It’s a great time to be an online business owner. Selling digital products is one of the most lucrative business models.
If you’re not currently selling digital products, now more than ever is a great time to make the move and start selling digital products online.
The e-learning industry is expected to exceed $240 Billion by 2022.
6 Benefits of Selling Digital Products
1. Digital Products are Scalable
When you sell digital products, your sales potential is unlimited.
Digital products are infinitely scalable and don’t require much additional effort on your end to deliver. You may need to invest in a premium, quality website hosting solution to ensure uptime for your site and access for your customers.
2. Free up Your Time
A major benefit of selling digital products is the amount of time it saves when it comes to delivering your offers.
Not only are you able to provide your customers with a sense of instant gratification when they purchase one of your offers, but you also don’t have to deal with the logistics of managing, sourcing, and delivering inventory.
However, we have seen some very successful memberships that include a subscription box paired with their online access. Here’s a look into our subscription box case study.
3. Save Money and Reduce Expenses
Going digital will save you tons when it comes to costs associated with in-person or physical products.
If you sell physical products you’re responsible for the cost of the product itself before markup, storage costs for your inventory, and shipping costs.
If you run in-person events or courses you’ll likely have costs associated with renting the location for the event and any personnel costs required for running and managing the events. You’ll also need to account for any costs you may acquire if you need to provide supplies or food and drinks for your attendees.
The expenses start to add up quickly. Selling digital programs is a great way to avoid these costs altogether and save money.
4. Digital Products Yield Higher Profit Margins
When you’re selling digital products compared to physical ones you’re able to sell more with fewer expenses. As a result, you’ll notice higher profit margins on your sales.
Plus, you may even be able to charge more due to the ease of convenience for your customers when it comes to receiving and using the product they purchased.
5. Digital Product Sales & Delivery are Automated
One of our favorite benefits of selling digital products is the automation involved. From sale to delivery, the entire process can be set up and left to run on its own for the lifespan of your offer.
There are so many content delivery platforms and plugins, as well as sales tools that make this process so easy for you to implement.
While the time investment to get everything set up just the way you want it may seem like a lot when you’re first setting things up, once it’s done it’s done. We can all appreciate that.
Waking up to new sales each day is so rewarding, and knowing your customers received everything they purchased and can start to experience what they purchased right away is so rewarding, for you and them! All thanks to the power of automation.
Automating this process frees you up to focus on activities that will help grow your business and less on running it.
6. Flexible Sales Strategies
Having the flexibility to pivot your sales strategies when something isn’t working or you have a new idea to test is a major benefit of selling digital products online.
Not only can you create and sell new digital products or extensions of existing products, but you might decide to bundle some of your offers if you’re selling digital downloads into a membership where users get access to the entire library of downloads.
If you’re selling online courses you can sell them individually or as part of a membership platform. The sky’s the limit and as long as your platform for selling digital content can support your vision you’re only limited by your imagination.
Where to Sell Digital Products
Digital products can be sold across a multitude of mediums.
Ebooks and digital downloads can be sold on sites such as Etsy and Amazon. You can sell online courses on third-party sites such as Masterclass, Udemy, and Skillshare.
However, in most cases, it may be easier and more lucrative to sell your digital products and downloads on your own website.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular digital products and where you might benefit most from selling them online.
Types of Digital Products
Membership Sites
Membership sites have been growing in popularity in recent years and will continue to trend upwards in this digital age.
Here at AccessAlly, we have membership site owners selling memberships for everything from guitar lessons, business and life coaching, to unlock your own adventure style memberships.
How to Sell Membership Sites with AccessAlly
Using AccessAlly’s membership management features you can create multi-tiered memberships, release dripped content, or sell access to a complete library of materials.
You have complete flexibility in how you want to deliver and release your content within your membership.
Online Courses
Online courses are another popular type of digital product that you can sell online.
Paired with a proven platform to sell digital products equipped with learning management system features, your potential customers will be set up for success.
Selling an online course is a great way to start selling online.
Be sure to check out these resources that will walk you through how to set up a successful online course and find the best LMS platform for your offers.
How to Sell Online Courses with AccessAlly
Thanks to AccessAlly’s native LMS, you can create and sell online courses. AccessAlly’s offerings wizard makes setup a breeze and you have all of the learning management system features at your fingertips.
Offer certificates of completion for your courses, build in quizzes to reinforce the material, and track each users’s progress with checklists, progress bars, and more.
Digital Downloads
Some of the most common and easiest digital products to sell online are digital downloads.
And, there’s not just one way to sell digital downloads.
Whether you sell access to a PDF as your main offering, as an upsell, an order bump in conjunction with another service or program, or you have a large library of digital downloads you have a lot of flexibility in how to sell and deliver these offers.
You can deliver your digital goods via download links in an email after they purchase from an online store, or you can gate access to an online portal where customers log in to access and view their digital assets.
Setting up an online portal where customers log in to access their material makes it easy to upsell and cross-sell them on other products and courses you have to offer. Plus, the user experience helps build trust in your business.
How to Sell Digital Downloads with AccessAlly
AccessAlly makes it easy to sell digital downloads.
You may choose to offer your digital downloads as an order bump or upsell after purchase to your membership or online course.
You can even create a library of digital downloads that customers can purchase as a bundle or individually.
And, if you offer a digital download as a lead magnet, AccessAlly’s native opt-in forms make it easy as pie to deliver the download as soon as a potential lead opts in. This Login Optin Strategy invites potential customers into your paid content area and gives them a taste of all that you have to offer, in turn increasing conversions for your paid offers.
Subscription Boxes
Offering a digital product with your subscription box is a great way to enhance the user experience. One of our AccessAlly users, The Ornament Girl, has a wildly successful subscription box business but doesn’t limit herself to physical products.
In addition to her subscription box service, she expanded her revenue stream by selling access to past content. When someone joins her subscription service they get access to her members’ area where she has tons of digital products to sell.
Members can purchase additional patterns and tutorials. This is a great cross-selling strategy if you run a subscription box business.
How to Sell Subscription Boxes with AccessAlly
The subscription box membership model continues to rise in popularity and can be easily set up using AccessAlly.
Based on your subscription model, whether it’s monthly or quarterly, you can deliver all of the digital materials using AccessAlly’s membership management dripped content settings. This whole process can be automated so your subscribers receive their tutorials and complementary materials when they receive their physical products.
You can even use the online portal to cross-sell access to some of your past content opening up another revenue stream.
Stock Photography
Selling stock photos is another type of digital product to sell online. There are a lot of stock photo sites that allow you to sell your own photos or you can start one of your own.
You could create a membership site that is set up as a subscription-based product and provides your customers with access to your entire library of digital downloads or you can sell each one individually or as a bundle.
How to Sell Stock Photos with AccessAlly
Using AccessAlly, you can create a membership platform to sell digital rights to your stock photos.
Whether you want to sell online access to a library of your digital art, or you issue a specific number of credits each month based on a user’s level of membership for access to your digital goods, AccessAlly has the features you need to build a successful stock photo site.
EBooks
Ebooks are very similar to digital downloads and can be sold fairly easily from your website.
While ebooks won’t likely be your primary revenue stream as they are priced on the lower-end, they are a great introductory offer for potential customers.
If someone has just discovered your business and is interested in the services you offer, but may not be ready to invest in a higher-end product, offering an ebook is a great way to warm them up, while also getting them to trust in your business.
How to Sell Ebooks with AccessAlly
You can use AccessAlly to sell ebooks similarly to digital downloads as we discussed above.
Ebooks make great order bump offers and also great introductory products that you can use to promote your membership or online course.
One great way to leverage AccessAlly for your ebooks is to use them as bonus content during a launch that you can automatically add as a bonus upon enrollment in your programs.
Certifications
Online certifications are becoming more and more popular in this day in age. As more businesses move online offering certification programs and training virtually is a great way to expand your business and reach a wider audience.
From coaching programs to continuing education credits this can all be done using a full-service e-Commerce and digital content delivery system.
How to Sell Certifications with AccessAlly
With AccessAlly you can issue certifications to individuals that complete your program. You can even set up a company-wide training system to onboard and test your employees, certifying them in different areas of expertise.
We have customers who also certify other coaches in their methodology building their certification course using AccessAlly.
You can also certify members of a team using AccessAlly’s teams feature.
SaaS Products
Another type of digital product you can sell is software as a service (Saas).
You can deliver license keys for your software upon purchase and your customers can download and access their app or plugin.
Similar to the learning industry, the SaaS industry is growing exponentially year after year.
How to Sell SaaS Products with AccessAlly
You can sell and deliver your SaaS product using AccessAlly. Upon purchase, you can deliver the license keys and download of your application from within your AccessAlly setup.
This is exactly what we do for AccessAlly itself.
We also include additional resources to support our users inside the members’ area to help onboard our users and get them up and running with our software.
Software to Sell Digital Products Online
To sell digital products from your own site there are a few tools you’ll want to ensure you have in your tech stack.
These tools will help you deliver a seamless user experience for your customers and set you up for maximum conversions.
Payment Gateway
When it comes to making online purchases, people tend to have their preferences, but as an online business owner it’s up to you to decide which payment gateways you want to use.
Accepting payments via PayPal is sometimes advantageous if you sell globally.
There’s also a benefit to using Stripe for course payments because people can’t cancel their subscriptions themselves unless you give them that option. With PayPal subscriptions, they can manage and cancel a payment plan even if they agreed to make all payments.
However, with the right PayPal integration and e-commerce platform, it’s possible to automate following up with your customers and receive cancellation notifications.
Apple and Google Pay are also rising in popularity, so depending on your market this may be another payment option you should consider.
Shopping Cart Solution
In addition to your payment gateway, you also need an e-commerce platform to set up your checkout process and order forms.
ThriveCart, WooCommerce, and SamCart are a few shopping cart solutions many online business owners use, however, it’s one more integration and tool you’ll need to add to your tech stack.
If you plan to deliver your digital products as gated content, we highly recommend finding a membership plugin or learning management system with native e-commerce functionality.
Having this part of your tech stack seamlessly integrated will help ensure a smooth checkout process and content delivery for your customers.
Website
Your website is the home of your digital product sales machine. In most cases, your digital products will be your biggest asset when it comes to marketing tools.
You may also promote and sell your products on social media and through email marketing but your website is where all of your traffic will be sent to initiate the checkout process.
You can set up your sales pages and landing pages on your site and integrate it with your e-commerce platforms to collect payments.
Learning Management System
If you want to sell online courses you’ll want to research and invest in a learning management system to build your online courses.
A learning management system will help you create an online course experience your customers will love.
If you plan to include quizzes to test retention, want to offer certificates of achievement, or create a rewards system and accountability for your online course participants, AccessAlly is a great solution.
Membership Management Tool
If you plan to gate your digital product ideas using an online portal, you’ll need a membership management tool.
At the most basic level, your membership management platform is responsible for creating each user’s login when they purchase access to your digital product.
Membership management tools also control a user’s access to the digital content the customer purchases and have access to.
Get Started Selling Digital Products
It’s time to get started, begin planning your digital product delivery strategy today.
Whether you want to sell digital downloads, courses, memberships, access to a content library, subscription boxes with physical and digital products, certifications, or a SaaS product, you’re ready!
Let us know what type of digital product you’re most excited to offer in your business below!
