How to sell digital products online

Selling digital products online is a great way to make money. You only need to create your product once but you can sell it as many times as you want. You don't have to worry about having stock levels, warehousing or delivery. And you can sell a huge range of products, from emagazine subscriptions to tiny house designs and ebooks. However, creating your digital product is only one step in the process. You also need to deliver your digital product, take payment, and actually get people to buy it. In this article, I'll offer some insider tips on how you can set up a successful digital products business.

Working out what digital products to sell

1. Share what you've learnt

You don't need to wait until you're the number one expert in the world on a certain subject to create and sell a digital product online. If you have been digging into a subject that bugs you and want to share what you've learnt with other people then you're in a great position to share your knowledge and make some money, whether you choose to sell an ebook, a fitness video or an emagazine.

Joel Runyon, founder of Impossible and the Ultimate Paleo Guide, turned his blog – read by just his mum – into a succesful business selling ebooks and videos. Read the full case study.

2. Grow your network early

Don't wait until you've finished creating your product to start marketing it. Even when you are still working on your book, or video game, or set of baby clothing patterns, start building your community. Share progress reports and ask questions. Get involved in discussions related to your product area. You don't even need to mention your product or service – just position yourself as someone who is interested and enthusiastic about an area connected to your product, and willing to talk about it in an accessible way.

While writing her ebook, Sarah Hinch posted exerts on a doggie Facebook group – and attracted a devoted audience even before the ebook was finished.

3. Don't wait for perfect before creating and selling your digital product

Perfection doesn’t take into consideration of the cost, time, or significance of something. It’s just an illusive, unreal, unattainable goal. It’s better to do good work really well. That way you’re contributing to people’s lives, instead of locked in your own head about whether your work measures up to an impossible standard.Michael Hyatt

If you wait for 'perfect' before selling your digital product online, you also run the risk of creating something very polished that nobody wants. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries talks about the benefits of creating a minimum viable product (MVP) that you can test with buyers at an early stage.

4. Get early stage feedback

Get early stage feedback on your digital product. It's easy to assume that you know what customers need – but you could be wrong. For a start, you are too involved with your product (what do you mean it's not easy to use? You just select this and do that and then this and...). And sometimes people just surprise you. If you make yourself available and easy to contact you'll also create good will – and your customers will be more likely to hang on in there if you have any teething issues with your digital product.

Sorting out payment and delivery options

5. Make life easy for your customers

Make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy your digital product. This means making sure that your checkout process is mobile friendly (mobile now accounts for 50.3% of all ecommerce traffic), that you don't overwhelm people by asking for too much information at once, and that people have faith in the checkout process. Look for a checkout that is fully customisable if you want to convert the highest percentage of your customers.

Also, consider giving your customers a range of payment options. Some customer love PayPal; others hate it. For more advice read our article How to improve your conversion rate:Getting more people through the checkout.

SendOwl even allow our sellers to accept payment in Bitcoins

6. Make life easy for yourself

There's no point feeling smug about now having to worry about stock issues and warehousing, if you still feel like tearing your head out because of bugs, poor security, having to manually email customers files, and trying to customise a checkout process that can't be customised.

Digital delivery companies like SendOwl sort out payment processing, checkout and secure automated digital delivery for you. Which means that all you have to do is create your product and then get paid. We also make sure that SendOwl is as easy to use as possible, so you won't have to waste time on day-to-day management.

Get selling your digital product

Selling digital products online is a great way to make money. You only need to create your product once but you can sell it as many times as you want.

7. Sell through a sales description page (or social media)

If you don't have a website or blog, or want to give your customers a quick way to buy your product or service without dragging them to your website, then a sales description page might be your best choice. SendOwl offers this choice to all sellers. Sales description pages are a short, punchy way to show customers why they should buy from you, without distracting them with extra information. If you want to condense the sales funnel further, you can even send people direct to your checkout from social media. Although this type of 'social selling' works best if people already known your company, or with certain types of digital products that can be ‘impulse’ bought.

SendOwl's sales description page is a great way to sell your product or service without a website

8. Sell through your own blog or website

Of course, selling through your own blog or website is a great option because you can persuade new customers they want your product, even though they didn’t know this 5 minutes ago. This is a big advantage over selling through a marketplace, where you’re limited in terms of marketing copy and are unable to develop a relationship with your customers.

If you're selling digital products through your own website or blog, you can either use an Instant Buy button or Cart functionality. The former is better for one-off products, while the latter is best if you have a range of products and would like your customers to buy as many as possible.

This example from Avocado Social uses an Instant Buy option to sell a social media course plus extras.

9. Get other people to sell your digital products for you

You can also get people to sell your product for you if you set up an affiliate scheme. You can either choose a specialist affiliate service, or a digital delivery provider like SendOwl that has a built-in affiliate scheme so you don’t need additional software. If you don’t know much about affiliate selling read our article Boost your digital product sales with an affiliate scheme for some tips on getting started. Just make sure that you recruit quality affiliates otherwise you could devalue your brand.

10. Optimise your sales funnel

Just because you’re selling direct to your viewers, readers or fans doesn’t mean you have to settle for basic marketing functionality. Consider testing marketing options like upsells, pay-what-you-want pricing and discounting so you can maximise your revenue. We found that one-click upsells increased our seller's total revenue by between 4-20% – with no additional marketing spend.

Upsells are easy to set up and can increase your total revenue

Good luck with your digital products business!

Selling digital products online and can be an exciting and rewarding way to make money, whether you're aiming to make over a million or just to pay for your next holiday.

Good luck – and let us know how you get on.

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