There’s a sinking feeling you get when you realize your entire business is built on trading time for money. Yeah, that exactly where Elise Hodge from Connection Copy Co found herself. For years, she was the go-to copywriter for high-converting sales pages, launch funnels, and email sequences. But there was a problem: every dollar she made was directly tied to her showing up and doing the work.

Then, baby #3 was on the way.

And Elise had to ask herself: Do I want to be juggling deadlines and client calls while figuring out life with three little ones? (Spoiler: that answer was a hard no.)

So she did what many service providers dream of but struggle to execute – she pivoted from done-for-you services to selling digital products. And she’s now essentially replaced her client revenue without launching a massive course or starting from scratch.

What’s Inside This Episode:

• The real reason Elise moved from services to digital products (it wasn’t just about scaling)
• The first product she sold – and the surprising tweak that doubled her conversion rate from a $7 product
• How she repurposed old content to launch an incredibly successful low-ticket offer
• How Elise used Facebook ads to go from testing to consistent, growing revenue
• What to focus on first if you’re new to selling digital products
• The mindset shift that made her finally commit to making this model work
• How she’s setting up her business for a stress-free maternity leave
• The exact tweaks she’s making next to scale her business even further

Why Move from Services to Digital Products?

Well, client work can be great. But it also comes with some pretty massive downsides if you want to stay in more of a solopreneur model:

Your income is tied to your time. There’s only so much of you to go around.
You’re constantly in execution mode. Sales calls, deadlines, deliverables—rinse and repeat.
Scalability? Want to double your revenue? Cool, you either raise your rates or work twice as much.

At some point, the math just doesn’t math.

“I loved working with clients, but I knew I couldn’t keep up with that pace forever,” Elise shared. “Your income is directly tied to your time… and there’s always a ceiling on how many clients you can take on.”

That’s why digital products are so appealing. You create it once, and it sells on repeat (with the right system in place). More revenue, less time stuck in the weeds.

Sounds like a dream, right? But making the switch isn’t as simple as just creating a product and hoping for the best. Here’s how Elise actually made it work.

Step 1: Find Your First Digital Product

Most people overcomplicate this part. They think moving from services to digital products means building something brand new – a big, fancy course or some all-in-one program.

Elise didn’t do that.

Instead, she looked at what she already had.

“I didn’t start from scratch—I looked at what I already had,” she explained. “I had created a set of 52 email prompts years ago, and I realized I could turn those into an actual product.”

So, she repackaged those prompts into a $7 digital offer. No months-long course creation. No waiting until things were perfect. Just taking something she had already created and making it available for purchase.

Step 2: Make Simple Tweaks That Increase Sales

At first, that $7 product? It did okay.

People bought it, but the conversions weren’t exactly blowing up her Stripe account. So she made one key tweak:

Instead of just selling prompts, she turned them into full email templates – plug-and-play, no extra thinking required.

That small shift doubled her conversion rate overnight.

“People don’t want to think,” Elise explained. “They want the easiest, fastest way to get a result. Turning prompts into templates made it a no-brainer.”

Then, she added a $37 order bump (aka a little checkbox at checkout where people could add a higher-value product to their cart with one click). And guess what?

34% of buyers took it.

Which meant that even though her entry product was only $7, her average order value jumped significantly.

Lesson here? Tiny changes – like tweaking the format of your offer or adding a simple upsell – can make a HUGE difference in sales.

Step 3: Sell Without the Stress of Big Launches

You know those entrepreneurs who are always launching, always running massive promo events, and always exhausted? Yeah. Elise didn’t want that life.

Instead, she built a simple, repeatable system that brought in sales without her needing to do a huge push every time.

Her secret? A tripwire. (Meaning: an upsell on the backend of a freebie.)

Here’s how it worked:
1️⃣ She offered a free Welcome Email Template to attract leads.
2️⃣ As soon as someone grabbed it, they got an exclusive offer for her $7 templates.
3️⃣ After that, she had an automated follow-up sequence to convert even more buyers.

This meant that whether she was working, sleeping, or on maternity leave, sales were still rolling in.

Step 4: Scale with Paid Ads (The Smart Way)

Once her funnel was working organically, Elise knew it was time to put some fuel on the fire.

“I knew if I wanted this to grow, I had to make ads work,” she shared.

But let’s be real – most people lose money on ads. Elise didn’t.

Here’s what she did differently:
She tested her funnel first. No sense in throwing money at something that doesn’t convert.
She tracked her numbers religiously. That’s how she knew her bump offer was doing the heavy lifting.
She focused on profitability, not just lead costs. Because $2 leads mean nothing if they don’t turn into buyers.

And guess what? Her ad funnel has been profitable every single month.

Which means now, instead of her revenue being tied to how many client projects she can take on, she has a system that works 24/7.

Making the Leap from Services to Digital Products

Transitioning from services to digital products isn’t about flipping a switch – it’s about stacking the right moves.

Start with what you already have. You don’t need to create something brand new from scratch. Look at what you’ve already built and find a way to package it.

Test and tweak before you scale. Elise didn’t hit gold on her first try. She made small but high-impact changes – like turning prompts into templates and adding a bump offer—that transformed her sales.

Create a system that sells for you. The difference between owning a digital product business and creating another job for yourself is having a funnel that works whether you’re launching, sleeping, or, in Elise’s case, preparing for baby number three.

Be willing to go all in. At some point, if you want this model to work, you have to stop treating it like an experiment and commit. Elise didn’t wait until everything was perfect—she tested, optimized, and doubled down on what was working.

Whether you’re looking to escape the time-for-money trap, add another revenue stream, or build something that scales, the shift from services to digital products is one of the most powerful moves you can make.

And the best part? You don’t have to do it all at once.

Start small. Test what works. And when you see momentum, double down and go for it.