Contributing to a Digital Product Bundle – a Case Study

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As a digital product owner, growing my email list with my ideal customers is my top priority. This is why I am always on the lookout for ways to grow my email list a little faster. 

One of the most effective ways to see rapid list growth (and to make sales) is to contribute to a digital product bundle. 

This usually results in between 1000-3000 new subscribers plus often thousands of dollars in digital product sales. 

In this case study, I will show you what sort of results you can expect by contributing your digital product to a bundle and how to make the most of the opportunity.

What is a digital product bundle?

A digital product bundle is a collection of digital products around a common topic that is sold at a steep discount. 

The product owner usually contributes their product for free but will earn a high commission for every affiliate sale of the bundle that they make. 

Usually, the product owner will promote at least one upsell at checkout and then again via an email funnel which is where they make their money. 

Why contribute to a bundle of digital products? 

You may be thinking it seems odd to agree to give your product away virtually for free to so many people. 

But there is a method in the madness as by contributing one product, you will be getting more eyes on your other products. 

Therefore it’s important that you don’t contribute your top tier product but perhaps the next tier down. 

So for example, if you have a membership then you could contribute an online course with an upsell to the membership. However, if you only have one online course, you may wish to promote an ebook or a toolkit instead. 

You may also acquire new testimonials and affiliates so it can be useful to help you gain some momentum with newer products. 

It’s important that whatever you contribute is valuable and not some ‘throw away’ product as it is setting the tone for your relationship with your new subscribers. Wow them and they might just keep coming back for more…

How can you contribute to a digital product bundle?

There are many bundles you can contribute to but one of the easiest ways to get started is to join the Ultimate Bundles program as an affiliate. They sell bundles of products in just about every niche from healthy living to business to travel! 

Once you join the Ultimate bundles affiliate program, you will get a newsletter that will tell you when they are seeking digital products and for which bundle. You can then submit your product for review. If successful, your affiliate commission will be increased from an already generous 40% to 70%!

If your product is related to the blogging niche then BC Stack is also worth considering.

What results can you expect when you contribute to a digital product bundle? 

Okay, let’s dig into the facts and figures from my previous experience with bundles such as the Genius Bloggers Toolkit and the BC Stack. 

I have contributed to 3 bundles this year. 

1. The Genius Bloggers Toolkit. Price: $97 (same bundle promoted twice during the year.)
2. The BC Stack. Price: varies depending on when you purchase but always <$37 
3. Lizzy’s goody bag Price: free

Let’s look at the results…

	GBTK	BC Stack	Goody Bag
New subscribers	2596	1497	519
Still active subscribers	2040	1274	358
Subscriber retention	78.5%	85%	69%
Subscriber value	$0.85	$0.88	$0.94
Digital product income	$2,200.80	$1,317.95	$487.50
Affiliate income	$2,329.16	$397.85	$34.80
Overall income	$4529.96	$1715.80	$522.30

As you can see, the Genius Bloggers Toolkit was associated with the most income (both own products and affiliate revenue) and the highest number of subscribers. 

However, each subscriber spends less money on average. 

This is likely because the bundle itself costs $97 so customers are less likely to splurge on upsells and bumps having spent a significant amount on the bundle already. They also get access to many other products (usually between 50-80) and so they will likely be signing up for multiple products and cannot purchase every upsell offered! 

Because they are joining multiple email lists, they are less likely to be engaged and therefore also less likely to purchase products further down your funnel. 

However, this is made up for by volume. The GBTK has the largest audience and therefore resulted in more subscribers and more income. 

I also earned the most affiliate income promoting the Genius Bloggers Toolkit because I did softer affiliate launches with the other two due to other commitments around the same time. I want to avoid being over sales with my email list and so I don’t like doing back to back similar promotions. 

I also obviously earned more per sale due to the higher cost and a cushy 70% commission. The Genius Blogger’s toolkit is also probably the better-known bundle amongst my audience and it’s always easier to sell something that people have already heard good things about!

The free bundle results in the most tripwire and upsell purchases. I suspect this is because people felt justified in spending more because the bundle didn’t cost them anything. The subscriber value is still lower than my average but again that’s because people are joining many lists which can be distracting and lead to lower engagement. 

Source	Average Subscriber Value
Bundles	$0.89
Virtual summits	$4.87
Organic website sign-ups	$9.12

Comparing the subscriber value (how much the average subscriber spends on my products after joining my list) with my organic subscriber value(those who signed up via my website for a lead magnet) it is much lower.

My subscriber value is usually $9.12.

Therefore the subscribers I acquire from bundles are in general not as engaged or likely to spend money in my business.

BUT, that’s made up for by volume.

Also, I often pay to find subscribers using paid ads. Whereas these subscribers are free so I’m not risking spending more than I earn at any point by growing my list with bundles.

And having earned at least an extra $6786.06 via contributing bundles I would definitely say it’s useful.

(I say at least as there’s no way of knowing if this audience purchase affiliate product recommendations and some may have become affiliates and referred sales that haven’t been counted!)

Just make sure that you regularly clear out cold subscribers off your email list to counteract the lower engagement levels!

Beyond the obvious subscriber count and income generated directly, there were other benefits including 

• Acquiring new affiliates for my affiliate program to help me promote my products. Many people buy these bundles just to find quality products to promote to their audience. (Find out how to start an affiliate program here)
• New testimonials which I can use on my sales page 
• Facebook group growth
• Brand recognition 
• Other collaboration opportunities
• My new subscribers may continue to purchase products and also purchase products I recommend as an affiliate. 

*Please note that your subscriber values may look very different if you sell higher ticket products. My most expensive product is $197 but I offer many products around the $27-57 range too. So it’s best to first understand what your own average subscriber value is and work backwards. It’s likely you will earn around 10% of that per new bundle subscriber!

How much time investment is required?

So we’ve established that you can make decent money with bundles but what about your time investment? I mean if you earn $2000 with a bundle but it takes you 3 months to prepare for it then it probably isn’t worth your time!

So how much time does contributing to a bundle actually take?

I personally repurpose a lot of content. So I have an email funnel that I reuse for different bundles. I do need to create a new welcome email but again I tend to duplicate a similar welcome email and then edit it to reflect the audience I am speaking to.

So there is some upfront work to create a new warm-up sequence – usually at least 3-5 emails. But once you have your sequence written, you can reuse it for other bundles as long as you are contributing products around the same topic.

There’s also your checkout page to consider. I prefer to have a separate product for the bundle so it’s easier to track sales and make sure everyone has the right tag in my email marketing tool, Convertkit.

To do this, I just duplicate the original product and then create a 100% off coupon. It takes minutes to do it this way.

There’s also the affiliate promotion to consider.

For my affiliate promo, I usually send around 3-4 emails and promote frequently on social media.

Unless you’ve contributed to the bundle previously and therefore can repurpose email content like the FAQs then you will probably have to write this upfront.

Some bundle organisers will give you swipe copy that you can use to help you structure and write your emails much faster. I don’t recommend using the email swipe without editing it as it needs to be edited to reflect your voice and your audience. Also, remember lots of people are promoting the product at the same time and your subscribers may be on more than one email list! You don’t want them getting duplicate emails from more than one sender!

I also create some social media graphics in Canva and keep a folder reader to grab during the promo week.

I make use of the magic resize feature with Canva Pro so that I can create a square image then in one click resize it for pins, Instagram stories, Facebook and Twitter posts.

So nowadays I spend 1-2 days preparing for a bundle but it would have taken an extra day or two when I first started and didn’t have content to repurpose.

How to make the most of this opportunity for more subscribers and sales. 

Here are a few of my top tips for making a success of contributing to bundles.

• Don’t contribute your top level product – go for one level lower. This way you have something to upsell but your product is still enticing to bundle customers.

• Make sure your product is high quality. Think of it as a teaser. You want your new subscriber to think it’s the best thing since sliced bread and jump on board every time you promote a new product because they know it will be amazing!

• Include a bump +/- an upsell on your cart chekout page. This is where the majority of my digital product sales came in. Try to choose something unique that is unlikely to be similar to anything else included in the bundle. I use Thrivecart as my cart platform as it is so good at delivering these types of offers. (Check out the Thrivecart lifetime discount here.)

• Your welcome email has to stand out from the crowd as they will likely be getting a lot of emails that day if they are signing up to multiple products. So think carefully about your email headline. Consider including a teaser of the next email to improve 2nd email open rates. I like to include a few extra bonus freebies for the first few emails to keep my audience opening my emails. Those 1st few emails are crucial as chances are they will choose a few newsletters they enjoy and unsubscribe or ignore the rest.

• If your affiliate program allows it, consider using paid Facebook ads to retarget previous bundle purchasers to earn more affiliate income. The 2nd year that you contribute, create an audience of previous subscribers who joined your email list via that product (or something very similar.) Many people buy bundles yearly to keep up to date and this audience will be very warm and likely to convert.

• Plan ahead! You will feel much calmer during the promotional period if you ahve all your emails and social media posts scheduled. All you need to do is be available to answer questions. You may also wish to go live on social media to talk about the bundle and reach a larger audience.

• Consider offering a bonus for people who use your affiliate link to purchase a bundle. There will be many affiliates promoting at the same time so offering a little extra can help to seal the deal and make sure that they use your link and not your competitors! This could be a bonus download, another product or yours or you could offer credit for your subscribers to use on any of your products. For the later, check out this course for just $9 to learn how to run this effectively without any hassle!

• Always make sure you have a way to acquire email sign-ups from your product directly – i.e. send them through your cart processor rather than allow direct downloads. If you contribute an ebook as a direct download, you will need to offer a signup incentive within your ebook like another free product. But not everyone will see this or take action and you wont see anywhere near as high list growth. Some companies will insist ebooks are made available as direct downloads. When this is the case, I only submit courses and products which are housed on my course platform Podia. Submitting an ebook with an optional upgrade would unlikely yield results that rewarded my time or effort sufficiently.

Digital product bundles vs speaking at virtual summits – which are better? 

Another way to quickly grow your email list is to speak at virtual summits.

This would involve creating a presentation that is either delivered live or as a pre-recorded session so that you can get inside the comments section answering questions during the talk.

Virtual summits are usually free but people can opt to upgrade and get premium packages with lifetime access or additional products. So there is an opportunity to earn some affiliate income but don’t expect to earn as much affiliate income as you will for bundles.

During your talk, you can usually promote a freebie which is how you can get new subscribers onto your list. Of course, it’s possible some people will watch but never subscribe.

In my experience, you will get far fewer new subscribers but each subscriber will be more engaged and more likely to purchase digital products.

Of those who watched my presentation, 56% joined my email list and I earned $1564.50 from digital product sales (in addition to $414 for affiliate sales.) My new subscriber value was $4.87 so considerably higher than bundle subscribers but lower than organic subscribers.

So based on these stats, if your priority is growing your email list fast, bundles are more effective. But summits generate more high-quality leads and subscribers who are more likely to purchase your products.

Personally, I like contributing to both and my view is the more of these I contribute to, the more brand recognition and authority in my niche I will obtain!

Read next | Speaking at a virtual summit – a case study/income report

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So in conclusion, contributing to digital product bundles can be both lucrative and useful for growing your email list very quickly.

It is important to keep in mind that your new subscribers may be less engaged than organic subscribers and therefore it’s really important to keep an eye on your cold subscribers and regularly send re-engagement series to those who haven’t opened your emails. If they still don’t respond or take action, delete them from your list.

But providing that you do this to keep your email deliverability high, then bundles are absolutely worth your time!

Read next

• 5 digital products you can create in an afternoon
• 21 Creative ways to use Convertbox to earn more income as a digital product owner
• How to integrate Thrivecart and Convertbox to reduce abandoned carts

Have you ever contributed to a bundle? How did it go? Do you have any top tips?

Here are a few other resources that may interest you…

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