If you want to make extra or long-term money from your online business, selling digital products is a good way to go.
It is an easy option for a beginner with very few skills and the will to succeed with an online business.
Most entrepreneurs start off with digital products but quickly expand to multiple other income streams related to digital products.
- What are digital products?
- What are digital downloads?
- Digital product ideas that you can create and sell
- What are the best selling digital products?
- Digital products to resell
- How do I create digital products?
- Marketing your digital products
- Sell digital products online – Conclusion
What are digital products?
To sell digital products online, you’ll need to do some research first to see what will fit your skills and interests.
Any product you sell on the internet that does not have a tangible form or substance is referred to as a digital product.
It’s difficult to describe a digital product without using examples – an app, software, or platform – so I’ll use my own favourite definition:
A digital product is a software-enabled product or service that provides a user with some type of functionality.
This category includes digital downloads and streaming content.
Ebooks, software, online courses, webinars, and a variety of other digital products are now available and are excellent ways to earn money online.
What are digital downloads?
It is the manner in which digital products are sold and distributed online.
A customer will find the required digital product they require on your website and make payment electronically. Once payment is confirmed the product will be activated and ready for download to the customer’s electronic device.
Once the digital product is downloaded the customer will install or use it as they wish.
Most digital products come with a license type that indicates the customer’s rights and privileges with the product. This is to prevent someone else from reselling your hard work without permission.
Digital product ideas that you can create and sell
Listing all the possibilities that you have when it comes to selling digital products online can take a very long time therefore I will only focus on what is easy for beginners.
It will give you a good idea of the possibilities and how you can start off easily without any effort that might be discouraging.
- Social media banner templates
- Pre-made Graphics
- PowerPoint Templates
- KDP Interiors
- Downloadable guides
- Recipe books
Social media banner templates
Everybody doing online business will sooner or later get onto social media but not everybody has the skills to do their own branding.
This is where you come in as a digital product creator. The idea here is to develop banner templates for all your popular social media sites and sell them as a package.
It is much easier for an online business to purchase these packages and adapt them otherwise they have to sit and design each one separately.
There are many online services that will help you in putting together these packages of which Canva is the most popular.
Getting a membership will ensure that you can build up a large portfolio and thereby ensure a consistent income stream.
Pre-made Graphics
If your skills are in graphic design then you have a large market to work with as designs for various products are always in demand.
From t-shirts to home decor is in demand and selling your designs with a commercial licence will become a very profitable income stream if you can build up an authoritative portfolio.
Most print on demand users will become repeat customers if your designs are selling well.
To get a good idea of what graphic designs are in demand and how much you can expect to charge you can do some research on platforms such as Fiverr, Teepublic, Creative Fabrica or Redbubble.
PowerPoint Templates
Most of us know how to put together a Powerpoint presentation so it is not that difficult for a beginner to design a few templates as a package based on specific niches.
In order to stand out from others, you need to do your niche research thoroughly to see what is selling and what is not.
Just by typing in “Powerpoint Templates for sale” in your Google search bar, you will be able to browse thousands of available templates.
Here is a tip on how to enter the template market: Keep it simple. People do not want complicated and when they do they are not always willing to pay the price for it.
Building up a sizable portfolio is the only way to attract enough sales and make this income stream profitable.
KDP Interiors
Although fairly saturated the Amazon KDP market for interiors are still very popular. Notebooks and journals still remain good sellers. There will always be new sellers entering the market with new products that compete with existing products.
With the Amazon algorithm being developed, it is no longer a copy and paste business, so new sellers are looking for different approaches to their interiors.
Some of the most popular KDP interiors customers are always looking for are:
- Adult colouring books
- Learn to read for kids
- Learn to write for kids
- Puzzles
- Diaries
- Journals
- Notebooks
Downloadable guides
Falling nearly into the eBook genre is a downloadable step by step guide.
There is a large demand for “How to” information, so it is common sense that there is a big market for this type of information.
The majority of guides are available as free downloads, but there are also businesses and entrepreneurs who purchase these as marketing tools to draw visitors to their sites.
Downloadable guides can also be listed as PLR documents with various copyright labels and pricing structures. This will allow businesses to add their own branding to these downloadable guides and will therefore be prepared to pay more for it. later on Skills
Recipe books
Who doesn’t like a decent recipe book filled with ideas that will make their time in the kitchen more enjoyable?
Recipe books and downloadable guides can both serve as helpful resources for users.
It can be a drawcard for visitors to their site or you can sell it outright on your own niche website. Most recipe books these days will target specific niches such as:
- Lose weight recipes
- Keto Recipes
- Diabetes Cookbooks
- Low Carb Recipes
- Bread Recipes
There are too many niches that you can target. Doing thorough niche research is necessary so you can build up a large inventory and create a valuable income stream.
What are the best-selling digital products?
The best-selling digital products are usually not the most profitable to develop, but they do offer a chance to improve your skills.
The competition in these markets is high but as said it gives you the opportunity to learn from the experts who have been in the game for a long time. Through research, you will see what is selling as these entrepreneurs will not continue creating products that do not sell.
Five of the most popular digital products to sell at this stage are:
- Templates of any kind
- Graphic Designs
- Niche-specific photography
- Codes and Scripts
- Video overlays
There are many digital products available for you to create income from, so do thorough research to find the best opportunities.
Digital products to resell
There is more than one option if you want to sell digital products online but do not have the skills. There are other creators like yourself that will create products for you in order to resell.
You must just make sure that you obtain exclusive resellers rights to your products or your ideas can be resold to anyone.
The most popular markets where you can obtain resellable content are:
- PLR Products
- Fiverr Creators
- Code Canyon
PLR Products
These are digital products that have been rebranded and resale-ready, but you may not have the exclusive rights to them. It has been sold many times over to other creators.
To rebrand any of these items as your own, make sure the license that comes with the product allows you to do so.
This way of reselling PLR digital products will remain popular as the sales will depend on your marketing strategy and the platforms you offer it on.
Fiverr Creators
To make sure you have unique digital content to resell, use freelancing services such as those found on Fiverr.
You can work with the creator to create the products you need, at an agreed-upon cost.
You should be careful to protect your copyright and make sure the cost of the product is low enough to be profitable, while still providing good quality.
Keep in mind that the creator will only deliver as good as your instructions are.
Code Canyon
The leader in code, scripts and templates Code Canyon has many options on offer. Be sure that the products you purchase come with reseller and commercial rights.
When it comes to not creating your own unique digital products the question of reseller’s rights and the profit margin you can make will be your biggest concern.
Creating your own products will guarantee exclusive usage rights and more control over quality and pricing.
How do I create digital products?
As a beginner, you will be challenged to learn the skills needed to create your own quality digital products.
Fortunately for us, we live in the age of technology and the information highway called the web.
There are many free resources available on how to create digital products, but it will require some effort on your part.
No online business idea will be executed without hard work and persistence.
There are only two ways of creating digital products that you can sell online.
- Online Platforms
- Own Software
Online Platforms
There are many platforms on the web that will allow you to create your own products. Some will require that you subscribe to the service but you will be limited in what you can do with the end product.
Some of these restrictions will include:
- Monthly limits
- Watermarked product
- Personal use only
- No commercial use
It’s a good learning experience to see what is required to create high-quality products on your own, and how to do it.
With experience, you will be able to reproduce similar content without being guilty of piracy or plagiarism. This is a no-no in online business when your income depends on it.
It is not worth copying or stealing other designs if you are putting in the hard work to start your own sustainable business online.
Own software
To sell digital products online, create a unique brand and use software to help you do it.
Luckily for a beginner, you can start off with 100% free software that can do the basics while learning. Free software that can be used by any beginner:
- Inkscape Vector Graphics
- Gimp Graphics Software
- Google Sheets, Slides and Spreadsheets
These will help you start your creative career and develop the skills you need to upgrade if you need to.
Most beginners will stick with these for the rest of their careers if it is sufficient for what they need to produce and the reason is that it has a low learning curve to master.
Marketing your digital products
Marketing your products is essential for success in any business.
Unfortunately starting your own online business will place great demand on your resources if you want to make a success of it and rise above the opposition.
The only way to do this is to flood the web with your presence without spamming the various platforms. You need to be on all the social media platforms where your customers might be present.
Building a recognizable brand on popular social media platforms may help you start receiving free organic business.
The top 6 Social Media platforms
- Tumblr
There are many others but your secret to success will be to identify those places where your customers hang out.
Also as a beginner, it is not recommended to start off trying to manage all at the same time as it will take up a lot of your time to market yourself daily.
Start with one platform until you have to build a presence that can be managed before moving on to the next.
Being on all at the same time does not necessarily mean more traffic especially if you are focusing on the wrong platform. Extending your reach you can do this through email marketing, advertising or automated posting.
These are the top three auto-posting software packages that are recommended for beginners because it offers both paid and free options.
Although free options are restricted it is more than enough to get the beginner going without wasting creation time.
- Blueticks Whatapp Scheduler
- Buffer
- Mailerlite ( EMail Marketing )
I would also recommend learning the use of marketing options already available on Twitter and Facebook which already allows you to schedule posts for the future.
This extra time will help you to focus on creating more digital products.
Sell digital products online – Conclusion
Selling digital products online is an easy option for beginners to start a sustainable income stream from home.
It is far from an instant get rich scheme as it takes time to build up quality inventory and niche authority.
This you can only do by learning new skills throughout the process.
Skills are as much a valuable gain as is the income you can generate from them. These online business skills will enable you to explore multiple income streams available on the web.