Its never been easier for retailers to drive their brick-and-mortar stores online, especially when the digital transformation has grown from storefronts to products.
Digital products aren’t only about eBooks and online courses; they are much more than that. Thanks to the internet, a whole world of virtual products is waiting to be discovered by savvy entrepreneurs who want to monetize their ideas and build an audience simultaneously.
If you’re also thinking of how to sell digital products online, worry not! There are plenty of digital products you can create and sell as your own business. Just keep in mind that a good business venture always takes some work.
Even though selling digital products differs from selling physical goods, you can learn several things to increase your chances of success.
So, let’s start with understanding what precisely digital products are:
What are digital products?
Video games, software, streaming movies, and apps might be the first things that come to your mind after hearing “digital products.” If so, you are right!
Virtual items that you can download instantly by paying for them are called digital products. Most of these products are intangible and usually start in digital formats but carry value- to the tune of a projected $331 billion industry in 2022.
Don’t worry; there are various other ways to create digital products without hiring a film crew, a team of software developers and other expensive things. All you need is- knowledge, creativity, skills and expertise.
In addition to learning how to come up with digital products ideas, it’s critical to understand the difference between digital products and physical products:
Digital Products vs Physical Products
As discussed above, digital products are mostly intangible goods or services you can create once and repeatedly sell online. Therefore, it gives merchants complete freedom to focus solely on improving their products instead of building more. Whereas on the other hand, physical items need constant reproduction and replenishment.
Moreover, digital products are downloadable, making them more convenient to sell and buy than physical products. Of course, you don’t have to run your business around digital products; however, you can always add digital products to your business.
Benefits of selling digital products
Here are some of the significant advantages why selling digital products can be beneficial for you in various ways:
Lower Projection: The digital products don’t need physical storage, so there is no packing and shipping to pay for.
Extra Revenue: Digital products make an extra revenue stream for your business, helping you to reach out to a global audience through your computer.
Sustainable: Usually, digital products don’t degrade over time. Even if they become extrinsic due to the technology changes, it is easy to update them.
Filled Inventory: You can sell as many digital courses or software programs as possible. You will always have a filled inventory because you can always duplicate digital products.
Easy to Enter: Selling digital products is not the smoothest journey, but it sure is easy to enter. For instance, you can sell your experience through online courses or sell eBooks. All you need is experience and a platform like Windo to get started.
However, it’s not all roses; digital products come with quite a few challenges:
Drawbacks of selling digital products
Below are a few of the challenges of selling digital products that you would want to hear about and prepare yourself while entering the industry of selling digital products:
Competing with Free Products: With digital goods, it becomes pretty easy for consumers to find an alternative and free version of products that you’re selling. So, it is critical for you to think about your next steps; the niche you target and the value you’re offering for the products. It will help you in building your brand to compete successfully.
High Competition: As mentioned above, it is easy to start selling digital products. Hence, it is one of the reasons why there is tough competition in this field of work.
Piracy/ Theft: It is vital to take precautions and reduce the risk of theft of your products. Because stealing and reselling digital products doesn’t require much effort.
Restrictions on How to Sell: For instance, to sell physical products through Facebook and Instagram’s sales channels. You have to follow their commerce policy.
Don’t worry. You can overcome these drawbacks by employing the right or proper tools while building your digital products business.
Steps to follow to sell digital products online
Now that you have understood digital products and learned about their benefits and drawbacks. Let’s move forward to steps that you need to follow to create and sell digital products online:
Come up with digital product ideas
Wondering what to sell and how to sell digital products?
All you need to do is remember that you will cater those products to your target audience. So, it is better to find their (your target audience) concerns on social media.
Other than that, you can try developing a questionnaire for your survey of potential customers to get good digital product ideas.
Recognize a problem to solve
After creating a list of many ideas, it’s time for you to switch gears and start evaluating them. During the evaluation, consider all the problems each idea is solving.
For instance, if you are planning to teach people how to workout without any equipment, then you’re helping people in:
Improving their health
Increasing their confidence
Saving a large amount that they’d usually spend on a gym or trainer and many more.
Note: The more complex problem your digital product solves, the more it will sell on the market. Therefore, try to identify every problem each idea solves and align them from most painful to least painful. Later, choose that specific idea that solves one of the most painful problems.
Target a specific niche
You must have heard the saying, “The riches are in the niches.” It will really help you if you target a specific niche when thinking of selling digital products.
Not to mention setting your targets on a specified target market enables you to:
Make your digital products more attractive and valuable by provisioning your digital products to the particular requirements of your niche.
Customize your marketing communications to the needs of your target market’s requirements, language, and desires.
Dominate the competition and build authority by becoming the go-to expert in a small niche.
Validate your idea
When you’ve put your heart and soul into making digital products, you would want them to sell anyhow. So, it is critical for you to validate your idea before creating your first digital product. If you don’t know where to start, you can begin with basic research:
You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to see the number of people searching for terms related to your idea.
You can check Google Trends to make sure the demand for your idea is growing or steady.
Then, create a minimal viable product, MVP, to test your idea in the real world.
For instance, offer online fitness coaching instead of making an 8-week video course about how to get fit. This way, you can test your product-market fit without putting too much time into it.
Create your digital product to sell online
Once you’ve validated your idea, start to create your digital product. If you haven’t already created one, choose a format first. Because you always have time to improve your digital products as you learn more about your customer’s requirements and desires.
For example, if you want to create a video course with downloadable resources, continue offering coaching calls and first start with making the downloadable resources.
Finally, create an online store
Wondering where to sell digital products? Then, let’s cut to the chase and discuss some of the best places to sell digital products.
Basically, it all depends on the type of products you’re thinking of selling and the people you are selling to. Of course, having your own website is always an option. However, Windo is considered one of the significant online marketplaces to sell such items. It is perfect if you are selling templates, downloadables and printables.
All you need is your own marketing and installation of the right apps.
Drive traffic
Once you’re all set up, it’s time to drive sales. Here are some of the best tips for internet marketing that you can use to generate sales:
Paid advertising: Advertise on platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Social media marketing: Share your content and engage your target market on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Influencer marketing: Get influencers to promote your products and offers to their audience.
Content marketing: Create and share engaging content to attract and convert more people into customers.
Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimize your website and content to rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) to develop modified web traffic.
Email marketing: Grab potential customers’ contact information and boost them into paying customers.
Affiliate marketing: Get third-party marketers to promote your products and offers in exchange for a fee or commission.
Conclusion
To conclude, there are thousands of ways in which you can create your digital products and integrate them into your business. By combining inventiveness and upfront investment of time, you will be able to offer a compelling value to your product that can more than pay for itself over time.