For Canva Templates:

Start with a blank canvas or use one of Canva's existing templates as a base.

Design your template with placeholders for customisable elements (text, images, data).

You can write some content and put it in there if you’d like.

Canva is not the only platform that will allow you to sell templates.

Convertkit will allow you to build out email automations and share them.

Notion will also allow you to build dashboards and share them.

For Notion Templates:

Pro Tip: Test your templates thoroughly.

Ensure they're intuitive and truly save time for your target audience.

Step 3: Set Up Your Sales Platform

The process is the same as selling PDF guides. Here are some alternatives to Shopify:

Create a hyperlink in your PDF document that points directly to the template file in your chosen software. Then, provide this PDF as the download key.

Ready to make your own guide or template but lacking inspiration?

Let’s get into the next type of digital product. Community and courses.

Imagine building a thriving community.

A digital Disneyland for professionals.

Where connections spark innovation.

This is the power of a course and community platform.

Ready to create your own?

Step 1: Solve a problem

What problem are you solving? What gap are you filling?

For example, the Performance Nutrition Network offers continuous learning.

Peer support in a rapidly evolving field.

It’s no wonder they have over 100 members.

What does your audience crave? What can't they find elsewhere?

A successful community fills voids. Solves ongoing challenges. Creates connections.

The longest standing communities are religious groups.

People go to church to see their friends, not the pastor.

Fostering peer to peer relations is the highest priority.

Step 2: Setting up a platform

There are many online community platforms you can chose from.

Examples include:

The most capable platform is Circle.so.

Circle can host your course and community spaces.

Community Features:

Live Events:

Pro Tip: Gamify participation.

Skool.com may be the best platform for gamification.

Inside Skool you can gate content that can only be unlocked once a user-engagement task metric has been hit.

For example, you can have a course which only unlocks when a user has started a specific number of conversations.

Payment processing is handled inside all of the major platforms (circle/mighty/skool). However, to paywall Facebook groups you will need to use a checkout system like Stripe, Paypal or SamCart.

While most platforms have payment processing built in, if you want to monetise a Slack, Discord or Telegram channel you can use:

Launchpass.com

Step 3: Launch and Grow

Consider an appropriate pricing strategy.

For example, performance nutrition communities range between £29.99-£59.

Pricing way above or way below may harm your revenue or the perception of the product.

Sometimes conversations in DM’s are all you need for initial growth. For example this community generated $55k through DM’s.

IF you have an email list, you could follow Jeff Walker product launch formula to drive revenue.

Setting up and delivering an online community is straightforward.

Reducing member churn is a challenge.

Step 4 (Bonus): Building a course into your community

Courses amplify your community's value.

They transform knowledge into structured learning.

If you already have a community, why add a course?

If you are using Circle/Mighty Networks/Skool, they have course players you can utilise.

If you are using other community platforms, you may need to seek alternative hosting.

If you run a Discord, Slack, or Telegram community, you could host your course on Payhip, Gumroad, Kajabi, or Teachable, to name a few.

Course production does not need to be high.

Justin Welsh has made over $1m selling his LinkedIn OS for $99 per sale.

His lessons are Loom recordings and Google slides.

There’s no need to overcomplicate things.

You can also include text-lessons. Like this article.

But make sure it has been edited so it reads well.

Video is not so important; if the problem is painful enough, people will read to find out.

Start with an MVP. A minimum viable product.

Test out a mini-course topic first before ploughing many hours into producing a monster course.

Test. Refine. Expand.

Integrating your course:

A course is a huge value-add. There’s a few ways you can approach it.

Remember: Your course is a transformative journey taking the customer from a to b.

From before to after.

What transformation will your course provide?

Courses and community synergise.

Courses provide structure. Community offers support.

Together, they create an unbeatable learning environment.

Don’t forget to check out the product database. This will be continually updated when new cool products launch.

As a fitness or nutrition professional, you have a unique opportunity to create your own digital product without the need for software development skills.

Hiring developers and building your own software is hard.

Very hard.

The costs to setup software can be incredibly high.

But the rewards for selling software are massive.

Instead of building software themselves, many are choosing to sell white-labelled software to reap the benefits.

This is particularly popular amongst coach mentors.

The most popular is a platform called GoHighLevel.

Here's how it works:

GoHighLevel is a comprehensive platform that helps businesses like coaching practices manage various aspects of their work. It includes tools for:

Some entrepreneurial coach mentors have found a way to use this software to create a new income stream and provide additional value to the coaches they mentor.

Here's what they're doing:

a) Customising the software:

They take GoHighLevel and add their own personal touch to it.

This includes putting their own logo on it and even giving it a new name.

They also set up specific automations and email templates that are tailored for nutrition coaching businesses.

This is known as building your own deployment. You are essentially selling your own configuration of the GoHighLevel platform.

It is used in all niches, like lawyers, spas, marketing agencies, etc.

b) Offering it to coaches they mentor:

After customising the software, they offer this personalised version to the nutrition coaches they mentor.

They charge a fee for access to this customised platform, often as part of their mentorship package.

c) Providing support and community:

Beyond just offering the software, these mentors also provide support to help their mentees use the platform effectively.

They often create a community where users can share tips and experiences, enhancing the overall mentorship experience.

Remember, while you're offering this as your own product, it's important to be transparent that you've customised and white-labelled existing software, rather than developing it from the ground up.

They need to know your solution is built on GoHighLevel. Most will assume you made the software yourself.

PropaneFitness are excellent at this.

They use it as part of a service within a specific niche - online coaches.

The remainder of their service is educating coaches on marketing and coaching, not just systems and funnels.

A list of other groups/individuals doing this:

There will be many, many more.

Your unique value lies in your industry expertise, customisations, and the support you provide.

All in all, this is a profitable product to sell, as you can charge hundreds per month for access to your version of GoHighLevel.

Our knee-jerk reaction to this was that it’s a bit scammy. However, on reflection, there is a scammy way to present this (as completely your own), and a non-scammy way (product offering built on top of GoHighLevel).

And this honesty about developers is very important.

Because hiring developers is expensive, as you’re about to find out with our final type of digital product, full-blown SaaS.

While white-labelling existing software can be a great starting point, some fitness and nutrition professionals aim to create entirely new software solutions.

Let's explore this approach through the story of Hexis, a pioneering sports nutrition platform.

Hexis began with CEO and co-founder David Dunne's realisation that there was a gap between nutritional knowledge and consistent application among athletes.

As a sports nutritionist for the Harlequins rugby team, he observed that even when athletes knew what they should be doing nutritionally, they often struggled to follow through.

Look for pain points in your field that existing solutions aren't adequately addressing.

The Hexis team envisioned a platform that would go beyond simple education, providing real-time, personalised nutrition insights to motivate athletes and guide their decision-making.

This idea combined cutting-edge sports science with artificial intelligence to create a truly innovative product.

Dr. Sam Impey's first step was creating a simple Excel sheet with if/then statements to demonstrate the concept.

You can see the full story here:

This basic tool could show how changing training hours would affect nutritional needs.

The team approached the startup accelerator hub at the University of Birmingham, where they were introduced to concepts like wireframing.

This helped them visualise their app's structure and functionality.

Hexis partnered with DataSpartan to build their beta product in just three months.

They focused on designing system architecture and data workflows implementing backend, frontend, and mobile apps, Optimising ML models for personalised recommendations

The Hexis beta system was rigorously tested by 1,000 users before its official launch. This provided valuable feedback for refining the product.

Hexis successfully raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round, attracting investors like Apex Capital and Sport Republic, as well as backing from elite athletes.

Once you have a proven concept, seek funding to scale your business.

Hexis continues to evolve, with plans to expand globally and release new features.

They maintain a public roadmap to keep users informed of upcoming developments.

Creating your own SaaS product, like Hexis has done, requires significant investment of time, expertise, and resources.

However, it also offers the potential for greater control, uniqueness in the market, and the ability to address specific industry needs in innovative ways.

The rewards in this scenario are the highest, but the risk, pressure, and stress are also highest.

Is a PDF guide looking so difficult after reading all of that?

Made it this far? Consider a donation to support the production of more content like this: