Ten Ways to Package What You Know

Most experts I talk to think packaging what they know means one thing: a big online course. Forty lessons. A portal. A launch.

That's one option. It's also the hardest one. And if you start there, there's a good chance you never finish.

I've built close to 200 courses, and here's what I've learned. There are at least ten ways to package what you know. They go from a checklist to a full course, in order of effort. "Pick the one you could ship this month, not the one that sounds most impressive." If you have an audience and nothing to sell them, that choice matters more than anything else you do this year. I wrote about why in Audience and No Offer vs Offer and No Audience.

The first three formats take days, not months

1. Checklist. The steps you walk every client through, written down in order. One page. It's the smallest possible version of your method.

2. Template. The document, script, tracker, or plan you keep rebuilding for every client. You hand it over already filled in with your thinking.

3. Recorded workshop. Teach one problem, live, for an hour. Record it. Sell the recording. You already explain this stuff on calls every week. Now it gets paid for more than once.

These three share something. You're not creating anything new. You're writing down what you already do. That's why they're fast. The risk is low, and the lesson is big: you find out whether people will pay for your thinking without you on the call.

The middle formats sell your judgment, not just your steps

4. Audit. You look at their situation and tell them what's wrong and what to fix first. It's one of the best first offers there is, because it sells your judgment, which is the part nobody can copy from a free post.

5. Mini course. One result, a handful of short lessons. Not everything you know. One finish line.

6. Group program. You teach the method live to a small group over a few weeks. It's still your time, but it's your time once for many people instead of once per person.

7. Community. A place where people keep working on the thing with you and with each other. Works best as a home for people who already bought something else.

This middle band is where most experts should be looking. You get more leverage than one to one. You still stay close enough to your people to see where they get stuck.

If you want to see how these fit together into a front door, a middle, and a top offer, the Offer Ladder tool maps it for you with your own prices.

Map your offer ladder

The last three formats need a proven method first

8. Certification. You teach other people to deliver your method. That only works if your method is clear enough to transfer. If you can't explain the steps in order, you can't certify anybody in them.

9. Done with you. You and the client build their result together over a set period. High trust, high price, still a lot of you.

10. The full course. The method, in order, with only what's on the path. The finish line named up front. This is the asset that can sell while you sleep. It's also the one people get wrong most, because they try to put everything they know into it.

These three are powerful. But they sit on top of the others. The full course is easier to build and easier to sell when you've already sold a smaller version and watched what people did with it.

Pick by what you could ship, not by what sounds big

Here's the trap. An expert looks at this list and picks number ten because it sounds like a real business. Then six months go by. The course is 60 percent recorded. Nothing is for sale.

Meanwhile, the expert down the street put a template on a checkout page in a weekend and has been selling it to her followers since.

That's not a knock on the full course. We build them for a living. It's about the order. Ship something small that people can buy. Let the buyers show you what the bigger thing should be.

Composite example. This is a composite of what I see, not one client. A nutrition coach with a few thousand followers gets the same question in her DMs every week: what should I actually eat on a busy workday. She has answered it maybe a hundred times. Instead of building a 40 lesson course, she turns her answer into a one page template and a recorded workshop and puts a small price on it. The people who buy it tell her what they're still stuck on. Those answers become the outline of the bigger program. Illustrative only, but that's the pattern.

The small product is not the goal. It's how you find out what the goal should be. If you want to see which small offers actually turn into buyers, look at Lead Magnets Ranked by Buyers, Not Downloads.

What to do next

1. Write down the one question you get most. Look at your DMs, emails, and call notes from the last month. The question that repeats is your first product.

2. Pick a format from the first four. Checklist, template, recorded workshop, or audit. Choose the one you could finish in the next two weeks.

3. Put a price on it before you polish it. Tell ten people it exists and what it costs. If some buy, build it. If nobody buys, you just saved yourself months, and you learned something about the offer, not the content.

None of that costs you anything but a few hours.

Two ways forward

If you already have proof people pay you and you want the full asset built for you, book your build call.

If you're still figuring out which door to build first, the Expert Freedom Playbook is $17 and lays out your offer strategy, gaps, and build order.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main types of digital products an expert can sell?

The common formats, from least to most effort, are a checklist, a template, a recorded workshop, an audit, a mini course, a group program, a community, a certification, a done with you program, and a full course. They all package the same method. What changes is how much of it you include and how much of you is still required.

Which digital product should I create first?

The one you could ship this month. For most experts that is a template, a recorded workshop, or a paid audit, because you already do the underlying work with clients. Ship it, sell it, learn what people are actually stuck on, then build the bigger product on top of real demand.

Do I need a big audience to sell a digital product?

No. Small and warm outsells big and cold. If a few people already trust you and keep asking how to work with you, you have enough to sell a first product. The size of the audience matters less than whether you have given them a clear way to buy.

Is a full online course always the best format?

It is the most leverage once it works, but it is also the most effort and the easiest to get wrong. A full course makes sense when you already know the finish line, the order of steps, and that people will pay for it. Many experts get there faster by selling a smaller format first.