A Perfect Guide Sell Digital Products Online

Are you ready to be a part of digital entrepreneurship?

And looking forward to learning how you can sell your digital products online. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

In this guide, you will be learning what are the digital products, what digital products you sell, where you can sell them and how to do so.

Contents

What is a Digital Product?

Digital products are the goods or items that can be sold in the digital form.

They are intangible items that you cannot see, touch, smell, feel or hold in your hands.

Such products are accessed online or offline through a computer, mobile or a memory-based device.

These are the electronic files stored in the memory or server to access remotely or to download.

It can be a software, application, ebook, audio file, video course, template or other formats.

The businesses that sell digital products can be called Digital businesses. They are more susceptive to the change and very quickly as the internet changes.

Why To Sell Digital Products?

Selling Digital Products Is More Flexible

If you want a side-hustle or any business to start, digital product based businesses have higher flexibility quotient to offer.

Since the product is virtual, the business is virtual as well. That means, you can operate or manage it from anywhere in the world.

It is a great option for working people who want to earn extra money. Also, a better alternative for entrepreneurs who can start a business without much investment.

The best part about creating a digital product is you don’t need to manufacture it again once you made one.

So the manufacturing cost, shipping and tons of other restrictions with physical products goes away giving great flexibility to entrepreneurs.

It Is A Low-Cost High-Profit Margin Product

Digital products require very low cost investment to manufacture and distribute, and that too with churning high-profit margins.

You don’t need an inventory, no warehouse to store them, no shipping or delivery needed and no assembly cost as well.

Digital product businesses are the best choice for starting a business without investment or extremely low-investment.

You Don’t Have To Manage Inventory

One of the best advantages of selling a digital product you would see right away if there is no hassle for managing inventory.

You don’t have to worry about having a physical space to hold your products in inventory.

Then, there are tons of other operational requirements that come with it such as transporting, distributing, management, safety and much more.

Also, there won’t be any upfront charges for the buying inventory or pay for transport or shipping.

It Is The Best Source Of Passive Income

Lot of people want to start a side hustle or even business but the limitation and complexity of opening a business with a physical product stops them.

So selling your digital products can be an effective passion income source to uplift your financial health.

You don’t have to invest a lot of money in creating and selling your digital products. Even the money you have to invest has tremendous ROI.

Digital products do not need too much money to invest as there is not transport, inventory or even much of a manufacturing cost per item.

In fact, selling digital products can be a sustainable business model for you, if things work out considering everything.

You Don’t Require Any Startup Cost

Most of the business aspirations never take off because they are too ambitious or complicated to start in the first place.

It requires taking high risk and extreme amounts of financial assets. The startup cost for any business is scary to even begin one’s entrepreneurial endeavour.

But with digital products, you won’t need any startup cost at all. You just have to focus on the quality and marketing of your digital product.

You Will Have Full Control Of Your Business

One of the benefits of starting a business to sell digital products is you will have the full control of your business.

Even with the product, you will be in total control of manufacturing, distribution, creative aspects, marketing and everything.

Also since you are creating the product by yourself, you own ownership of the supply chain without any middleman in the process.

More control you have and less interference you get in your production, more chance

What Type Of Digital Products You Can Sell Online?

top digital products you can sell online

Ebooks

Ebooks are one of the most popular digital products. Also, it is somewhat the torchbearer of digital products since its inception.

You can write an ebook on any topic for which you have expertise or capability for and monetize it as a digital product.

Ebook is basically nothing but just a book in a digital form to read. Once can carry it digitally or can be saved in the cloud to access it from anywhere.

Such a product doesn’t need any updation or a lot of afterwork, once you are done with the product you can just start marketing it to your target customers.

It is also the amongst the most popular go-to ways for entrepreneurs, digital experts, content creators and influencers to monetize their brand.

Web Elements

Web Elements are also one of the important digital product niche which has its piece in the pie.

There is a huge demand for it within the rise of digital entrepreneurs, bloggers and online creators.

Web elements include all products which are basically elements that used to create an online website or to improve it.

It can be a web template, wordpress theme, wordpress plugin, CSS codings, fonts, buttons, graphics and many more.

There are various marketplaces where you can sell these web elements for a really good price.

There is no limit on what web elements you can create and sell. People are earning six-figure amounts by just selling wordpress themes.

Courses

Courses are the biggest chunk of this digital product ecosystem currently.

It is surely one of the most popular digital products that sells like hotcake if things are done well.

Online courses are just like any offline in-classroom courses you take from a registered institution except here you can teach it online.

There are different elements used or can be used to create a digital or online course for target customers.

These online courses are constructed using visual, textual and audio elements packed into different modules.

Online courses can be completely created using either or all of these three elements that is video, audio and text.

Video courses are definitely the most popular digital product. Here customers are allowed to access the videos in their own time on the given website.

They don’t have to decide a particular time to attend the course.

Music

Music is another most popular digital product where it is not just limited to the mainstream music companies or entertainment giants.

Selling indie music is one of the significant revenue sources for musicians and composers.

The indie music scene has benefited through this ecosystem to survive along with the mainstream music industry.

People can actually record their music and sell it anywhere around the world.

It gives artists their freedom to sell their talent the best way possible without compromising with their music.

Music can be just digital files easy to download and sell anywhere in the world through tons of platforms.

Where You Can Sell Digital Products Online?

platforms to sell digital products online

Sellfy

Sellfy is an ecommerce platform where you can sell your digital products online. The platform also allows you to sell subscriptions and even physical goods.

Image Source: PAT

You can just embed “buy now” buttons from sellfy on your website or social media platform. Even you can embed the entire store to an online website.

Link your Sellfy products to your social media profiles to sell your digital products easily and market them.

The platform offers features such as discount codes, product upsells, automated email marketing, tracking, analytics and much more.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is undoubtedly one of the best eCommerce platforms to sell not just your digital products but physical products as well.

Image Source: Woocommerce

You can use the platform by their free wordpress plugin. All you need is a blog or website on WordPress to use this plugin.

The plugin allows you to access the efficient interface and backend functioning of an online store on your website.

WooCommerce has one of the most professional-looking designs or templates to use with their integrated features and services.

E-Junkie

This platform allows creators to sell their files, codes, software, generated keys and download links that expire within limited time or use.

Image Source: Digital

E-Junkie is such a great platform to sell downloads offline with unique codes. The platform offers you other features such as discounts, coupons, promotional freebies and affiliate programs as well.

You can sell your digital products at a fixed price or go for whatever price you want. It even allows you to accept donations.

Apart from the digital products, you can also sell the physical products which the platform charges for the tax, shipping and inventory management.

LearnDash

If you want to sell your digital products online, another WordPress-based plugin platform to go for, needs to be LearnDash.

It is a best LMS ( Learning Management System) wordpress plugin particularly allows you to sell online courses.

Image Source: Elearning

The tool or integrated platform is available in different pricing models including a plethora of features such as membership, time sales, bundles etc.

LearnDash has very specific features especially designed for people selling online courses on their website.

For Example, you can create a forum for all the students of your online courses where they interact with each other.

Pulley

Pulley is a one-stop solution for selling all of your downloadable products such as music, digital art, pictures, fonts, software and ebooks

You can embed its “Buy Now” button on any website, email, social media platforms and blogs as well.

Whatever you sell through the platform or the embed links, the money will go directly to your PayPal account.

The selling platform also gives you features like real-time statistics, download history, complete order etc.

Easy Digital Downloads

The Easy Digital Downloads allows you to sell your digital downloads from your own website through their wordpress plugin.

Image Source: WinningWp

You surely need a domain name and web hosting to begin with but then with this plugin, you can sell digital downloads to your visitors or customers.

It is very easy to integrate with your system. Especially when you are just starting out to sell your products through your website or blog, this is the easiest way to begin.

The plugin also offers shortcodes where you can display your products anywhere on a desired web page you manage like a blog or published article.

SendOwl

SendOwl is a platform where you sell your digital products, memberships, downloads and subscriptions.

You can sell your deliverables through social media, your website, email or any other such platform.

Image Source: Dwama

It utilizes the drip functionality to release your product over time as well.

SendOwl offers tons of other features such as discount codes, pay-what-you-want pricing, post-pay upsell, built-in affiliate system and much more.

The platform accepts payment options such as credit card, Apple Pay, PayPal and also bitcoin.

Restrict Content Pro

If you have used the Restrict Content plugin on your WordPress site, this is its paid version program to use.

It is such an easy plugin to integrate with your website and sell content-based products online.

Image Source: TMG

This is a great way to restrict your content for a members-only.

You can also lock your content such as particular articles or blogs for paid members of your website.

The Restrict Content Pro allows in-built integration with PayPal, WooCommerce, Stripe and many more.

FetchApp

The platform allows you to sell your digital products such as PDFs, videos, music, photos, ebooks and software.

You can integrate FetchApp to most of the popular ecommerce systems such as WooCommerce and Shopify.

When the platform receives the order, it automatically emails the customer a secure download link where the deliverable product can be downloaded.

PayLoadz

The platform allows you to sell downloadable items to your customers such as movies, music, templates, PDFs, files, ebooks and actually anything digitally.

You can even sell through your social media platform by using their button codes and links.

It delivers the product to your buyer instantly just after the confirmed payment. You can also integrate it with your eBay account for doing digital goods auctions.

PayLoads supports more than 190 countries and over 20 currencies for transactions all around the world.

Your customer can pay for your digital products via their debit cards or credit cards, Paypal, e-checks etc.

Shopify

Shopify is no stranger for people who are into digital space. It is the ecommerce platform where you can create your online store and sell your products.

It is also the best platform for managing a dropshipping store where you don’t have to lookout for shipping and inventory.

Needless to say, it is also perfect for selling your digital products. The platform offers you anything and everything you need to run your online store.

You can create a website hosting on Shopify using pre-built themes , tools and applications available and sell a variety of digital products.

To start, unlike with any other platforms, you don’t even need domain name and hosting.

MemberPress

MemberPress is actually a WordPress plugin which allows you to not just sell your digital products online but also create, manage and track it.

You will be able to manage and control the membership subscriptions by using this plugin on your website.

There are various features where you can manage the membership for your customers such as revoking access for the categories, options or posts for them.

MemberPress has a wide range of customizable features to integrate this online selling system to your WordPress blog or website.

It also allows third-party services such MailChimp, PayPal, ActiveCampaign and Stripe as well.

Teachable

Like LearnDash, Teachable is another best platform to create and sell your own online courses.

So, if you are particularly looking for selling your online courses, Teachable is a good alternative to go for.

The best part is unlike LearnDash, you don’t need a website to host your online courses.

They offer a free plan where you can start right away without paying any dime.

The platform offers you a seamless interface where you can manage your course subscription and members easily.

How To Sell Digital Products Online In 5 Steps?

Product Selection

The very first and most certainly the trickiest thing to do is selecting the product you want to create and sell online.

However, before this you must have interest, experience or knowledge in a particular niche from where you can cultivate your product.

It can be a particular skill you know or the professional you already have experience in. You can also pick a new thing that you want to learn and master as well.

But remember, you have to play to your strengths in order to get a better product even before you start developing it.

Avoid Choosing a Random Niche/Product

The less random a niche and product you select, better chances you have to make it faster and more efficient development.

So try to find something that you already do well. The idea here is to find a product which needs work not you.

Learning completely different things, mastering it or even learning it enough can take time or lacks credibility.

That’s why influencers, digital coaches, content creators or any digital entrepreneur start working on their digital product only if and when they gain some credibility.

Do Not Select A Product Only Because You Know How To Make It

If you want to cement your chances for success, it is better to not take up your ability to do things as a product.

Your skill is not a product. If you know how to do something, the best approach is to find out how or whether it can help.

What specific problem of people can you help with your skill?

In this case, you won’t be creating a generalized product but stand out in the competition amongst others.

Your target audience will be more niche and selective. Creating a product that resolves problems in the niche you have skills is how you do it.

Product Development

You need to develop the product once you have decided on selecting your niche and what products specifically you want to sell.

Developing your product is going to a back and forth procedure which can take time, energy and lots of effort.

You need to keep improving your product unless you are satisfied with its quality and purpose for your target customers.

It is always better to test your product amongst customers only. However, do run your products for the quality test to experts.

Make sure your product is within the industry standards to begin with. Keep checking everything again and again.

Price Structure

Before selling your product through the sales pages, you need to first decide the pricing of your product or the pricing structure and model.

It also depends upon your digital product, the quality and scale of it.

Decide what pricing would make sense for your target customers and what you have spent on the product as well.

You have to also think about what value you are providing to the customers through the product.

Also, see how it matches with the industry standards or just other competitors of yours.

For products higher than $100 and especially for products like video courses etc, you can allow customers to pay for it in installments.

Make sure you offer different modes of payment including credit card and EMI options as well.

Sales Page

The very next stage after the product development for you online business is going to be creating the sales page.

That’s where your target or potential customers are going to land to purchase the product.

The objective of a sales page is to advertise your product. It is also the first part of your sales funnel.

Your sales page must include all the detailed features, benefits and description about your product with high-quality product images.

The format of a sales page is about using Title, various subheadings, images, videos, buttons and all kinds of graphics in order to sell the product.

Your sales page must highlight the most significant features of your product in the best way possible.

The page has a “buy now” button on multiple spots on the sales page to initiate the checkout process and make customers purchase the product.

Product Delivery

Next, a major process you need to go through after creating the sales page and getting some orders, is to deliver the product.

Product delivery with digital products isn’t a daunting task at all. You just need to find the right tools to distribute the product to particular customers of yours.

Depending upon the product, the mode and method of distributing the product changes.

For Example, if a customer bought an ebook from you, they might simply have to login to account on your website and where they can find the download link of the product.

Similarly, if you sell video courses, you have to give access to customers that paid for the product, so they can play the videos on your website.

There are multiple third-party platforms as well where you can host your product and share access to your paid customers.

Tips For Selling Digital Products Online

Decide What To Sell

Make sure you do your research before picking up a digital product to sell. The research will also help you understand the temperament of your audience.

Even before, you need to specify your targeted audience or the potential buyers.

The better you understand your potential buyers, the more able you can be to satisfy their needs.

Know Your Potential Buyers

It will help you create an irresistible offer for your audience. Digital product sells best when it pin-points a very particular problem for a specific kind of audience.

It is essential to understand your audience, their likes and dislikes, issues they face, and desires they want to fulfill.

Everything will help you craft a better product for them that will make their life easier.

This is the most crucial step to begin creating your digital product as without extensive research, you might end up making a good product but no use to your targeted audience.

Or you might just end up making a bad digital product with loss of financial investment, time and effort.

How To Find Out What Audience Wants?

To know the audience, their wants, requirements, problems, preferences and what they are looking for, you can do following :

Work for them : What better could be to work for your targeted audience, and see what they look for. Giving services to your upcoming customers will help you know better about their expectations and preferences.
Talk to People : The best you can do is directly reach to your audience and ask them the relevant questions.
Join the relevant Facebook Groups : There aren’t types of audience hubs you won’t find on Facebook groups. So find your target audience there and try to interact with them, see what they talk about and look for.
Read Product Reviews : Read reviews on the huge marketplaces such as Amazon or Ebay of the products in your niche. Find out what people like and don’t like about the product. What do they prefer?
Speak to the audience directly : You can also reach out to your audience, not individually but targeting a group of people through survey platforms and discovery calls.
Live on Forums : Forums are the best place to find the general consensus of people on particular subjects. It is a great spot for dialogue and discussion. Here you can interact heavily to investigate more.

The whole point of exposing yourself to your potential targeted audience, once you specify them, is to learn about them.

Basically, what you are looking for here, is a single giant problem which you can resolve or help them with.

And that is something your product should do. Unless you find that, it is highly advisable to not invest or spend money on creating any digital product.

Sell Educational or Skill-learning Products

The best digital products you can sell, especially when you hold an expertise in a particular topic, educational or skill learning products are the best.

Digital products are the best way to package all your information and teachings and sell to the learners in exchange for some money.

You can launch an online video course featuring numbered video tutorials to watch and download.

Selling ebooks on particular topics you have expertise on are digital products sell like hotcakes if you work on it enough.

Learning or educational products are high in demand and sell way better than any other category.

However, you need to leverage your existing reputation and credibility being an expert to draw attention to your product.

How To Promote Your Digital Products ?

Set Up A Pre-Launch Promotional Campaign

The primary objective of a pre-launch promotional campaign is to pull the target audience or potential buyer for your product at the initial stage only.

It is to grab people’s attention over a new product in a market with promising features or benefits in the given area.

Set A Long-Duration Marketing Goal

Marketing a digital product is a tough nut to crack. So first, it is better to make up your mindset for a long-duration goal for this.

It is also highly advisable to start your pre-launch promotions as early as you can after finishing the product.

It takes time to develop trust amongst your target customers to buy any digital product from a new seller.

Especially in the case where you don’t have any known credibility such as social media following, specialization, large network or long experience.

Collaborate With Influencers

The most effective way to reach out to a target audience today is influencer marketing.

Social media influencers have a huge and dedicated following depending upon their niche.

You need to collaborate with influencers in the same niche of your product for the pre-launch promotions.

Influencers are the best advocates for target-based promotions and no one can better create the hype of the product as they can.

Find the relevant influencers through influencer network platforms such as Grin, Social peeks or HYPR.

Pro Tip : Aim for a larger number of micro and nano influencers rather than trying to collaborate with big influencers.

You need to create the social media presence for your digital product on all the relevant platforms.

Depending upon the kind of your product, you can particularly focus more on certain social media platforms.

For Example, If you are selling graphics or other artsy products, Pinterest will be the best to work more on.

However, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are the primary social media platforms to create buzz.

Create Facebook page groups, Instagram accounts and Pins to consistently share about your product.

You can create visual content or talk about the product prepping up the potential customers to get excited for.

Run A Contest

The idea of pre-launch promotion is to create a wave of excitement and anticipation for the product before its launch.

You need to do that thorough one way or another. Running a contest related to your product is a great way to pull attention.

Make sure the prize for the contest is worth the task you give the participants.

Also, the task should be aimed to increase engagement and bring people closer to the upcoming product.

It will help you boost the brand awareness of your business, and so the product will reach a more number of targeted audiences.

Getting Into A Expert Review

Newly launched products need credibility and familiarity to generate sales in the market.

Why would anyone trust a new digital product? How would they determine whether your claims for the digital product is right or not?

Well, there are other ways to develop trust within your customers but the most effective one is to get stamped from an authoritative or credible resource.

In this case, you can approach the experts in your niche or industry. It can be a person, media house, blog, magazine or a review website.

If an expert reviews your product and gives their trustworthy opinion and that favours you, it can be a great selling point for your product.

You can just showcase that into your sales page to boost the sales conversions of your product.

Get Your Product Featured In Product Reviews

Video can be really persuasive in order to attract customers for the new upcoming launch for the product.

You can get your product reviewed from the known Youtubers on their channel even before it launches.

There are many vloggers who would like to feature your product in their video talking about the exciting product launch.

It is most certainly one of the best ways of pre-marketing the product. Youtube videos also appear on the Google searches.

Then, there are blogs which review products in specific niches. You just have to pick in yours and get the news out about your upcoming product.

Or you can give out your product for an early review on these blogs, websites and youtube channels.

Freebies & Early-bird Discounts

Giving away freebies and offering early-bird discounts for your upcoming product is a good strategy to lure customers in and build trust with your product as well.

Everyone loves free stuff! Heavy discounts can really attract people to the deal you’re having.

You can ask for their email address to sign up a mailing list for this or ask for share this on social media.

Discount marketing has always worked efficiently especially in the case of pre-launch promotion.

You can ask the customers that if they buy the product early-on or sign-up for pre-order, they can get a heavy discount.

This is also a great way to organically increase your reach to target more potential buyers.

Open Pre-Order For Customers

Pre-orders are a great marketing strategy to kickstart your sales right off from launching your product.

Many online retailers and businesses overlook the significance of taking pre-orders. There are brands who already have a loyal customer base, always ready to buy the product immediately as they get launched.

But if you are starting out, pre-order allows you to attract a large amount of audience at the beginning of the product launch.

However, make sure you start planning for opening a pre-order feature for your customers very early on, way before the launching date.

So it is mandatory that you have already decided the pricing of your product.