Choose the Best Digital Product Format for Your Teaching Style

You know stuff. You’ve solved problems, developed expertise, and mastered skills that others are still struggling with. Now you’re ready to package that wisdom into a digital product you can sell.

But you don’t know which format to choose.

Should you create a workbook? An online course? A template library? The options feel endless, and picking the wrong one seems like it could waste months of work.

Well….The best digital product format for you isn’t the one that sounds most impressive or the one everyone else is creating. It’s the format that matches how you naturally share knowledge and what your specific expertise needs.

The Best Digital Product Format for You…

…is all about your style!

Some of us are natural teachers who love explaining step-by-step processes. Others are guides who ask powerful questions that lead to discovery. Some are curators who gather the best resources and organize them beautifully. Others are researchers who test methods and share what actually works.

Your teaching style isn’t something you need to invent. 

It’s already there in how you help people now. Notice how you respond when someone asks for your advice. 

• Do you immediately start listing steps? 
• Do you ask them questions to help them figure it out themselves? 
• Do you send them links to three different resources with notes about each one?

That natural instinct is your teaching style, and it points directly to which digital product format will feel easiest to create.

Digital Product Formats Worth Considering

Let me walk you through the most common formats and what makes each one work well.

Workbooks and Guides

These are written products with exercises, prompts, and worksheets that help someone work through a specific challenge or process. They work beautifully if you’re good at breaking down complex topics into manageable steps and you enjoy creating exercises that help people apply what they learn.  Workbooks are my favorite types of digital products!

If you can map out “first do this, then do that, then check this,” a workbook format will feel natural to create.

Online Courses

Online courses typically deliver your teaching through video lessons (or your lead the class on Zoom), usually organized into modules that build on each other. They work well when what you’re teaching requires demonstration, when seeing your face helps build trust, or when the topic needs multiple layers of explanation.

If you’re someone who is comfortable on camera and what you’re teaching unfolds over time rather than fitting into a single document, courses might be your format. 

Fair warning: Courses can take longer to create than most other formats. And if the thought of recording yourself talking makes you want to hide under your desk, maybe save this one for later. There’s no rule that says your first product has to involve staring at a camera lens and wondering if your hair looks weird.

Template Libraries and Toolkits

These are collections of ready-to-use resources like checklists, spreadsheets, email templates, or planning tools. They work when your expertise comes from systems you’ve developed and refined over years.

If people always ask you “what do you use for that” or “can I see how you organize this,” you probably have template-worthy knowledge.

Ebooks and Resource Guides

These are longer-form written products that dive deep into a topic, compile research, or share comprehensive information. They work when you have extensive knowledge to share but don’t need interactive exercises or video content.

If you love writing and you have expertise that’s best delivered through detailed explanation rather than activities, ebooks might be your format.

How to Choose the Best Digital Product Format for Your First Product

The digital product format you choose needs to serve the content you’re teaching. Some content naturally fits certain formats better than others. For example:

• If your content is about helping people make decisions, you might lean toward workbooks with reflection exercises or guides with decision frameworks.
• If your content is about teaching a skill, you might choose courses with video demonstrations or workbooks with practice activities.
• If your knowledge is about organizing or systematizing something, you might create templates that people can use immediately or guides that walk them through your process.

The format should make your teaching easier, not harder. When the format matches your content and your natural teaching style, the product creation process will flow instead of feeling forced (because you won’t have to keep going back and re-working your product).

Start With What You Already Have

Many of us already have pieces of a potential digital product scattered across old presentations, training materials, or advice we’ve shared in emails. Look at what you’ve already created when you helped someone in the past.

If you have lots of written explanations and documents, that points toward workbooks or ebooks. If you have video recordings or you’ve taught workshops, that possibly points toward courses. If you have systems and tools you created for yourself, that points toward templates or toolkits.

Starting with what already exists makes your first product faster to create and proves that the format you chose actually matches how you work.

But…The Format of Your First Product Matters Less Than You Think

The format for your first digital product doesn’t have to be your forever format. 

Many people start with one format and later expand into others. You might create a workbook first and then add a video course later. Or start with templates and eventually build a comprehensive toolkit.

Your first digital product is about getting started and learning what works. It’s about proving to yourself that what you know has value in the marketplace and that people will pay for your expertise.

The format that gets you to finished and launched is better than the perfect format you never complete!