What is a Digital Product?
A digital product is a virtual item a customer can purchase online. Usually its some kind of content like an ebook, course, video, or newsletter.
Most digital products are either entertainment, or educational, but there’s a healthy market for products in the organization space tool.
Digital vs Physical Products
There’s a couple reasons why digital products can be a better route for e-commerce than physical, I’ll dig into them below:
Minimal Startup Cost
Say you want to start an e-commerce brand for t-shirts. You could do print on demand, but making and selling the shirts yourself lets you keep more revenue. Problem then is the additional costs – equipment, supplies, the merchandise itself, then all the costs related to marketing and selling the t-shirts.
With digital products, you eliminate nearly all of those costs. Sure, you might need to pay for some specific equipment (microphones for a podcast, cameras for a course), but once you’ve built the product you can sell an infinite number of it.
Passive Income
Another bonus of selling a digital product, and its unlimited nature, is that you can make a thing one time, and sell it for as long as you want to. This is considered “passive” income, as you’re not actively putting effort into making money when it sells, but I think the passive part of that phrase is a bit oversold.
Truly passive income, in my opinion, means you don’t work to generate it (like stock dividends). Since you do have to put effort into marketing, hosting the product, etc I think this is more of a semi-passive form of income.
Easy to Scale
Like I mentioned, a digital product is infinitely scalable. You make it one time and can sell it to an unlimited number of people. Also, because you don’t have to actively continue producing the product, you can move on to another offering to continue to grow your business.
Since your input can be a one-time endeavor, you’re able to spend more time marketing or growing your business!
How to Create a Digital Product
First, pick the type of product you want to build, some options include:
- Entertainment – videos, podcasts, music
- Courses
- Document templates
- Fonts
- Software & apps
- Ebooks
If you’re stuck on what to sell, you can narrow it down by asking yourself questions like:
- Do want to teach people how to use your products?
- What are you good at?
- Are there things you can help people with, related to your niche?
- What do you wish existed, but doesn’t?
- What kinds of products have you found helpful before?
Remember, providing value to your audience is the ultimate goal. Helping them solve a problem is a great place to start with your product, but isn’t the only way to do it.
So, you’ve picked the type of product you want to build, now you have to go make it! I’m not going to give a full overview of how to make every type of digital product out there in this post, but I’ll give a quick overview and some thoughts to get you started
Entertainment Products
I’m including things like videos, podcasts, and music in this category. If you’re a creative type and like to entertain people, this is probably a good area to look at. This category also is one that typically has the highest startup cost, as you need to buy equipment for the most part to make the product.
For podcasts, you’ll need a way to record your voice and audio editing software. While you could use your phone for recording, spending money on an affordable microphone setup will do wonders for the quality of your podcast. As for software, you can find a bunch of free or low-cost options online.
If you want to make music, you likely already have the instruments you’ll play. One thing to think about is you don’t just need to make music for listening, you can make backing tracks for other artists to use, or music for use in videos, games, or steaming. To record, you’ll need software and equipment suitable for your particular instruments.
Last but not least is entertainment videos, like movies, skits, or Youtube. Phones now have really great video cameras, but you’ll want a decent microphone setup for good audio. You’ll also need video editing software, which there are lots of free or low-cost options available.
Courses
Courses are usually a video product, which means you’ll need the same equipment as you would for entertainment videos. Courses are an educational product, where you share your expertise on a subject to help your audience.
A great course starts with a comprehensive curriculum, breaking down complex concepts into digestible modules. Use engaging multimedia elements such as videos, and downloadable resources. Prioritize clarity and interactivity to enhance the learning experience.
Regularly update your course to stay relevant and continue to provide value to your audience. Ultimately, creating and selling digital courses requires a blend of expertise, creativity, and strategic marketing to succeed.
Document Templates
Document templates include things like spreadsheets, journals (either complete or pages), planners, and so much more.
There’s a variety of tools used to make this kind of product, often you’ll use the software the template is made for to build it (like Excel for spreadsheets), but for the more design-heavy products tools like Canva or Adobe Illustrator are good options.
Fonts
If you’re passionate about typography, fonts are a great option as they’re used pretty much everywhere. You can use tools like Glyphs or FontLab to digitize and refine the characters, then post the font group for sale!
Software & Mobile Apps
This area can be incredibly lucrative, especially if your idea is one that you can sell to businesses (B2B). That said, app development is difficult, so I wouldn’t recommend you pursue it without previous experience even if it was just for fun.
These days, you can use no-code or low-code tools to build out a basic app, then work with a freelance developer to make the app. You’ll still need to understand user interface and experience design to make something people want to use.
EBooks
Last but certainly not least, you can write and sell eBooks! Fiction, non-fiction, how-to guides, all options for books you can write and sell. If you have expertise in a subject, you can probably write a book on it that people will want to buy.
Fiction writing can also be a great option if that’s something you’re interested in. With so many self-publishing options out there, there’s no reason not to put your material out into the world!
So How Do You Sell This Stuff?
Selling can be the hard part, but with the challenge comes the fun in my opinion!
Depending on the kind of product you want to sell, you’ve got a couple options:
Build Your Own Store
Building your own online store means you own every part of the customer experience. You don’t have to pay extra fees for offering more products, and you keep more of the money from each sale.
There are downsides though. Since you own the store, support is also on you. When things don’t work it’s up to you to get them fixed. Unless you outsource the website portion, you’ll need to keep things up-to-date and well-maintained.
Check out Shopify for more info on starting your own e-commerce store, they’re a powerhouse in the industry and have tons of resources.
Sell It On A Market Place
If you want to save time and hassle, posting your products on a marketplace is a great option. Plenty of people have found success selling digital products on sites like Etsy, printables are a very popular product type there.
There’s a marketplace for pretty much every kind of digital product out there, so do some digging and find the ones that work best for what you want to sell!
So that’s it! You’ve got an overview of what goes into making and selling digital products. Now get out there and do it yourself!
