Selling digital products is an easy, cost-effective way to generate income. Whether that income is sustainable or not depends on the quality of your product, your promotion efforts, and the platform to sell your product.

Also, digital products have more advantages over physical products. The most obvious advantage is a high profit margin.

Who doesn’t want to make more money?

People earn money from a variety of endeavors. From singing for one minute on TikTok to dancing on a 30-second Instagram reel down to the traditional buy-and-sell business.

Our digital creators at Selar say they earn great money teaching what they know and sharing their experiences in the creator economy.

In this article, we’ll highlight the best digital products to sell and the best places to sell them. You may just discover a new revenue stream.

Why Sell Digital Products Over Physical Products?

The most important reason is that your products are not limited by the natural forces of time, location, and distance to get to your customers.

There are lots of good reasons to sell a digital product online. They include;

1. High-profit margins

There is no recurring cost of goods, hence you get to keep the majority of your sales as profit.

2. Low Investments (High-potential returns)

There are lots of digital products you can put together over time without investing a large amount of money. Online e-commerce tools such as Selar are relatively inexpensive, compared to renting a traditional store. So, you can be sure to get high returns even on your little investments.

3. Low overhead costs

With digital products, you don’t have to pay for shipping or worry about inventories. Once uploaded to an online store, you can easily share your product with your customers.

4. Flexible products

Digital products are very flexible. You can offer free products to build your email list, monthly paid subscriptions for access to exclusive digital content, or licenses to use your digital products. There are lots of options as to how you can incorporate digital products into your business.

5. More profitable

Digital products sell at a higher margin than physical products. And its margin can increase over time because you do not spend money on producing more units.

6. Online education is the future

With more businesses and educational systems moving online, the demand for digital products is on the high. This digital product demand is projected to be worth $319+ Billion by 2025.

Also, the COVID pandemic forced us all to discover alternative ways to do business and learn. Now that we’ve all adjusted considerably, the demand for courses and ebooks is here to stay.

10 Best Digital Products to Sell Online

The top 10 best digital products to sell online are;

• Ebooks
• Online courses
• Memberships
• Art items
• Music and audio
• Stock photography
• Coaching packages
• Services
• Tickets
• Digital templates and tools

1. Ebooks

One of the best digital products to sell online is ebooks. The great thing about this product is that you don’t need to be a Nobel-prize author or novelist to write one. You just need to have good knowledge about a skill, topic, or niche. The trick is to think about what you do best, and how you can teach others in writing.

LEARN MORE: How to Write an Ebook That Sells Like Crazy

2. Online courses

Online courses are another one of the best products to sell online to make money. If you have the expertise about something and want to sell it to the world, an online course is a way to go.

Everyone wants to learn something new. Whether a new hobby or a new skill to advance themselves professionally. You can leverage this audience by launching a digital course.

The best part is that you don’t need to be an educationalist either. You just need to know something well enough to teach it.

You can get started by learning How to Create a Profitable Online Course: Beginners Guide.

3. Memberships

An alternative to selling digital products individually is that you can lock them together and offer a paid subscription to access them all.

This online strategy is beneficial if you intend to grow a community and have a digital library of premium content.

In some cases, paid digital subscriptions can even create an opportunity to directly monetize your existing content marketing efforts.

Since your content is only accessible by paid subscribers, you can host an exclusive webinar, and have them stream it rather than download it. You can build this type of business using Selar as your digital delivery system.

See how to get started by creating a Successful Coaching Membership Site

4. Art items

Digital artists can create and sell digital products online as a means to generate revenue.

A cartoon artist can turn their work into print-on-demand products, printables, or phone wallpapers.

Technology has changed things a lot, now they need only a functional device connected to the internet to turn their art into print-on-demand pieces. Cartoon maker tools, video editing software, animation creators, etc are widely accessible to everyone.

Since you’re selling digital products, you can experiment to know which one your audience will love. But the baseline is that art items are one of the highest-selling digital products in Nigeria.

Here are the most common art examples to sell online includes;

• Logos
• Brand kits
• Design templates
• Adobe files and templates (.PSD and . AI files)
• PowerPoint themes
• Backgrounds/Wallpaper
• Original artwork
• Clip art
• Card designs
• Patterns
• Brushes

5. Music and Audio

People play music because it soothes the soul. Audio on the other hand is used as a powerful medium to communicate a strong message, either for inspiration or insight.

If you’re a musician, chances are you’ve explored ways you can monetize your talents for your audience.

Podcasters, YouTubers, bedroom pop stars, and film producers, are people who all use audio in one form or another to market their work. So you can take advantage of it. Record a beat or a sound, or an audio saying relevant things you think people will need and put it up for sale. You’d be amazed how many people will be interested.

6. Stock photography

You can monetize your photography skills by selling the photos you take online. Since lots of people constantly publish content online daily, there is a high demand for unique photographs.

A good way to promote your photography business is by sharing your images on platforms such as Instagram.

Instagram allows you to retain ownership of your photos while protecting you from theft. More so, the more attractive your photos look, the higher the chances of getting noticed, and ultimately generating income for you.

Alternatively, you can use Selar to sell your photos online. All you need to do is to create your store and upload your product.

7. Coaching packages

As part of your passive income strategy, you can add a coaching service to your list of digital products.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you have mastered all the tricks and strategies in Affiliate marketing. You wrote a book and even converted it to an online course, all of which you’re selling. Notice that some people still require a one-on-one coaching session to help them understand better.

To leverage this situation, you can create a coaching package for your audience. For $500, you’d spend 15 minutes on the phone with your customers every two weeks. (This is, of course, subjective).

Here, you are creating a digital product and a service because you sell it online and do not have to be in physical contact with your audience. It’s a service on the other hand because you are providing value/substance to your customer. That is, you are working directly with your customer.

LEARN: How to Create a Coaching Program

8. Services

Services are not really classified as “products” but they can be sold alongside digital products. For example, a nutritionist can prepare and sell a meal plan, he may also offer nutrition consultation as a service.

You could offer business consultation alongside a downloadable product that teaches businesses how to grow their mailing list.

With this information, you can create certain services attached to valuable digital products for sale.

9. Tickets

Tickets are different from other types of digital products because they are limited. A ticket is sold for a specific date, time, and physical location(optional) not in unlimited quantities.

Nonetheless, you can sell tickets like every other digital product, on Selar. The process is simple;

• Set up a store
• Attract your customers to your store
• They select a preferred ticket
• Checkout
• They receive their tickets hassle-free.

From carnivals to conferences to trade fairs, there are lots of events you can maximize to make money online!

10. Digital templates and tools

Another best-selling digital product to sell online is Digital templates and Tools. You can create tools or templates that help professionals to carry out their work effectively. You can also sell solutions to the common pain points of your audience.

Some products that fall under this category include;

• Resume templates for job seekers
• Cover letter templates for resumes and foreign students
• Powerpoint slide design templates for office workers
• Digital marketing strategy templates for entrepreneurs.
• Notion templates for planning and organizational purposes

The goal is to turn your skill and/or knowledge about a topic into a revenue-generating channel.

Best Places to Sell Digital Products Online

The best places to sell digital products online are;

• Selar
• Shopify
• Amazon
• Etsy

1. Selar

Selar is an e-commerce tool that is built for digital creators willing to make money off their knowledge. By providing an easy-to-use and user-friendly platform, you can easily sell any digital products online without struggle.

Digital creators prefer to use Selar because it has lots of unique features, some of which include;

• Ability to easily set up your unique custom branded domain name eg; mybrandname.com
• Manage all your customer information directly on your dashboard. With its CRM you can send emails directly from your Selar dashboard to your customers.
• Extract more value from your customers with product upsell (order bump) and cross-sells. Recommend products on checkout and show customers frequently bought products.
• Selar lets you accept payment in more than 8 currencies [NGN, USD, GHS, ZAR, KES, TZS, GBP]. Enable your currencies, make more sales and get your funds settled in your local bank account stress-free.
• Create custom sales/landing pages for your products. Descriptive sales pages drive more conversions.
• Set up your own affiliate marketing system, and give a commission to anyone who facilitates a sale for your store.

You can create an online store in minutes and start selling. Selar makes it easy to scale a business selling digital products.

2. Shopify

With Shopify, you can create an online store to sell your digital products. You don’t need to have special tech skills, there are lots of templates with built-in features to help you get started.

At a monthly fee of $29, you gain access to different Shopify apps to help you manage your store and sell more digital products online.

You can sign up for a free 14-day trial to test it out yourself before you make a decision. During this trial, you can build your online store, test the Shopify apps, and possibly make a sale.

3. Amazon

As the most popular e-commerce tool in the world, it’s natural to be the first to come to mind when you think about selling digital products. But how well does it work with digital products?

Amazon was originally designed for physical products and that is how they’ve shone over the years, by facilitating the sales of physical products.

Over time, Amazon has adjusted to selling ebooks. About 68% of the ebook market is owned by Amazon. More than that, they boast of an easy-to-use publishing platform, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

To play safe, you may want to consider other solutions while selling other types of digital products.

4. Etsy

Etsy is the go-to online platform for craftsmen and vintage suppliers. It can also be a great platform to sell digital products.

Not only does Etsy make it easy to sell digital products, but it also exposes you to a large market of crafters and DIYers, some of which are relevant to your niche.

So if you have an ebook or online course about DIYs or crafting, you may want to consider selling it on Etsy.

Additionally, Etsy is a good platform for digital products that thrive on visuals. For example, Amazon’s Kindle allows for ebook cover graphics but it’s not a criterion to make sales or how well your ebook will be published. The visuals of your digital product, however, are very important to thrive on Etsy.

These are the best places to sell your digital products online.

Choosing the right digital products for your business

There are lots of digital products to sell online. But first, you’d have to create it. We’ve put together a guide on how to create and sell digital products that should help.

Once your product is ready, you can sell it on Selar, a platform that is designed for digital products. Afterward, the next step is to promote your product. Here are effective steps to take to promote your digital product and make more sales.

Of course, there are lots of platforms where you can sell digital products online. But with a platform such as Selar, you are sure of using the right tool.