Core Concept
Ok, we need to get philosophical first. Digital products are more than a mobile app downloaded from an app store or a SaaS platform delivered as a web app.
A Digital Product is a solution to a problem that is delivered online and consumed on a device.
Therefore:
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If you do not know how to bake a cake, then a YouTube video where you can learn how is a Digital Product.
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If you are an owner of an e-commerce store and you need to know when is a good time for a sale, then an email newsletter that is a summary of high or low sales is a Digital Product.
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If you are an owner of a business and want to be successful, then a podcast where already successful business owners are interviewed for their insight is a Digital Product.
When you define a Digital Product as a solution regardless of implementation and size, then building Digital Products that solve problems can be small yet effective.
Value, Effort, Validation
Creating a Digital Product that solves a problem is the means of delivering Value.
The time, energy, and money you spend to create that Digital Product is Effort.
Knowing that a specific person will take value from your Digital Product and knowing you have the means to reach a group of those people is Validation.
To express what Digital Product you choose to work on and what that work is, we can consult two graphs: the relationship of Effort to Value and the relationship of Effort to Validation.
In both relationships, going above being directly proportional is bad times. If you spend high effort on something for little value, that is just stupid. If you spend high effort on something that has little validation, that is risky.
Therefore, building a Digital Product that is high-effort with no validation and doesn’t even deliver much value is stupid and risky.
From experience, I have seen people spend a year building a SaaS platform with zero validation with only one many features even being used by a tiny user base. Every time, it leads to a negative impact on mental health and self-worth.
Whilst the golden area is low effort and high value/validation, you will not get here without already having a Digital Product with active and engaged users in the market.
Therefore, when starting at zero, day one, aka I ain’t got shit, everything you need to implement is low effort, low validation seeking for high validation. Once you have high validation, you can implement low effort and move into high effort without risk.
But to be clear it’s not a game of jumping from low to high, rather a case of climbing up the slope of a directly proportional relationship.
So What Does this All Mean?
Now, having established that the initial work and implementation are low effort and small, it means you can build lots of small things and seek validation in several places at once.
Useful reading:
https://medium.com/@kasimaslam/googles-7-11-4-rule-and-why-it-matters-f274205dba0f