How to Create a Product and Sell it on Instagram
TL;DR Summary: Create and sell digital products on Instagram by identifying a hyper-specific problem, creating a digital product around it, setting up a simple checkout page, and driving daily views. Consider using Stripe instead of Samcart for lower fees. Learn how to streamline the process from creating the product to setting up the website and payment system. Read the full article for detailed steps and insights.
We’ve all seen the videos explaining that all you have to do is create something, set up payment, and sell it on Instagram. I’ve done a lot of that, but with this next one, I thought I’d document the process. I started this on 1/28/2026, so I’ll post this and then make updates as I work on it more.
The Basic Setup
I found this video explaining the process outlined below:
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DS1AFFcEi3j/
- Step 1: Brainstorm things your friends come to you for advice for. What do you help them with?
If you do it for free, you can definitely get paid for it. - Step 2: Decide a hyper-specific problem you want to solve. For example: if your friends come to you for party-planning advice (and most of the parties you plan are for kids), your hyper-specific problem should be “How To Plan Kids Parties On A Budget”. Hyper-specific.
- Step 3: Pick the kind of digital product you’ll create around that hyper-specific problem. A video course OR a PDF/spreadsheet bundle is a good place to start.
- Step 4: Create your digital product. It should take 2-4 hours max. Don’t overthink it.
- Step 5: Build a very simple checkout page so people can pay you. (I use Samcart and highly recommend!)
- Step 6: Get about 50-100 views per day. (I have tons of free content here to show you how!)
Alright. That’s pretty straightforward with me, as I’ve done most of this a lot.
Do You Have the Right Topic?
What topic you choose can make or break your project. There are other factors involved, too. Before moving on make sure you’ve considered:
- A topic that is unique without a lot competition.
- Know how defined your audience us.
- Is it something that can produce fast results?
- Is the change visible?
- Do you have proof you can show?
If you want to make sure you’ve chosen a topic for your course/book that will work, use the Course Profitability Estimator Tool on my website.
Samcart: My Opinion
I’ve used Samcart. It worked well, but their fee of $80+ per month was digging into too much of my profits. Once nice feature they have is an embedded checkout form. It does convert well, so you have to decide if their fee is worth it for you or not. In my opinion, if Samcart did something to actually help you get sales, like have a marketplace, it would be more worth it.
So, instead of Samcart, I’ll use Stripe. The fees are way less. Yes, conversion might not be as good, but the transaction will take place on my site.
The Size of Your Product – IMPORTANT
A product might sound really great until… I see that it’s like 10 hours or materials. Pff! Forget that! I don’t want to sit through that – just give me the answers I need. Course creators think they need to provide a lot of material to provide value. That’s wrong. If you provide a quick answer that I can implement right away… then, I’m in!
Do not pad your product with tons of stuff. It’s a super big turnoff. You’re losing sales that way. If you must do that, then give people a Quick Start kind of guide – in case they just want to get to the meat right away.
Tools Being Used:
- Apple Notes app with dictation.
- ChatGPT
- Google Antigravity
- Chrome browser to pring (and Firefox since that’s my main browser)
- Stripe checkout
And then I bought a domain at NameCheap and I already have my own web hosting I can easily add websites to.
The Process
Choosing the Topic
I knew which topic the book should be on… website design. I decided to create a book called “How to Fix Your Website” since I’m an expert at that. I opened Apple Notes and started dictation. I spoke and it recorded a note for me. I then copied and pasted that text into ChatGPT and had it organize it into a book. It’s a nice document. I had it add checklists and cheat sheets in the end as well as resource links to my website since my site covers a lot of related topics in the book.
For me, the process of creating the book, from dictation to a PDF, took about 45 minutes, but I’ve done this kind of thing a lot.
Creating the Book
I asked ChatGPT to give me HTML for the book, and then I would use my browser to print to PDF. This worked well. It formatted it nicely, put in page breaks, and I used Chrome, which helped include page numbers. This gave me the book in PDF format. I had ChatGPT create a book cover for me, too. It did a nice job. I then had it create sales copy for the home page.
Creating the Website
I took the home page copy and book cover to Google Antigravity. I had it create the website. It got it done pretty nice. I made a few changes, but the basic pieces were there.
Stripe Setup
Next, I opened the files so ChatGPT could see them and so it could help with the Stripe setup. I create a new sub-account in Stripe and set up the product. This part was the most confusing part with the Stripe keys, but I got it up and running: https://siteanalyzerfree.com/
I think I’ll create maybe a standard book selling script using just one Stripe account where all I have to do is add the new products and we’re good. That’ll be easier. Maybe I’ll make this script available here.
Promotion
That’s the next thing to crack. I have all these assets and I have to learn to promote them. I’ve found a solution for that and I’m working on it now.
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