How to Make Money Selling Digital Products
In the modern online economy, digital products represent one of the most lucrative business models. Delivering value to customers through downloadable products while avoiding physical inventory and shipping logistics provides immense income potential.
From ebooks, courses, templates, and more – you can build an entirely digital product-based business and earn income passively. This guide will explore different digital product ideas and how to get started selling online.
Why Sell Digital Products?
Some key advantages of selling digital downloads versus physical products:
- Low overhead – Avoid all inventory costs, shipping, and fulfillment. Products are delivered instantly.
- High margins – Digital products have 90%+ profit margins since there is no per unit cost.
- Passive income – Products continue selling 24/7 with minimal ongoing time investment.
- Scalable – No production constraints, instantly serve thousands of customers.
- Automation – Sales, distribution, and delivery can be fully automated.
- Flexible pricing – Test different price points, bundles, membership levels.
Selling digital products online is one of the purest entrepreneurial business models. Build once, sell forever.
Best Digital Products To Sell
Almost any product can be turned into a digital version. Top sellers include:
- eBooks – Fiction, non-fiction, how-to guides, recipes
- Online courses – Video lessons, coaching programs
- Stock media – Photos, videos, graphics, music
- Software – Apps, plugins, templates, themes, scripts
- Blueprints/guides – Business plans, strategy guides, toolkit PDFs
- Memberships – Premium subscriptions, communities, ongoing training
- Audio – Podcast compilations, meditation tracks, audio lessons
Any niche or industry you’re knowledgeable in provides digital product opportunities. Identify customer pain points and deliver solutions.
Leveraging PLR Content
One shortcut many digital entrepreneurs use is repurposing PLR content. PLR stands for “private label rights”, which refers to content you can purchase and customize to resell.
Sources for quality PLR content include:
- PLR.me – eBooks, articles, videos, graphics
- Quality Private Label Rights – Packaged PLR bundles with legal licenses
- Muncheye – Curated marketplace for PLR ebooks and articles
- PLRGoldmine – Huge PLR library with a focus on online business topics
- GoPLR – Massive collection of PLR articles on many topics
PLR provides a headstart for creating products more rapidly. You get professional quality content to adapt and infuse your expertise into.
Digital Planners As PLR Content
Digital planners and planning inserts have also emerged as top-selling items on Etsy. You can create stylish and customizable planner templates for budgets, schedules, goal-setting, project management, and more. Tailor your designs to niches like business, fitness, weddings, or education. Ensure your planner inserts are visually appealing and functional. Offer individual inserts or complete planning bundles. Optimized SEO and marketing of your planner shop is key. With the productivity and organization trend, planners allow you to carve out a specialized niche.
Some of the most in-demand and best-selling digital planner templates on Etsy include:
- Fitness and health planners to track meals, exercise, and wellness goals.
- Budget and finance planners to organize income, spending, savings, and investments.
- Student planners for scheduling classes, assignments, tests, and activities.
- Wedding planners to map out weddings tasks and timelines leading up to the big day.
- Home organization planners with cleaning schedules, to-do lists, and more.
- Travel planners to plan dream vacations and trip itineraries.
- Goal setting planners to set and achieve personal, health, and career goals.
Cater your digital planner shop to popular planning niches based on seasonal demand and evergreen needs like health, budgeting, and organization. Focus on creating the most useful and visually appealing templates.
“You just got to stay focused and believe in yourself and trust your own ability and judgment.” – Mark Cuban
Building Your Digital Store
To sell your digital products direct to customers, you need an online storefront. Top platforms include:
- Shopify – Leading all-in-one commerce platform, wide app ecosystem
- Gumroad – Simple digital product sales, customizable storefront pages
- SendOwl – Digital delivery, shopping cart, and affiliate tools
- Selz – Digital downloads, memberships, and subscriptions
- PayHip – Digital item sales integrated with Stripe payments
Choose a platform that aligns with your tech capabilities and business model. Most integrate with payment processors and email list managers.
Promoting and Selling Your Digital Products
Driving traffic and sales for your digital offerings requires ongoing promotion:
- Start an email list to market to buyers directly
- Create funnels with lead magnets to convert visitors into buyers
- Advertise through Google Ads, Facebook Ads, relevant affiliate programs
- Build SEO traffic through blogging and content tied to your products
- Pitch to promoters, bloggers, influencers in your niche for endorsements
- Create affiliate programs to get others promoting on commission
- Offer promotions and launch discounts to incentivize purchases
Consistent marketing and reinvesting profits into growth provides compounding returns over time from digital product sales.
From Side Hustle to Full-Time Business
While selling digital products makes for a great side hustle at first, it can slowly grow into a full-time passive income source with the right strategy and execution.
The combination of low overhead and commission-free platforms empowers everyday people to build substantial businesses selling online. With focus and perseverance, you can live the laptop lifestyle and ditch the 9 to 5.
Selling professionally created products as your own presents some ethical issues though.
Ideally, you want to infuse your own expertise and perspectives into products rather than just repurposing as-is. Add additional sections, rewrite key parts in your own voice, combine multiple PLRs into something new.
At the end of the day, developing digital products that provide true value based on skills you uniquely offer is the most rewarding and sustainable approach.
