Are you a small business owner looking to move your store online? Then you are at the right spot. Selling digital products can be pretty challenging if you are unclear about where and how to start. Check out our complete guide on Shopify digital products, the best way to create and sell digital products, along with the list of trending products on Shopify.
Outline
- What are digital products?
- Benefits of a Digital Product Business Model
- How to Sell Digital Products on Shopify?
- Validate your business idea
- Create an online store with PageFly
- Add digital products: Use digital tools like Canva, and Figma
- Market your store to audience: make your online store user-friendly
- Provide discounts, research on customer sentiments
- 5 apps for selling digital products
- Inspiring Shopify Stores with Digital Products
- Profitable Shopify digital products to sell in 2023
- Conclusion
What are Digital Products?
Digital products are goods that exist in a digital form and are consumed or used in a virtual environment. The global digital transformation is happening at a CAGR of 26% with digital products occupying the major chunk- no wonder digital products are now selling twice as much as physical products. The goods category has already surpassed the $950 billion market mark, and is rising ever since.
These products can range from electronic versions of physical products (such as ebooks and photographs) to products that can only exist in a digital form (such as software and apps). With the recent developments in technology digital products have become increasingly popular and are now found in virtually every industry across the globe.
Benefits of a Digital Product Business Model
Unlike physical goods, digital products can be easily distributed and accessed anywhere in the world. The only real necessity is that the users must have an internet connection. This means that selling digital products can have several advantages over selling physical products:
- Lower costs: Digital products involve little to no maintenance or overhead costs.
- Greater profit margins: Since there are no recurring fees when it comes to digital goods, it allows one to keep more profits from their sales.
- No limitations with stock: Once the product is built, there is no reason to worry about running out of inventory as one can sell an unlimited amount of digital products.
- More Flexibility: Digital products are more versatile in that they can be sold as a primary source of income, used as lead magnets that you create an audience or even given away for free in order to strengthen your brand awareness.
- Easier to update: It’s extremely convenient to update or add new material to digital products. This can help businesses repackage an existing product in a manner that draws new customers.
- Larger customer base: While physical products are often limited to regional customers, digital products involve no such constraints and can be marketed to customers from around the world. This means that a company selling digital products has the potential to reach customers from a wider geographic area, drastically increasing its sales opportunities.
How to Sell Digital Products on Shopify?
Shopify is the king of eCommerce, period. Today, the platform empowers more than a million businesses across 175 countries. Shopify stores are easy to launch, even for shop owners struggling with the latest technology and trends. Right from a 70 year old businesswoman sitting in Colorado, to a 30-YO man from India, Shopify ensures that it serves all age-groups, and work types with integrity. Besides, a 24*7 customer support, wider customer base turning to visitors, and mobile-friendliness makes Shopify a pro choice for creating online stores.
Now that we know Shopify’s omnipresent utilities (humble brag); here is a step by step guide on how to go online with your business idea, and sell digital products on Shopify.
Validate your business idea
The first step towards starting a business is to do research and validate your business idea to see if there is a market for your product and whether selling that particular product is economically viable. Some of the ways in which you can do this are by doing a market analysis, researching demand, defining your target customers, and conducting a competitive analysis.
Create an online store
Next, to open a Shopify store, go to shopify.com, add your email address, and hit on the “Start free trial” button. Later you can choose a Shopify plan that works for you. Once the process is complete, you are ready to start setting up your store. You can build and customize your online store usingPageFly Page Builder to decide the layout of your website.
Add digital products to your store
Using Shopify's Digital Downloads app, you can upload files like videos, songs, and graphic art as a product in your store. Click on products from your Shopify admin. Then click Add product. For digital products, you need to uncheck- This is a physical product.
Reference: PageFly
To enable your customers to download a digital product, go under product settings and add the product to Digital Downloads. Include any attachments to your product that can be downloaded after your customers buy the digital goods.
Market your store
There are many ways to promote your store and build a solid customer base. You can start creating an email list through SEO and social media tools. For beginners,Plugin SEO is a good tool to start with. The app curates all optimizations related to keywords, SEO, and marketing in one place, and comes with a 14-day free trial. You can find templates, 404 notifications, rich snippets, and regular health reports with Plugin SEO.
In the end, make sure that you reach out to your potential customers regularly to increase your reach and keep up their interest in your product.
Final tips for selling digital products
Make sure to use discounts and create interesting offers through cross-selling and upselling to increase your sales. Also, keep in mind to research customer sentiments and alter or update your products accordingly to ensure that they attract a wider audience. Use additional marketing tools if they fit into your production budget. Let's see some of the top Shopify tools that can help you save thousands, be fully within your budget and help you sell digital products.
5 Apps for Selling Shopify Digital Products
SendOwl
SendOwl is a multipurpose app that takes care of almost everything, right from analytics, to marketing, and secure product delivery. The B2B company has been in the market since 2010, and has helped its seller base generate a net revenue of $250,000,000 as of now. Moreover, SendOwl’s direct payment portal helps micro-entrepreneurs save a lot of money as they have a direct $9 flat charge for a month’s sale, independent of quantity sold; a direct benefit over third-party payment providers like Stripe. Other features that make SendOwl a go-to choice for digital product sellers are:
- High degree of customization
- Secure, password-protected product delivery to customers
- Automated reports about customer behavior, delivery data, store analytics, and more
- Third-party integrations across Zapier, Linkpop and GA for hassle free operations
PageFly
PageFly offers a range of tools to help you build and manage your online store from helping businesses design their web pages to ensuring SEO optimization. It also automates a lot of operations, leaving only the most pressing tasks to manual work. Other features that make PageFly a go-to choice for Shopify store owners are:
- Flexibility to create landing pages, collection pages, redo a shop uplift with either custom-made templates or PageFly’s no-code editor
- Affordable pricing support with a basic and premium plan. The Shopify page builder also offers a 14-day free trial for users so they know what they are getting into, without paying blindly.
- 24*7 customer support
Sky Pilot
The Sky Pilot solution for Shopify digital products is a user-friendly, third-party application that helps businesses increase sales and provide instant deliveries to their customers. It also allows online stores to organize the pre-sales of their upcoming products and send release-day notifications to their customers.
Reference:Sky Pilot
FetchApp
FetchApp is designed to simplify the process of selling digital products and managing online stores. It allows you to track who has access to your paid content and control the number of times your product can be downloaded and the amount of time for which a download link is active.
Reference:FetchApp
Inspiring Shopify Stores with Digital Products
Wintercroft
Wintercroft is an online store that specializes in selling digital templates for eco-friendly paper masks that can be printed on recycled paper. With a wide selection of eco-friendly and unique masks, the Shopify store hosted by Wintercroft allows customers to create their own customized masks and make a positive contribution to the environment.
Gauge Girl Training
Gauge Girl Training allows customers to download a variety of meal plans, courses, and ebooks. Customer accounts also have the option of reviewing past orders and checking their progress.
Life Is Messy and Brilliant
Life is Messy and Brilliant has brought the charm and personalized quality of handmade diaries and planners to a digitized version of the same. This online store allows you to customize your planner by offering different assets and templates.
The Luxe Lens
The Luxe Lens is more than just an online store selling stock pictures. Instead, it offers a comprehensive list of all the templates, tools, and courses any photographer would wish for.
PeachCréme
PeachCréme helps its clients develop their brand style through consultation and pre-made templates for online businesses. Customers have the option of requesting customizations on the existing themes to fit their brand image.
Profitable Shopify Digital Products to Sell in 2023
The market for digital products is increasing rapidly with more and more people switching to digital goods for the benefits they offer. Highly sought-after digital products offer greater ease of use to their customers. Another characteristic that makes digital products attractive is their wide range of features. From allowing users to customize appearances, to providing helpful AI functions, digital products that offer more variety to customers tend to have greater appeal. Moreover, digital goods that offer regular updates and evolve with time are able to keep up with the ever-changing needs of customers.
01. Software
According to a report by Software.org, software contributes over $1.14 trillion to the total value-added GDP in the United States and employs 2.9 million people. With the continued growth of the software industry, businesses have endless opportunities to develop and sell products like templates, desktop software, phone apps, and web-based applications.
02. Online Courses
A recent market research analysis featured on Forbes suggests that the online learning industry is expected to generate a revenue of $325 billion by 2025. This means that the market for selling online courses is ready to explode. These courses can range from knitting lessons to tips on investing. The best thing is that you don’t need to have a degree to start building your own course and share it with the world.
03. Ebooks
According to a Statista market forecast, Ebooks are projected to generate a revenue of $14.21 billion in 2023. The market trends are ripe for successfully selling ebooks online. But you don’t have to conjure a literary masterpiece for your ebook to bring in profits. It can be something as niche as a guide to your city or a book on food recipes.
04. Digital Workbooks
Apart from ebooks, there is also a high demand for digital workbooks. These are usually more interactive than ebooks and can help users to plan, monitor and record their habits, personal goals, etc. Some examples of digital workbooks include food trackers, journals, painting guides, event planners, crossword puzzles, and vision boards.
05. Stock Photos
Digital images are one of the first digital goods to be sold on the internet. Now with an increasing amount of blogs, websites, and online platforms being created every day, stock images are an absolute necessity. As early as 2012, Shutterstock licensed over 70 million photos and vectors. Since the demand for premium, high-quality photos is rapidly expanding, selling photographs online can be a great way to earn money on the internet.
06. Music
Quite recently, Justin Bieber made headlines for selling the rights to his music to Hipgnosis Songs Capital for reportedly $200 million. As a musician, one way to monetize your talent is by offering it as a digital product. These don’t necessarily have to be music albums and some other possible options can include ringtones, demo sounds, and audio guides, etc.
07. Podcasts
Podcasts are a great digital product because they involve little to no investment costs and can generate high rewards. You can research a particular theme around which to build your podcast and have discussions with experts in the area. You also have the option of making your podcast member exclusive.
Conclusion
Selling Shopify digital products can be overwhelming at first, but we have got you covered. Once you are started, selling digital products can be as easy as a cakewalk with multiple benefits- reduced production cost, comfortable profits, a chance to go on auto-pilot mode, and seamless delivery options.
Using a third-party app like PageFly, FetchApp, SendOwl, and PushOwl can help sellers optimize their selling and marketing strategy, create customer-oriented designs, and even build a loyal customer engagement framework from scratch with personalized analytics coming with each tool.
While we have covered our top picks of best Shopify digital products, it is always advisable to take a middle path: where the seller trends are going, plus what you intend to sell. Only when you combine your personal likings and interests with professional business choices, results can be 10x what you initially desire.
