Every business needs a product or service to sell, and your eCommerce business is no exception. The lion’s share of successful eCommerce businesses actually sell digital products, rather than physical ones.
There are a lot of advantages to selling digital products:
- They don’t need storage space in a warehouse.
- They don’t cost anything to ship or deliver.
- You can sell each one many times.
- You don’t have to deal with manufacturers or suppliers.
Digital products are also frequently easier and faster to produce.
There’s just one thing: you have to choose which digital products to sell on your eCommerce site. If you have a particular skill or talent, like musical ability or artistic talent, then the choice is easy – you’ll sell digital music tracks or art prints. But many of us find it a little more tricky.
Here’s our guide to choosing the best digital products for your eCommerce business.
eBooks
eBooks are incredibly popular today. In 2019, eBooks are expected to bring in $13,693 million of revenue, with an annual growth rate of 6.2%.
Your eBook can be on any topic you can think of. If you already have a blog, look for your most popular posts and see if you can bundle them together and repurpose them as an eBook. Remember, eBooks don’t have to be super long – even 20,000 words is great for a non-fiction eBook.
eBooks are easy to make and publish on Kindle Direct Publisher, Apple iBooks, Kobo, and many more large and small online selling platforms. You can also choose a digital aggregator like Smashwords or Draft2Digital, which converts your text to eBook format and then distributes it to multiple platforms, or sell your eBook through your own website. Some of these platforms have built-in marketing tools to help you promote your eBook and upsell connected products.
Online Courses
According to marketing thought leader Neil Patel, “An online course [is] one of the best ways to monetize your content today.” It’s true that it takes time to create a good online course, but once you’ve made it, you can earn money from it for months, if not years, with just a little tweaking to keep it up to date.
One of Neil’s examples, Rob Percival, spent three months developing a 30-hour course on programming, which earned $15,000 in one month alone.
Your online course can be on any topic, so pick something that you’re interested in and skilled and knowledgeable about. It could be photography, creative writing, basic plumbing, advanced Javascript – the world is your oyster.
The many platforms for selling online courses, including marketplaces like Udemy and all-on-one platforms like Kajabi. These make it easy to plan, prepare, and sell your online courses. Some platforms even allow you to build landing pages within the platform, or to promote your course with sophisticated marketing automation funnels.
Membership Sites
Have you considered charging visitors to enter your website? It might sound radical, but membership or paid subscription sites can be very effective. People actually value content more when they have to pay to get it. They also like to feel like they are members of a select club.
If you have a popular website or blog with plenty of traffic, you just put some of your best content behind a paywall, and hey presto – you have a digital product! Creating a paywall is fairly simple, but bear in mind that you also need to promote your subscription option in email newsletters, popups and other marketing placements.
Bear in mind that it’s not a good idea to charge people to access all of your materials. The best approach is to offer some of your content for free, to attract new visitors. Then you can create gated content that’s only available for paid members.
Software
We all need so much software to get through our lives. Mobile apps are among the most popular digital products for entrepreneurs. Globally, we spent $71.3 million on mobile apps and games in 2018.
But there are plenty of software products for you to sell, from online games to practical apps, business software to browser extensions. You could sell Wordpress themes and plugins, desktop business software for accounting or time tracking, or SaaS products, like email marketing apps and project management or content management tools.
Of course, to sell any type of software you need to build it, so if you don’t know how to code, you need to team up with someone who does. You can sell your software through online marketplaces like the WordPress plugin directory, app stores like the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, or on your own website.
Graphics
Selling graphics goes way beyond art and pictures. It includes:
- Templates for email marketing campaigns, social media posts, or websites
- Logos, vectors, and infographics for businesses to use online and offline
- Custom backgrounds and avatars
- Fonts
- Themes for WordPress and other sites
- Printables like stickers, art prints, gift tags and workbooks
You’ll need a good graphics program to design high quality digital products, as well as skill at art or design.
Take time, though, to think about how you’ll sell them – you could use an online selling platform like CreativeMarket or MyFonts, or sell them through your own website. It’s important to take steps to prevent people stealing your graphics, so use a watermark to assert your copyright and make sure that no one else can claim ownership of your images.
The Best Digital Products Depend on You
As you can see, there are loads of digital products that you might sell online. There’s no single “best digital product” that’s right for everyone.
Each business is unique. It’s up you to think about your skills and knowledge areas, consider how much time you’re willing to put into creating a product, and choose the best digital product for your business.