Ways to productise your service Part 3

As we have mentioned in previous articles, 2020 saw a massive boom in eCommerce and opened up an opportunity for small businesses to productise knowledge and services.

in Part 1 of the series, we explored the growth of ecommerce in 2020 and why productising your knowledge is a good strategy.

In Part 2 we shared the steps on how to do that.

In part 3 we are going to share some specific ways to productise your knowledge and some examples.

A productised service business is the path to be able to scale up your business and help you create multiple revenue streams.

As we have discussed the key to success is in picking the right idea that is a product to fonder fit. It won’t work if it is not personally a great fit.

If you have a service here are some ways to turn into a sellable & scalable product.

• Workshops or events

Holding an event or workshop allows you to take a ‘1 to many’ approach. This could be a ‘How To’ event such as How to invest in the stock Market or How to make a coffee table.  It could be educational and share general information such as

Bunnings used to hold workshops for women on different topics to help educate their audiences (and also generate additional sales)

• Create an online program or course

As a service provider, you have skills, knowledge, and experience that you can teach others. Creating paid courses or online programs is a simple way to sell your knowledge over and over and also get a scalable income. These can be extensive and educate over a longer period or something short that teaches skills in one sitting to learn.

• Membership site with monthly subscription

One way to get recurring monthly revenue is by creating some sort of monthly subscription product. There are unlimited ideas here. Some examples are a magazine for your industry, software as a service like Dropbox, templates like Canva, product boxes delivered to your door like Scenic Rim Farm Boxes…. get creative!

• Licensed Products

This allows you to create products that allow you to sell licenses for the product, rather than exclusive access to the product itself. A common example of this would be a photographer selling stock photos.

One example is local artist Matt Stewart. Apart from selling his custom murals he has Anderson has productized the service by creating products for sale with his exclusive designs

• Write a book

Books help your customers come up with DIY solutions to their problems, rather than the usual done-for-you solutions that you’d typically come up with as a service provider. They can be ebooks, print books, or both. A well-known Australian author who has penned many books to help business owners is Andrew Griffith. His books put his knowledge onto a page for business owners to learn and grow their business.

• Create an app

Can you turn your service into an app that can be purchased and downloaded? One common approach is to create Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). These SaaS products are typically hosted in the web and require a user subscription to use. 

One example of this is Airtasker which matches providers with customers who need that service.

It will take time to productise your knowledge but it will be time well spent if you do it right. Think outside the box, involve your team, and set a goal to make it happen in 2021.