How AI Content Platforms are Revolutionizing Digital Product Creation

In the 2025 creator economy, digital products have become an essential tool for diversifying revenue streams and providing value to your audience, while turning listeners and followers into paying subscribers. But with the constant pressure to produce content across multiple channels, how can creators and media brands efficiently create digital products that actually sell?

The media landscape is shifting rapidly, with new AI-powered tools enabling faster and easier digital product creation than ever before. In this guide, we'll explore what digital products are, what they unlock for your brand, and how to leverage new technology to create winning digital products in 2025 — more efficiently than ever before.

About The Authors

This guide was inspired by a 30-minute conversation between Stephanie Pereira (Astral COO, former Head of Community Education at Kickstarter) and Zack Kinslow (Astral Growth Marketing Lead, former Head of Education at Foundr Magazine and Content Manager at Skillshare). Both Stephanie and Zack have a combined 20+ years’ experience in launching digital products with entrepreneurs. 

Zack Kinslow has produced over 100 online courses in his career, driving upwards of $100 million in revenue as a direct result of digital products.

Stephanie Pereira was a senior leader at Kickstarter overseeing community engagement of 100,000 global creators, and guiding them through their 30-day campaign plans to ensure successful launches. 

In short, these two know a thing or two about creating digital products that sell.

Tune into the full 30-minute conversation here:

1. What Are Digital Products?

Digital products are assets that are created once and distributed electronically, without the need for physical inventory. Essentially, a digital product is any knowledge, skills or teaching methodologies that you can “package up” into a high-value content offer, and gate it behind a paywall or email opt-in. 

Some common examples include:

• PDFs (ebooks, workbooks, templates)

• Online courses and tutorials

• Whitepapers or research reports

• Gated newsletters (e.g. Substack)

• Premium content subscriptions

• Downloadable audio content

• Cheat sheets, checklists or roadmaps

Who a Digital Product Benefits

For creators, authors and coaches, digital products offer a way to package expertise into a tangible asset that can be sold repeatedly with minimal ongoing costs. This helps diversify revenue streams, especially for folks whose income isn’t always the most predictable. 

For media brands, digital products provide opportunities to monetize existing content beyond traditional advertising models — especially as ad revenue reliance continues to decline. Beyond the daily stress of juggling assignments under tight deadlines, publishers are under pressure to monetize their huge archives of existing content in new ways. Rapid creation of digital products is a huge unlock for these industries. 

For marketers, a digital product helps turn traffic into leads, and can even help drive revenue in and of itself. Content marketing teams spend countless hours pouring their hearts into producing high-quality work, which is often given away for free on the internet. Why not convert some of those visitors into leads? 

“Think of your digital product or High-Value Content Offer as an ethical bribe for your audience’s contact details.” — Sabri Suby, Founder, King Kong Agency 

Why Digital Products Matter

• Diversify revenue streams beyond ads or sponsorships

• Provide additional value to your audience

• Strengthen relationships with subscribers/followers

• Generate leads and grow your email list

• Create passive income opportunities

The world of social media marketing and online content tends to involve “farming on rented land.” If Meta or Google decide to change their algorithm rules (which often happens), an online business can tank. That’s why it’s more important than ever to farm on “owned land” — and convert your audience into subscribers. 

Your email list and customer base is something you carry with you, regardless of which online channel is the latest shiny object. 

2. Creating Digital Products Faster with AI

One of the biggest challenges in creating digital products has traditionally been the time and effort required. It previously took weeks of writing work, followed by weeks of design work and back-and-forth edits. However, new AI-powered tools are dramatically reducing the barriers to entry.

AI content platforms like Astral are enabling creators, media brands and marketing teams to quickly transform existing content (like podcasts, videos or blog posts) into polished digital products in mere minutes — rather than weeks. This allows for rapid experimentation and iteration.

For example, Astral lets users turn five podcast episodes into one cohesive ebook. Or synthesize multiple articles into an ultimate guide. Then, the AI can also generate all the surrounding marketing assets to promote your digital product across multiple channels. These “many to one” and “one to many” features of AI content marketing tools like Astral are just one of the many benefits of exploring new tech in 2025. 

Key Benefits of AI-Assisted Content Creation

• Synthesize large amounts of content into cohesive products

• Generate multiple promotional assets alongside the core product

• Maintain consistent brand voice across different formats

• Reduce production time from weeks/months to hours/minutes

3. Validate Demand & Pain Before You Create

A common mistake is creating digital products based solely on what you want to make, rather than what your audience actually needs. To avoid wasting time on products that won't sell, it's crucial to validate demand first.

Some effective validation methods include:

• Surveying your existing audience (ask them what they want to learn)

• Keyword research to identify high-volume, low-competition topics

• "Fake door" smoke testing - creating a landing page to gauge interest before building

• Analyzing questions and comments from your community

Far too many course creators and digital products sellers focus on making something that only they like. This passion for your craft is only half the battle — or more precisely, one quarter. 

According to Zack Kinslow’s framework from producing top-selling digital products at Foundr Magazine, a good way to approach your topic is “The New 4 P’s”:

• Painkiller Idea: Your digital product idea should solve a very real problem or answer a burning question that your audience is dealing with. Painkillers sell. Vitamins don’t. What challenges has your audience mentioned they are facing, that they’d like help navigating?
  
  

• Practitioner In Your Field: You should have deep experience and knowledge in the area that you’re teaching or producing content around. Don’t just make more content for content’s sake. Authority sells!
  
  

• Passion For The Topic: Of course, this should be knowledge you’re excited to share. Enthusiasm shines through and creates a deeper human connection with your community — increasing the likelihood that they will be longtime customers.
  
  

• Packaging It Up: How you frame your content offer is a big piece of your digital product’s success. The same idea could be packaged up 10 different ways. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and try to angle it in their own words. How do they talk about the problem? What are they literally asking for (i.e. googling)?

4. Rapid Experimentation and Iteration

With advanced tools to create digital products quickly, at your fingertips, the key to success is embracing a mindset of experimentation. Rather than aiming for perfection on the first try, focus on getting a minimum viable product (MVP) out quickly and iterating based on audience feedback.

Tips for Rapid Experimentation

• Start with existing content you can repurpose

• Create promotional assets alongside the core product

• Set a goal to launch a new product experiment every 1-2 months

• Use analytics to identify what resonates, then double down

"Don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. Ask questions, use AI to help synthesize insights, then start creating and testing against your audience." — Stephanie Pereira, Astral

By lowering the cost of production, new tools enable a "fail fast" approach where you can test multiple ideas quickly to find winners. No more wasting 3-6 months producing something that isn’t going to work! 

Putting It All Together: Your Digital Product Action Plan

1. Identify your audience's biggest pain points or burning questions

2. Validate demand through surveys, keyword research, or "fake door" testing

3. Gather relevant existing content (blog posts, podcast episodes, etc.)

4. Use AI-powered tools like Astral to quickly transform content into a digital product

5. Simultaneously create promotional assets (social posts, emails, etc.) stemming from the same hero content

6. Launch and promote to your audience

7. Analyze results and iterate based on feedback

The ability to create valuable digital products quickly and cost-effectively is becoming a crucial skill for creators and media brands alike. By leveraging new AI-powered tools and embracing a mindset of experimentation, you can diversify your revenue streams and provide more value to your audience than ever before.

Ready to start creating digital products that actually sell? Sign up for a free trial of Astral and see how easy it can be to transform your existing content into polished digital products in minutes.