Best Way to Sell Downloadable Content
Digital products can't exist held, tasted, or touched, simply everyone consumes them—from music to videos, ebooks to online courses, and more than.
Many entrepreneurs build unabridged businesses around these intangible appurtenances, due to their popularity and ease of distribution, or launch digital products to sell complementary to the physical items or services they offering.
What makes learning how to sell digital products peculiarly highly-seasoned, however, is they can be created once and sold repeatedly to dissimilar customers without having to replenish inventory, making them platonic for creatives, bloggers, educators, and freelancers looking for passive ways to make money online that require less attempt to maintain.
This guide volition walk y'all through how to sell digital products online—including the top digital products examples, how to create your own, and marketing tips to sell online successfully.
What are digital products?
A digital product is an intangible asset or piece of media that can be sold and distributed repeatedly online without the need to replenish inventory. These products frequently come up in the form of downloadable or streamable digital files, such every bit MP3s, PDFs, videos, plug-ins, and templates.
Why sell digital products versus physical goods?
Selling digital products has many advantages that makes it uniquely attractive to entrepreneurs:
- Depression overhead costs.You don't accept to concur inventory or incur any shipping charges.
- High turn a profit margins. There's no recurring toll of goods, then yous retain the majority of your sales in profits.
- Potential to automate. Orders can be delivered instantly, letting you be relatively easily-off with fulfillment.
- Flexible products. You can offering costless products to build your email list, monthly paid subscriptions for access to exclusive digital content, or licenses to utilise your digital products. Yous have a lot of options every bit to how you comprise digital products into your business.
- Eastward-learning is the future of educational activity. Yous take a massive opportunity to aggrandize your business organization and affect with due east-learning, an industry expected to be worth $374 billion by 2026.
But online digital products also come with specific challenges you'll need to scout out for:
- You're competing with free content. With digital appurtenances, consumers can probably find free alternatives to what you're selling. You'll have to think advisedly well-nigh the niche you target, the types of digital products you sell, and your production descriptions. You'll also want to offer high-quality products and know how to build your make in guild to compete.
- You lot're susceptible to piracy/theft. You need to have precautions and reduce these risks by employing the correct tools to protect your products.
- At that place are some restrictions on how to sell digital products. For example, you must sell physical products through the Facebook and Instagram sales aqueduct co-ordinate to their commerce policy.
Most of these challenges can be overcome, nonetheless, if you utilize the right tools when designing your digital product business organisation.
Learn more: Trending Products to Sell in 2021
6 best digital products to sell online
For a little inspiration when creating these products, explore the top types of digital products listed beneath:
- Educational products
- Licenses to employ your digital assets
- Membership sites
- Digital templates and tools
- Music or art
- Services
1. Educational products
Online courses are best suited for in-depth content. They crave some effort up front, from creating a presentation to recording a video walk-through. When creating courses, commencement with learner outcomes: what do you desire the learner to know or be able to do at the stop of your course?
You can include quizzes, knowledge checks, and interactive activities inside your courses to help break-upwards learning content and brand your e-course more than engaging. Consider learning and implementing a teaching model like ADDIE.
If you lot consider yourself an adept on a detail topic, digital products are a great way to parcel that information and sell it to others looking to acquire.
If there's an abundance of gratuitous blog posts or tutorials on YouTube nigh what you'd similar to teach, you tin compete by delivering content that promises not education but transformation. In other words, don't sell the product—sell the customer's own potential after buying your product.
You lot tin leverage an existing reputation equally an expert to garner attention for your downloadable products to sell online or, if you're starting from scratch, yous can create and give away free content to generate involvement and leads for your paid digital products.
2. Licenses to apply your digital assets
From stock photos to video footage, from music and sound furnishings, at that place's a global ecosystem of licensable digital assets uploaded by creatives for other creatives to apply in their piece of work.
By offering licenses to individuals and businesses, you tin can accuse for the utilise of your photos, videos, music, software, and similar top digital products in your own store and through online marketplaces, such as stock photo sites. In substitution for exposure, some of these marketplaces can take up to 50% in commission for every sale. However, if you want to build your own destination for digital products to sell, you can use Sendowl to ability this type of business with unique auto-generated license keys.
When coming upward with assets to create, it helps to piece of work backward from the needs of your intended audience. Commencement by thinking about what kind of avails they'd want to employ in order to create products that are actually in demand (and thus easier to sell).
Too, be sure to protect your digital products with watermarks and other security measures, peculiarly if you lot're selling photos.
three. Membership sites
Instead of focusing on how to sell digital products individually, you can bundle them together and lock them behind a paid subscription to generate recurring acquirement.
This approach to selling digital products is ideal if you plan to maintain a growing library of premium content and nurture a community of passionate members. In some cases, paid digital subscriptions tin can even create an opportunity to straight monetize your existing content marketing efforts.
Since this content is backside a gate that only paying subscribers can access through their customer account, you tin can also host exclusive content that can be streamed rather than downloaded.
You can build this blazon of business thought by using Charge Rabbit for recurring subscription billing and Sky Pilot every bit your digital commitment organisation.
iv. Digital templates and tools
Digital products tin as well come in the form of intangible tools that equip professionals to do tasks that either fall outside of their skill set up or take upwardly a lot of time. You tin can sell digital solutions to the common pain points and needs of a specific audience.
Some examples of how to sell digital products online this way include:
- Digital marketing strategy templates for entrepreneurs
- Résumé templates for job-seekers
- Mobile apps for businesses
- Graphic design templates for brochures, flyers, posters, etc.
- Adobe Photoshop filters and plugins for media editors
- Icons, fonts, or UX Kits for spider web designers
If you already have a freelance business organization, it might be worth because how y'all can plough your skills and services into digital products to create passive streams of revenue.
five. Music or fine art
If yous're a musician or an artist, chances are you've explored ways you tin monetize your talents or the audition you lot're building. While print on demand t-shirts or custom prints are always an option, there are also plenty of digital product examples for selling art and music.
A musician can sell ringtones of their best songs alongside their merch. Or a cartoonist could turn their fine art into printables, phone wallpapers, or print-on-demand products. A filmmaker tin can sell their movies online. Since you don't have to hold any inventory with online digital products, you can experiment with dissimilar formats to meet what your audience wants without much risk.
6. Services
Services tend to pair well with a variety of types of digital products considering services are essentially their contrary—with services, your "inventory" is limited to the number of working hours y'all tin accommodate.
Plus, customers oft receive digital products equally part of their "purchase" with many services. A designer will deliver logos. A personal trainer might deliver a workout programme. Leaning into this, you tin position sure services as packages containing valuable digital products.
For example, you lot could offer a consultation for a fee, along with a personalized report or Excel spreadsheet, and and then upsell your customers on your other services or products. Or yous could offer a gratis downloadable production to generate leads for your electronic mail marketing listing, a tactic that many online businesses employ today.
If there are common tasks y'all complete as part of your service business that are easy for you just valuable to your client, you tin can consider productizing them to create revenue streams that require less of your time and attempt to maintain.
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How to create digital products
While it's easy to get stuck waiting around for a eureka moment, finding a adept business idea is more of a procedure. Information technology's corking to have an idea that excites you, simply if you want an idea that sells, you'll want to follow a procedure of brainstorming, research, and validation. Here'south what goes into creating the best digital content to sell:
1. Brainstorming
Generate ideas to start with, and write them all down. Don't be as well critical—y'all don't need to come up with the all-time digital products in your starting time begin. Bad ideas can lead to adept ideas and vice versa. The key to brainstorming is to avoid overthinking things.
If you're looking for a spark for ideas on downloadable products to sell online, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Tin you teach customers how to utilise your products? For example, if yous sell knitting products, y'all could offer appointments to teach advanced knitting techniques.
- Are there things you can aid your customers with related to your overall industry? If you sell surfboards, yous could create a workout program to help your customers stay in surf shape at home.
- What are the values you've built your concern on, and what are topics related to them? For example, if you sell sustainable dress, you could create a course teaching your customers how to live a more sustainable life.
- In what means could you bring your community of customers together? If you sell kitchen supplies, y'all could run a virtual guided wine tasting event.
- What are you good at? If y'all're actually great at production photography, you lot could teach other people how to get amend at product photography likewise.
2. Inquiry
Practise some research to add to your list of business ideas. The best digital products to sell appeal to pain points your customers have related to your production, industry, or values, likewise as topics they love or get excited nearly. Both present great business opportunities to provide value in the form of an educational product.
Here are some good places to become started doing research for your top digital products:
- Facebook groups. There are Facebook groups dedicated to every niche and audience imaginable, making them a great place to larn what your potential customers care about.
- Industry forums. Forums dedicated to hobbies and communities in your industry tin help you learn more about what people desire and demand in your broader industry.
- Product reviews. Read both the reviews for your products and competitors' products to become ideas. These could come from the reviews on production pages as well as stand-alone reviews on blogs and other websites.
- Weblog posts and comments. Read the blog content your community might be reading, also equally the comments, to get even more ideas. For case, if y'all sell auto parts, dig around on automotive blogs.
- Emails from customers. Finally, don't forget to go back and reread whatsoever emails or messages you have gotten from customers over the years. The people who took the fourth dimension to contact you lot with thoughts and concerns are usually "loftier intent" customers and they might have shared some really useful insights.
iii. Validation
Before committing as well much time to your thought for digital products to sell, you want to validate it and make certain it's solid. The last thing you desire to do is invest a lot of time or money in a new venture without knowing it has a proficient chance to exist successful.
There are a couple of ways to validate your idea every bit you figure out how to sell digital products:
- Keyword enquiry. Use a keyword tool to see how many people are searching for your topics. This will requite you lot an idea of the opportunity size of each one.
- Google Trends. Search your topics on Google Trends. Wait for topics that are growing in interest. This ways the opportunity size will continue growing.
- Enquire for feedback. Contact your customers direct, either through email or social media. A poll or survey is a dandy manner to collect customer feedback.
- Start small and iterate. Sometimes, the easiest style to validate an thought is to experiment with a smaller version of the idea with room for growth. The goal is to get something out into the world as shortly every bit possible and then you can put your idea to the test and improve from it from there.
No matter what manufacture you're in, you take unique strengths and knowledge that would be valuable to your customers and selling digital products.
4. Create an online store
In one case you validate a digital production thought, you lot'll want to get an ecommerce platform to sell on. sell on. If you desire to know how to sell digital products online, this step is crucial.
Shopify is the easiest and near reputable mode to create an ecommerce shop for online digital products. You lot don't need whatsoever tech skills or a large upkeep, and yous can choose from over 100 templates with built-in features to go set upwardly speedily—all for a small $29 monthly fee. There are also over 4,000 gratuitous Shopify apps you can utilize for managing your store and selling more digital products online.
Resources:
- How to Start an Online Store
- Starting Upwards Starts Here: The Shopify Store Launch Checklist
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How to Find and Source a Winning Product to Sell
In less than xl minutes, permit us walk you through how to notice product ideas, how to validate them, and how to sell them once you lot have an idea you want to pursue.
viii apps for selling digital products on Shopify
At that place are a number of sales and marketing tools y'all'll desire to consider for selling digital products, depending on your needs:
- Digital Downloads. This free app by Shopify offers a simple way to sell digital products on your own website. Upon purchase, customers can download their file immediately and receive a link in their email.
- SendOwl. For more complex digital product businesses, SendOwl comes with a variety of features and useful automation, like expiring links and car-generated license keys, to ability your products.
- Courses. This Shopify app lets you lot create lessons, tutorials, webinars, and manuals and sell them online. Yous tin can create beautiful online education portals, embed pre-recorded videos, and even livestream lesson content. Customers can track their progress and earn certificates for their completion.
- Unmarried Music. If you're a musician selling music, Single was fabricated with you in mind. Not only does it span the gap betwixt physical and digital music sales, it likewise lets y'all easily include clips on your product page for customers to sample.
- Thinkific. This app lets you monetize your expertise and grow your audition past adding online courses to your Shopify store. You tin can upload and elevate and drop content to create a class curriculum. A free plan is bachelor, allowing you lot to create up to iii courses.
- FetchApp. FetchApp is another digital download delivery app that offers fewer features than SendOwl but has a free plan bachelor (5 MB of storage) and gives you the ability to attach multiple files to a single product.
- Heaven Pilot or Bold Memberships. These apps are ideal for building a membership plan. Y'all tin sell files and sectional video streams to customers. Customers can then access all of their previously purchased files through their ain customer accounts.
- BookThatApp, Tipo, or Sesami. These three apps are perfect for businesses that offer one-to-one or small grouping interactions and need an appointment booking solution to schedule consultations or coaching sessions with customers. All three apps have a free program bachelor.
Beyond these digital product delivery systems, there are other Shopify apps to ability and protect your digital appurtenances, such equally:
- Recurring Order & Subscription. This is an app for weekly or monthly subscriptions. Utilise it to automate recurring orders, invoices, and digital subscriptions for online memberships or programs.
- Photolock. If you want extra protection for visual products like stock photos, this app offers virtually of the security measures you may need, from watermarks to source code protection.
- Disable Right-Click. When your content is your production, this app helps you protect information technology from theft. Yous tin lock images and text then they can't be saved or copied without your permission.
Depending on your needs, these apps and more can exist used together to help y'all incorporate digital products into your Shopify shop and execute any of the digital products examples below.
Sales and marketing tips for selling digital products
Whether you're a brand-new business possessor or calculation online digital products to your existing store, keep these tips in mind:
- Create a great product. The outset criteria for creating digital products is to add value to your customers' life. Since you're competing with gratuitous content on the web, invest in building a product people tin't discover anywhere else.
- Promote a lead magnet. Regardless of how much your product costs, create a light version of it for complimentary. A costless production can help y'all build an email listing you can sell to in the future. It also opens the door for upselling and retargeting potential customers with different promotions. Free builds trust between your business organization and potential customers.
- Start an affiliate program. Affiliates are a huge source of traffic and sales for creators selling digital products. Detect influencers who are established and trusted in your manufacture and offer them a committee for each sale they make. You tin can create different percentages for unlike affiliates, then if someone has a massive audience, you can give them a college commission charge per unit to promote more and attract customers.
- Collect pre-orders. A great style to get early sales is by giving a discounted "early bird" cost. If you're releasing a new digital product, you lot can offering a fifty% discount for the offset 100 buyers, then 25% for the adjacent 100 buyers, and then release the product at total price after the 25% discount runs out. You tin can only launch the 50% disbelieve to your existing audience to reward their loyalty, go feedback, and bulldoze pre-launch sales.
- Offering a money-back guarantee. If yous're hesitant almost offering a warranty on your products, information technology makes sense. Some people could buy and use your production so ask for their money dorsum. But it's all a part of running an online business. The rewards of higher conversion rates outweigh the small percentage of people who may abuse the policy. A money-back guarantee shows potential buyers you're putting your money where your mouth is, and putting the risk on you, not them.
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Creating the best digital products for your business
Without the need to hold inventory or the overhead associated with selling physical products, all types of digital products can be assisting online business ideas.
There are endless means you can create the best digital content to sell and resell and incorporate them into your business. With a petty ingenuity and upfront investment of time, you can serve upwards irresistible value that can more than than pay for itself over fourth dimension.
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Digital products FAQ
What are some examples of digital products?
- Online courses and webinars
- Kindle books
- Audiobooks
- Software programs
- Spider web elements like Shopify or WordPress themes
- Printables
- Membership sites
- Workbooks
- PowerPoint templates
How exercise y'all create a digital product?
- Brainstorm digital product ideas.
- Research buyer pain points.
- Validate ideas through keyword and tendency research.
- Produce your digital products.
- Create a Shopify store.
- Build an audition and market your digital products.
What digital products are in demand?
- Educational products like ebooks and online courses
- Sectional membership communities
- Digital templates and tools
- Repurposed music or art
- Productized services
- Licenses to use digital assets
What kind of digital products sell best?
The acknowledged digital products include graphic design, templates, downloadable prints, music and audio, stock photography, and impress on need products like custom t-shirts, notebooks, and mugs.
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