Are you looking to start your own online business selling digital products on Shopify? If so, you're in good company.
With over 2.4 million merchants using Shopify to sell their products (source: storeleads), it's one of the most popular e-commerce platforms out there. And with the global digital products market blooming with the rise of eCommerce, there's never been a better time to jump in and start your own digital products store.
But where do you start? Selling digital products on a platform like Shopify can seem intimidating at first, but with the right guidance and strategies, you can quickly become a pro. In this blog post, we'll provide you with all the information you need to get started and succeed in 2024.
We'll cover everything you need to get started to sell digital products on Shopify stores to marketing your products and maximizing your profits. Plus, we'll provide you with a bonus section that includes tips and tricks for taking your digital products business to the next level.
So if you're ready to join the ranks of successful digital products sellers on Shopify, keep reading.
Why Sell Digital Products Online?
Selling digital products online is a great way to start an online business with minimal investment and maximum earning potential. But there is more. So let's explore some of the top benefits of selling digital products online:
Low Overhead Costs
One of the biggest advantages of selling digital products online is the low overhead costs involved. Unlike physical products, digital products don't require inventory, storage, or shipping. This means that you can create and sell your digital products on Shopify with minimal upfront investment, and your profit margins can be much higher.
Unlimited Reach
Another major benefit of selling digital products online is the potential to reach any prospective customer from anywhere. With the internet, you can sell your digital products to customers worldwide, 24/7. This means you have access to a global customer base, which can help you grow your business much faster.
Easy to Scale
You can create multiple products and add them to your online store quickly and easily. Since they are digital in nature, your customers get the product instantly, via email or by simply downloading them directly once the payment is made. This way, you can offer a wide variety of digital products without worrying about inventory or storage.
And with the help of Shopify's built-in tools, you can track your sales, manage your inventory, and analyze your customer data. This makes it easier to make informed decisions about how to grow your business and increase your profits.
High-Profit Margins
As there is no shipping or packaging involved, you can attend to numerous orders in less time, accounting for better revenue and more profits.
Even though selling digital products online sounds easy (for a wide range of reasons, as we discussed above), it comes with a few challenges that you might want to keep an eye out for.
Intellectual Property Protection
Digital products are vulnerable to piracy and copyright infringement. It's important to take measures to protect your intellectual property through watermarking and encryption to reduce the chances of theft. However, these measures may not be 100% effective, and it can be difficult and expensive to enforce your rights.
Finding Your Niche
The internet is a crowded marketplace, and it can be difficult to stand out from the competition. Identifying a niche market for your digital products and developing a unique value proposition to attract customers is important. This can also depend on your skills and what kind of digital products you can create and sell, and how you can make them unique to stand out from the competition.
Once you start selling digital products online, it is best advised to protect your digital assets from theft or misuse. You can use Photolock for your visual products, or if your content is your product, then with Disable right-click, you can avoid copying and saving images or text.
What to Avoid While Selling Digital Products Online?
Before you start selling digital products online, ensure you steer clear from the following red flags:
- Selling pirated or illegal content: You should always ensure that your products are genuine and legally acquired. It's illegal to sell digital products that infringe on someone's copyright, trademark, or intellectual property.
- Over-promising and under-delivering: It's important to set realistic expectations for your customers. If you promise something you cannot deliver, you risk damaging your reputation and losing customer trust.
- Neglecting security: Digital products are vulnerable to online threats such as hacking, data theft, and malware attacks. You need to ensure that your website and payment gateways are secure to protect your customers' personal information.
- Failing to provide customer support: It's essential to have a support system in place to assist your customers with any issues or queries they may have. Failing to provide adequate customer support can result in negative reviews and loss of business.
How to Sell Digital Products on Shopify?
Selling your digital products on Shopify comes with certain advantages compared to other eCommerce platforms. For example, the Shopify pricing plan enables businesses of any size and individuals to kick start their dream eCommerce project without needing any heavy investment. Plus, Shopify comes with unbeatable reliability that creates and maintains a positive image for your brand.
You can learn more about the benefits and features of Shopify here → Shopify Features + Benefits.
Now, let’s learn how to sell digital products on Shopify in 2024:
Set Up Your Shopify Store
To get started, you need to open your Shopify store. All you have to do is visit Shopify.com and enter your email address. Then, hit the "Start free trial" button. Since Shopify offers a free trial period of 14 days, you don't have to worry about paying right away.
You will then be redirected to the next page, where you'll be asked questions to help set up your store. You have the liberty to skip this and move on to the dashboard of your store. However, we recommend you answer these questions to get a head start.
Once this is done, Shopify will ask you for your store name and business location, and then finally, you can create an account on Shopify. Once you have created an account, you can enter your name and continue.
On your dashboard, you will see a setup guide that takes you through all the critical steps of creating your store. You can skip it and move on to the settings to explore everything one by one.
- If you click on ‘Add product’ on the setup guide, you can start adding your product info, such as the title of your product, description, media, etc.
- As you scroll down on the product page, you will see the product section, where you can choose whether it is a physical or digital product.
- Click on ‘Digital product or service’ so that your customers won’t have to input any shipping details when checking out.
- Once all the necessary information is added, click on ‘Save,’ and there you have it! You have added your first product.
Once you have added all the product information, you can go back to the setup guide and complete the other tasks, including adding pages to your store, customizing the pages and adding a theme, organizing the navigation, and others. You can also use any Shopify page builder to build your store more efficiently.
Don’t forget to set up the payment by clicking on ‘Settings’ and then ‘Payments.’ You can set up your account to accept payments for your digital products there.
Optimizing Your Shopify Store for Digital Products
Optimizing your Shopify store for digital products is crucial to your success. To maximize your sales potential, you need to focus on a few key factors.
The product page is the most important section in your online store. Showcasing your products has a lot to do with your sales, and one critical element of your product page is the product description. They provide potential buyers with the information they need to make an informed decision.
Make sure your product descriptions include keywords and are clear, concise, and highlight the benefits of your digital products. You can add the product description for each product from the 'Products' section of your Shopify dashboard.
Next, high-quality product images can make a huge difference in your conversion rates. You want to provide your customers with a clear and enticing visual representation of your digital products. Make sure your images represent the real product.
Since you are selling digital products, you can use Shopify’s Digital Downloads app or any other third-party app to create a download link that allows your customers to download the digital product easily.
Remember, the success of your store depends on various factors beyond the ones we have discussed. Leveraging customer reviews, email marketing, other marketing strategies, such as upselling and cross-selling, to amplify sales and page speed also can prove beneficial while selling digital products.
- You can build trust with potential buyers and increase conversions by displaying positive reviews and testimonials. So include a section for displaying customer reviews on your website.
- You can keep in touch with your customers and promote your digital products by building an email list. Use compelling subject lines and offer exclusive discounts to incentivize your subscribers to purchase.
- Setting up upsells and cross-sells can help you increase your average order value. You can encourage customers to make additional purchases by suggesting related products or complementary services. You can even use a third-party app like ReConvert from the Shopify store for the same.
- The speed and efficiency of your product pages can make a significant difference. To ensure that your pages load quickly, thereby keeping potential customers engaged, it's beneficial to regularly use a page size checker. This tool can help you maintain an optimal balance between rich content and fast page loads.
Marketing Your Digital Products on Shopify
Selling digital products on Shopify requires effective marketing strategies to increase visibility and drive sales. Fortunately, Shopify offers several built-in tools to help sellers promote their products.
- One of the most critical tools is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Having an online store on Shopify means you get the necessary built-in SEO features to help optimize your content. This way, many of your SEO concerns are taken up automatically, such as the canonical tags which are added to pages to prevent duplicate content from showing in SERPS. Also, when you choose a theme, the generated title tags include your store name automatically.
- You can also build an email list and send emails to prospects and customers to inform them of your latest collection, any new updates or ongoing discounts, and many more.
Shopify App store provides numerous options to market your products and brand. You can leverage your target audience's favorite social media channels to promote your digital products. You can use any marketing or conversion tool from the Shopify store that meets your needs.
For example, you can connect your store to Facebook or Instagram platforms to sell your products using the Facebook & Instagram tool.
Watch our latest video to more success marketing tips:
Analyzing Your Shopify Store's Performance
Marketing digital products on Shopify involves utilizing the platform's built-in tools and analyzing your store's performance to optimize your marketing strategies.
- You can click on 'Marketing' or 'Analytics' from the Shopify dashboard to get a quick view of many critical analytics of your store, such as sessions, conversation rate, average order value, etc. This information can help you identify areas of improvement and develop strategies to increase sales.
- Tracking the performance of your email campaigns, social media marketing, and paid ads can help you identify which channels are driving the most traffic and sales. You can use this information to allocate your marketing budget to the most effective channels.
- Keeping up with market trends is also important. Staying up-to-date with industry news and trends can help you identify new opportunities for your digital products. You can also use market research to understand your target audience's needs and preferences, allowing you to tailor your marketing messages to their interests.
You can also check out this video on how to set up your Shopify account to sell digital products online:
Bonus Section
Setting up your store to sell digital products on Shopify, optimizing the store, and marketing your digital products cover the basics of your journey to becoming a successful brand. But there are certain advanced strategies you can use to unlock the maximum potential of your Shopify store.
Creating a membership program
When selling digital products on Shopify, a membership or loyalty program can be a great way to encourage customers to return to your store and make repeat purchases. By offering exclusive access to new products, discounts, or other perks, you can incentivize your customers to join your program and keep coming back for more. Apps like Appstle or Bold can prove beneficial for this.
Utilizing affiliates to drive sales
As a digital product seller on Shopify, it can be challenging to get your products in front of a new audience. By partnering with influencers or bloggers in your niche, you can tap into their audience and promote your products to a wider audience. The best part is that you only pay your affiliates when they make a sale, making it a cost-effective way to expand your reach. Shopify's third-party apps, like BixGrow, enable you to manage affiliates and referrals easily.
Developing a comprehensive upsell strategy
Upselling can be an effective way to increase your average order value and boost your revenue. You can make relevant offers for higher-priced or upgraded versions of the products your customers are interested in. ReConvert, and AfterSell are amongst the many apps you can use from the Shopify store for your upsell strategies.
Product Ideas & Apps to Sell Digital Products on Shopify
If you are just starting off your digital product/service business and are wondering what to sell, then here are a few digital product ideas for reference:
- eBooks
With the rise of e-readers and the increasing popularity of digital content, selling eBooks online can be a lucrative venture. You can create and sell your own eBooks on various topics based on your expertise or industry expert insights. You can even source and resell eBooks written by others.
For example, Gauge Girl Training is a Shopify store that sells eBooks on meal planning for leading a healthy lifestyle.
- Graphics and digital art
You can create and sell your own digital art online if you have a talent for drawing, painting, or other visual arts. You can sell your art as prints or as digital downloads that customers can use as wallpaper, social media graphics, and more.
Check out Luxe Lens, an online store that sells Lightroom themes and presets that can users can purchase and use for editing their photos.
- Online courses
With the growth of e-learning, online courses are becoming increasingly popular. You can use your store as a platform to sell other highly rated or popular courses from a particular niche or multiple industries.
Udemy is a good example for a platform that sells online courses.
- Software and apps
If you have the skills to create software or mobile apps, you can sell them as digital products. You can develop your own software or apps or source and resell software and apps created by others. These are more suited if the apps or software you sell caters to a specific need or related needs, such as marketing or sales.
These are just among the many digital products you can sell online. Pick the one that most aligns with your needs, and be sure to research them. You can check out the video below for more ideas on trending digital products that you can sell online:
Shopify Apps to Sell Digital Products
We talked about Shopify Digital Downloads previously, that will provide your customers with a downloadable link for their purchased digital products. Similarly, you can use any other Shopify-enabled applications, and we have listed a few of them for you:
This app specializes in helping merchants sell and distribute digital downloads like music, videos, and books. Sky Pilot offers features such as automatic fulfillment, customizable download pages, and secure file hosting to make it easier for merchants to sell digital products on Shopify.
Rating: 5/5 (114 reviews)
Pricing: Free trial is available. Lite plan is priced at $20/month.
With Easy, you can attach up to 10 files to a product or variant, and your customers will see download buttons on the order confirmation page. You can even customize the email your customers receive with their digital products to make it an elegant and memorable experience.
Rating: 5/5 (154 reviews)
Pricing: Free plan is available. Pro plan is priced at $9.99/month.
SendOwl enables the automatic delivery of digital products after checkout. It supports various digital products like ebooks, audio, video, and access codes, making it a simple and secure solution for merchants selling digital products on Shopify.
Rating: 4.3/5 (154 reviews)
Pricing: Free plan is available. Paid plan starts at $15/month.
This tool integrates with your online store to automate the delivery of digital products to your customers. You can attach multiple files to a single product, associate one file with multiple products, or restrict downloads by time or quantity - providing you with the flexibility to meet your unique needs.
Rating: 4.1/5 (39 reviews)
Pricing: Free plan is available. Paid plan starts at $5/month.
Conclusion
Selling digital products on Shopify can be a lucrative business in 2024 if you approach it strategically. You can increase your store's visibility and drive more sales by leveraging Shopify's built-in tools and implementing effective marketing strategies.
As a bonus, remember to keep the customer experience at the forefront of your efforts, and you're sure to see success this year and beyond.
