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I have launched a digital shop for Mum’s the Boss using Pensight in 2024. Read on for the reasons why I chose this platform and what I think of it so far. There are affiliate links in this post but these are my honest opinions and I only promote affiliate links if I really use and rate a product. Take a look at my profile on Pensight above, and judge for yourself – I think it looks great!
Many of you will have noticed that I have started offering more freebies and products at the bottom of my blog posts. If you have been following me on Instagram, you will probably have heard a bit more about my push to launch some digital products from the Mum’s the Boss platform.
You may have wondered why I didn’t do it sooner, but the main issue has been finding the time and the bandwidth to set something up – the usual mum business owner conundrum.
Getting Started with Digital Products
But now the kids are at university and the time has come. I started getting more active on Instagram in February 2024, with a view to eventually usng it as a platform to sell from. One of the first decisions I had to make was choosing the platform to host my digital shop, such that it would be easily accessible from this website and from Instagram and my other social media platforms.
Instagram is a fun one because you only get one link when you have less than 10,000 followers, so you need to have a good one. People are used to seeing “Check My Link In bio to see the product I’m talking about“, but you do need to make sure that when they do click, they will find an attractive page that is easy to navigate, and they will find the thing they are looking for really quickly.
When I started thinking about a Link in Bio app for Instagram, there are three big ones that came to my mind. For the last few years I’ve been using the smart.bio app that comes with Tailwind, but it’s not exactly a selling platform. A lot of people use Linktree, which can link to whatever you like, and the most popular one on Instagram and Tik Tok for digital sellers right now seems to be Stan Store.
But for some reason, I wasn’t particularly taken with the look of Stan Store, and in particular, I didn’t like the idea that there was only a 14-day free trial and then you are committed to paying $29/month. I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that I probably wouldn’t make that much in sales immediately in the first month or even two, and I wanted a bit more time to test my concept before signing on the dotted line. I did a little bit of research and came across Pensight, a less famous, but promising alternative. Pensight offers you the option to use limited functionality on a free plan for as long as you want to, and the free account functionality is enough to do quite a bit when you are first getting started in digital product sales.
Review of Pensight – Introduction
The title and strapline when you first log in to Pensight promises this –
The all-in-one platform for your digital products and services. Consolidate all your digital products, coaching, subscriptions, courses, and emails into one link-in-bio store
I found the home page very easy to set up and it was simple to connect to a payment system (Stripe) and to set up my first freebies and paying digital products. If you look at the image above you will see that the homepage looks a little bit thin on a desktop, but it is absolutely optimised for phones and tablets which is where most ot my viewers are watching from. The images they use to illustrate the products on the page are YouTube thumbnail sized – which is the normal size I use for images on the blog too, which I found very handy.
With the free Pensight app you are allowed to set up a variety of digital products, courses, 1:1 coaching sessions, bundles including coaching and products, group events and a video Q&A. I’ve also added in a couple of links to some of my most popular blogs. You can also have products within the Pensight system which do not show on the homepage, but you can have a link so you can still offer the product on your website or elsewhere and the payment is handled by Pensight.
The premium Pensight account also offers the option to have a membership, and also various payment types such as instalments or choose what you pay. You can also offer money off coupons of various kinds.
Email marketing is also possible in the Pro version of Pensight, incuding sales funnels for people who download a free product. You can set up product/purchase specific emails and automations and also broadcasts to all your users or a specific segment of users which you can specify.
If you want to stay on the free version of Pensight you can download the email addresses from the Pensight system and feed them into your own email software.
The pro version of Pensight also offers an embeddable Buy Now button that you can put on your website when you are promoting your products, but to be honest on my WordPress site I find it easier to use a clickable image of the product with a button of my choice as part of the image. All of the images in this article are clickable and lead to my Pensight – so feel free to browse to see how it works.
So how well does Pensight work?
When my Pensight was on the free version I added four freebies:
- Sample of Instagram Carousel templates
- What to post on Social Media ebook
- Mum’s the Boss Guide to Faceless Reels on Instagram
- Home Financial Tracker in association with Frugal Jools
Two low price products
And one higher priced product
I figured this selection would give me an idea of how these products would go and gave me a chance to test out the functionality of the free software before updating to Pro.
So I promoted these products on Pinterest, on Instagram (Reels, Posts and Stories) and by email. I did a lovely carousel post on Instagram promoting the carousel posts, and I’ve also added quite a few links on my most popular blog posts. I haven’t spent any moeney on promoting yet – that will come later once I know what my most popular products are.
And to be honest I’ve been more than satisfied with the results. I opened the shop on April 20th, gave away my first freebies on April 24th and made my first sales on May 3rd, and everything has gone really smoothly, even before I have started aggressively promoting things.
Upgrading to Pro Account
So last week I updated to Pro, started adding a few more products and setting up the upsell and email funnels for each one – it’s really easy! I’m getting regular emails to say that products are walking out the door – it’s a trickle for now, but its a bigger trickle than before I set up Pensight. And I’ve also recorded a little introductory video for my homepage – I think that is a fun touch.
I’ve got plans for many more products, some courses, some group sessions and I have a lot of ideas in my head for other stuff. I will come back and update this post in a few months once I’ve been running it for a while and lt you know what my results have been.
I was also very impressed that a few days after joining Pro the people from Pensight contacted me and have offered me a free one to one call to answer any questions that I have. I haven’t booked that yet but I love that it is part of the package and it was a pleasant surprise.
A Special Offer for You
I paid for an annual subscription for Pro, because there was a special offer on, and I’m able to offer you guys a special offer too. If you go to pensight.com/?refCode=mumstheboss and set up your free account, then you will get a 40% discount when you upgrade to Pro. That is an affiliate link and I will receive a small commission too if you do decide to upgrade to Pro, but I really am excited by Pensight and I definitely recommend it based on what i have seen so far.
I’m only scratching the surface of what this app can do for the moment, but I will add in more bits to this review as I discover them. But if you are thinking of selling digital products or coaching/consulting sessions from your website, then Pensight is a great place to host everything.
And if you like the idea but feel a bit nervous with the tech, I’d be happy to help you set it up – drop me an email at debbie@mumstheboss.co.uk and I’ll do my best to help you.
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