This is a guide about how to sell recipes online.
And let me be clear about something.
NO, you do NOT need to be tech-nerd to do it.
In this post I’ll give you the quickest, simplest way to sell your recipes online in 2020.
So, if you’re looking to create a cookbook and turn it into a new revenue stream in record time, you’ll love this new guide.
Why you should sell your recipes online?
As a cafe or restaurant you undoubtedly have some secret recipes that your customers know and love, so why not package that knowledge into a digital product and create a passive income stream in the process!
Moreover, unlike your business that has fixed trading hours, your digital product is always open for purchase.
How to sell recipes online; the quick way...
I want to show you a quick - really quick - way to start selling your recipes online asap.
The method I’m about to show you is simple, and you don’t have to be a techie to understand it.
It comprises of three steps:
- Create your digital recipe ebook.
- Build a way to accept payment.
- Direct customers to your product to buy it.
How to create a digital recipe cookbook the easy way...
I’m going to give you my quickest possible solution to building a high quality, professional-level digital cookbook.
To do this, we’ll be using Canva.
Canva is a free drag-and-drop graphic design tool that’s easy to use, and perfect for creating a digital cookbook to sell your recipes online.
How to create a digital recipe cookbook with Canva
Take yourself over to canva.com and get yourself set up with an account.
Once you're all signed up, from the homepage search bar start typing 'recipe card' and select it from the suggested options.
Next step is to choose a recipe card that fits your brand.
Once you've chosen a recipe card that you like, all that's left to do is edit the card with your own recipe information, images, etc.
After you've finished creating all of the recipe cards and your digital cookbook is complete, all that's left to do is download it as a PDF.
Ok, so that's the first stage out of the way. The nuts and bolts of your digital recipe cookbook are complete, but there's one last thing we need to do build in Canva before we move on, and that is to create a cover for your new digital cookbook.
To do that, shoot back to the Canva homepage.
And again, same steps as above, just choose a recipe book cover that fits your brand and go through the same steps and download it. However this time, you'll want to download it as a PNG (I'll explain why a little later).
By now you should have a complete digital recipe book with accompanying professional cover image ready to sell your recipes online.
Next step, is accepting payment.
How to take payment for your digital recipe cookbook
In order to sell your digital cookbook, you first need a way to get paid.
For that, we’re going to be using Stripe.
If you haven’t already got a free Stripe account head over there now and get set up.
Oh, nearly forgot. You’ll need to go through the verification process too in order to accept payments. It’s really quick and verification usually is complete within 12hours.
It's a straightforward process, so I won't take you through the steps in this article. You will however also need to link Stripe to your bank account to withdraw funds.
And that's basically it for payment processing.
Stripe will now handle all of the payment side of things for you. Your customers can pay in a variety of ways, in virtually any currency, at any time.
You're nearly ready to hit publish and start selling your recipes online, just one more step.
The last step is the delivery of your digital recipe book to your customers.
How to deliver your digital recipe cookbook; with zero technical knowhow
To deliver your digital recipe cookbook we'll be using Payhip.
Payhip is free service with no ongoing costs and they only charge a small commission rate (%5) on sales, plus, they’re ridiculously easy to set up.
So let me take you through the setup process.
Head over to Payhip and get yourself setup with a free account.
Once you've gone through the set up stages you'll be redirected to the Payhip dashboard, and as you can see you're already 25% of the way there to completing the process.
Click on the Add your first product button.
We're building a digital recipe book to sell online, so select Add Digital Product from the options.
Alright, so the first step is to upload the your digital recipe book, to do that click Upload product file, and upload the PDF.
The second thing you need to do is upload the your recipe book cover (remember the PNG file we saved earlier on?), to do that click on Upload product image.
The rest is pretty straightforward. Simply add a title, price and description and you're done.
Once you've done all that, click Add product to save it.
Once saved, you'll be directed to a page like this with your unique product URL. This is the URL you'll be directing your customers towards, to see your offer.
Save it somewhere safe, as you'll need for the final step.
But, before we move on, lets take a look at what your product checkout page looks like.
Looks pretty good right?
Ok, lets move on to the final step.
How to sell your digital cookbook
So, your digital cookbook is now ready to sell. You've got your product URL to direct your customers to your checkout page, now, all that’s left is to promote it, and drive people to your product page.
Alright, so go grab your product URL from Payhip, and lets go and add it in the following places.
Once you've added links to all of your social media pages and your website, then it's time to start promoting it.
You could run competitions, offer a sneak peak on your social channels, create stories, write a blog post about it, create video content to promote it...
You get the picture.
Get creative, think outside the box and drive as many people to your product page as possible.
*OPTIONAL: Create an affiliate program
Think of this as the icing on the cake and non-essential, however, it's definitely worth doing.
What I’m talking about is adding an affiliate program for your digital cookbook.
If you’re not sure what an affiliate program is, it’s basically a profit share program whereby any registered affiliate that sells a copy of your digital cookbook gets rewarded with a commission from the sale.
And luckily, Payhip has a simple, yet powerful affiliate program built in.
Simply follow along with the steps in this video to activate your affiliate program.
Conclusion
You should now have everything you need to turn your recipes and specialised knowledge into income-generating digital products that you can sell online.
Not only will this digital recipe cookbook give you income immediately, but it’ll also provide you with a passive income stream long into the future too.
If you still need help to set up a system like this for yourself, shoot an email to hello@rowanclifford.io and I can help you get set up.