Sell Digital Products & Earn Passive Earnings Online in 2022

Can I make money online selling my own digital products?..🤔

It may sound crazy but many multi million dollar businesses are built upon digital solely on digital products only.

There are a lot of businesses that create and sell digital products regularly and make millions of revenue each year in the process…😮😮

So the short answer would be YES!!

Digital form of content is one of the best sources of passive earning online for a sustainable income in the long term.

Today, we live in a world where everything is accessible at the tip of our fingers.

People who are willing to learn and explore new skills always have access to the internet. This is the best resource one can look out for to grow personally and professionally.

To give you another insight, 

Our consumption of digital forms of content has been rising rapidly with an estimated 4.66 billion users who had access to the internet back in January 2021.

This figure is almost 60% of the entire world who are seeking some form of information or knowledge out there digitally across the globe.

There is no better time living than now, considering how rapidly everything is getting digitized around us everyday.

You can create a digital product on your own and can create a full time income too with your consistent dedicated effort and time into it as well…

Example

Consider this,

1. Kat Norton famously known as Miss Excel makes a revenue of a whopping $1,00,000 every day by teaching Excel courses online.
2. Another example is Rachel Jones from ‘MoneyHackingMama‘ who has made over $10,000 per month in sales selling stuff on Etsy.

Both of the above examples are about 2 successful businesses running online selling digital products.

Today, we will talk about what is a digital product & how you can create a digital product & make money online from it.

Okay, now let’s see what exactly is a digital product and how you can sell it online.

What is a digital product?

A digital product is something which doesn’t have a physical existence (intangible) that is consumed in exchange of an amount which is paid generally.

When you are listening to your favourite music on Spotify or watching your favourite movie on Netflix, you consume a digital product in exchange of a paid value for it.

Here, movies or music don’t have any physical existence of its own but rather exist virtually.

Another similar example would be taking a new course on “How to play a guitar”. Here you pay the tutor an amount in exchange for learning the instrument.

The course you take is a best example of a digital product which has a value attached to it.

Let’s have a look at the types of digital products you can look out for.

What are the types of Digital Products?

Digital products can come in several forms, such as:

1. Digital products can be sold as e-books or courses

You might have come across a similar product sold digitally across various platforms.

Ebooks are nothing but a book sold digitally. It can be anything such as “How to bake a chocolate cake” or even “Photography basics for beginners”.

They can cover any type of niche market such as education, real estate, entertainment, sports etc.

Ebook reader base is expected to touch upon 1182.8 million users by 2026.

Ebooks are always preferred as a perfect digital product that can be a free resource where customers sign up onto your email list (lead magnet). Eventually, this makes your customers paying customers if you provide genuine value to them. 

A quick example over here would be Mike Geary who made around $10,00,000 per month, selling his e-book titled “The Truth About Abs” about sharing knowledge and information on any given topic.

Similarly, courses are about sharing knowledge and information on any given topic in a digital format onto different platforms.

Courses can be on anything, such as “How to use Canva” or “How to learn Japanese”. 

Why do people buy courses?

People prefer to buy courses due to several reasons such as:

1. Online courses give them information & knowledge upon a subject in an organised & structured manner.
2. Spending money on an online course creates a sense of being accountable towards what you spend your money for.
3. It provides access to your exclusive content & also to the community of students who are into the same goal as you are.
4. You get a straight & well planned roadmap from Point A to B for what you are trying to learn.
5. It saves time & energy by filtering out all crap but giving you only required invaluable content.
6. You get to learn from an experience of someone else directly & this helps you save yourself from committing mistakes, if any.

Stats say that, by 2026, the elearning market size will reach around $374.3 billion which will grow at a rate of 14.6%.

This says about how big the sector is and how it would expand in the future.

2. Digital products sold with a license to use the product

These are typically products that need a license to use them in the first place.

Products such as images, videos, sound effects, softwares etc come with a license for its use over a period of time.

These are generally used by other people in their own commercial projects or other purposes in exchange of payment for the same.

Typical common examples of such platforms are:

1. Unsplash (Images)
2. Pixabay (Videos & Images)
3. Pexels (Videos & Images)
4. Shutterstock (Images, videos, sound effects)
5. Soundsnap.com (For downloading sound effects)
6. Croma (For softwares)

3. Giving memberships to customers for an access to digital products

This is another way of selling digital products.

Generally in this type of product, several digital products are bundled together into 1 product for the help of others.

As an example, foodbloggerpro is a membership community offered by Pinch of Yum founders.

This offers the people an access to community programs who learn about how to start & expand their food blog.

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4. Selling templates in digital format

Some of the popular digital templates include icons, plugins, fonts, themes etc which sell well.

With some creativity you can design such kinds of templates and sell them in various marketplaces online to make money online selling your digital product.

Eg: A good example is WooCommerce plugin which has generated really good sales since it's launch.

There are numerous other examples of templates that is filed with such amazing templates, such as:

1. Budgeting planner template.
2. Study time table planner for setting study time tables.
3. Marriage planner template for anyone getting married.
4. Email or resume templates for sending email or making resumes etc.
5. Selling your own digital assets such as artwork or services packed into one product.

If you are a person who loves to draw or has a skill to design stuff there’s an amazing marketplace where you can sell your digital art online to others.

Some of the common examples include selling digital artwork in the form of books, t-shirts, books etc.

People sell their art on t-shirts,pillows, caps etc through Print On Demand stores and generate passive earnings online from it.

Essentially, you print something on demand of the customers, any sort of design or artwork such as t-shirts, hoodies, caps, mugs etc and dispatch it to them.

Again there are numerous examples of people who have created multi million dollar businesses selling merch.

People actually buy the merch due to the artwork that you create digitally which they would like to get printed on any product online.

A store worth mentioning here is StomaStoma which houses unique artwork sold for babies.

Besides these you can bundle your services into 1 package and sell your service to others.

An example would be providing services as an Accountant.

Here you can help your client prepare for books of account, file returns for them and also provide consultation necessary from time to time all packaged into 1 single product.

Or else you could be a lawyer who would provide consultation through 1 on 1 session online or even in a group.

Advantages and disadvantages of a Digital Product

Let’s have a look at some of the pros and cons of selling a digital product online:

Pros of a Digital Product

1. Saves a lot of time and resources

Selling a digital product saves your invaluable time and even saves you a lot of money which goes into storage of inventory, shipping products to customers etc.

As it’s everything in digital medium, one doesn’t need to hold up any inventory beforehand to make any sales.

Thus, you save a ton of money from operating digitally…💰

2. Grow your business quickly

You can accomplish growth in revenue & scale your business quickly by selling digital products in comparison to selling digital products…📈

3. Ability to generate higher profitability

When you save upon costs of running businesses (selling digital products) , your profit margins rise up substantially…⬆

This is the beauty of selling stuff online.

4. Put your work on complete autopilot mode

When you sell stuff online, you hold the potential to take your business on complete autopilot mode once you have all things set in place…🚀

This is the ultimate passive income model you are looking out for that can truly generate returns even when you are asleep.

5. Change the way products are sold to customers

One must decide upon How to sell the products to customers.

Even you can package multiple products into 1 bundled product or sell products individually to customers as per your choice.

You can even add/ create a different range of products if required & modify the process of how you sell the products to others.

Cons of a Digital Product

Here are some cons of selling a digital product:

1. It is a tough competitive place to compete with

There are several competitors always trying to sell digital products as yours. 

So, it can be a tough market to enter into and make money online selling digital product.

2. Possibility for resale of digital products

Piracy is a major issue and a cause of concern for all when it comes to selling digital products.

Many people copy other products to create a replica of yours which creates an issue of theft of original digital products.

Having said all of the above, it isn’t always impossible to start selling your product online. 

Afterall you start anywhere you will always face competition and that is where the true business lies.

Now, let’s have a look at “How you can create a digital product”.

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How do I create a digital product?

This is a million dollar question..isn’t it?🤩

A good digital product marketed correctly to a targeted audience has the potential to make you good money.

Creating a digital product will involve several things which we have discussed hereunder.

This would mean several iterations & testing involved to bring out a good digital product.

Digital products can be a great source of passive income online, if tapped in correctly.

This broadly involves 3 things to be figured out:-

1. Finding problems with customers.
2. Creating a solution for the problems of customers.
3. Make the solution saleable in the form of a digital product for customers.

Let’s see the following 5 step process which can help us to create a digital product covering the above aspects.

1. Research for your idea of product before actually creating your product

The very first step before putting your efforts into product creation is about finding the right stats & key figures if your product has any evidence looking out for it or not.

You can take help from different platforms, such as Quora, Facebook groups, finding trends in Google Trends to determine if the product is worth putting your efforts into.

2. Build your potential customer base by providing them something valuable for free

It’s key to the success of any digital product. 

Any digital product won’t attain the desired success level until & unless it doesn’t reach out to the right targeted customers.

At this stage, you can think of providing a free resource to get them on board & you can get their email address for it.

This will be your most valuable asset once your product goes live. Thus, this will become a very important step in the entire process.

3. Create your Digital Product at this stage

This step is what you have been waiting for.

Your digital product will take shape at this moment. You can create your digital product in any desired form as required, which can be anything as follows:

1. E-books
2. Printables
3. Courses
4. Digital templates etc

Work around ways that work best for you & put your time into creating one such product which can make money online selling digital product.

4. Find the channels where you will list your products for sale

This is a crucial step where you need to find the required channel for sale of your digital product.

You can sell off your digital products through various mediums, such as:-

1. Blogs
2. YouTube Channel
3. Other listed marketplaces (we will talk about it later) etc.

There are a lot of ways where you can sell your digital product and make money selling digital products.

5. Collect feedback from customers to improve upon your product

This is another crucial step in the entire lifecycle of the digital product.

It’s important to remember that getting feedback from your customers is key to improving upon your digital products.

This will improve the user experience & fulfill the requirements of what the customer expects.

Thus, it becomes crucial to collect feedback from customers & incorporate it accordingly for improvement of product.

Where do I sell a digital product?

A digital product once launched needs the right marketplace to be successful.

There are several ways to market & sell a digital product.

Let’s see 7 such platforms we can see for the same:

Shopify

This is a platform where you can sell any digital product of your choice. It is also a major storehouse of so many different products listed by so many sellers online.

This is a good site to start with to make money online selling digital products.

Sellfy

This is another platform to sell digital products which would include different types of products such as music, audio files, videos, ebooks etc.

Fastspring

This is an ecommerce platform where you get the option to go for selling any digital downloadable files and you can make money online selling digital products here.

Simple Goods

Another example of a website where you can sell your digital goods. This works with the use of pop-ups to websites or sell through any payment pages hosted from you.

It even supports multiple formats of currencies & credit cards as well.

Sendowl

This is a platform which is again helpful for the sale of digital products.

This includes several forms of digital products such as downloadable content, memberships or even subscription to your products.

You can sell in bundles, ebooks, music sheets, designs, How to Guides etc and make money online selling your digital products.

FetchApp

This is another platform which allows you to sell & digitally download files such as any form of photos, music files or even ebooks, PDF’s.

This is also integrated with Shopify & Woo Commerce platform which further provides better features to creators.

Gumroad

This is a great platform which includes use of digital products which can be downloaded for use. 

Creators use this platform with a simple 4 step approach, which is opening an account, adding a product, selling a product, and getting paid for it.

Additionally, we can also sell digital products onto our own created channels, such as:-

1. Blogs or websites
2. YouTube channel
3. Social media platforms such as Quora, Facebook etc which provide plenty of opportunities to do so.

We have covered up for ways on where to sell digital products.

Let’s see if selling digital products is really a passive source of income.

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Are digital products truly a passive source of income?

The short & quick special answer is YES!!

As crazy as it may sound, people have made their fortune selling digital products online.

NFT’s are selling really well recently & creating all the noise.

An artist by the name of Beeple recently managed to make a sale (NFT) worth $69 million for an effort that took around 5000 days.

This figure says it all about how making money can do wonders for your business & help make passive earnings online possible.

Digital products are the future & this is where the true market lies in the future.

Self-publishing author Mike Dawson makes around $0.45 million every year through the help of his self-published ebooks.

Any entrepreneur thinking of any business idea definitely has digital products in life for its customers who would be willing to buy something in future.

So, don’t think much about it & get started right away. You are just a sale away to get going.

You feel that digital products are really good to go, but you want to know which products are most profitable.

Let’s have a look at the same.

What are the digital products that are profitable in 2022?

There are several digital products that are profitable & can produce really good results.

Some of the products that can turn profitable & go well with customers are as follows:

1. E-books

Sales of ebooks have been going really well.

This is always a demandable product considering how people look to consume content in readable form.

2. Video formats

Videos also sell well considering how it can be helpful for the audience to capture the information.

Videos play a key role in delivering value to the audience.

3. Audio files (inclusive of music)

Audio in the form of podcasts are also a vital product with growing need & importance of people tuning in to audio podcasts over a period of time.

These would include audio books, reused sound effects, lectures to be used by people as well.

4. Digital photos & artwork

Digital photos & artwork sell well. Several bloggers & people who own websites sell their content from different websites where they sell stock photos & artwork at their own set price.

5. Graphics

Businesses require logos & unique design ideas to illuminate their presence online. 

Artists can sell their drawings, sketches or any finished pieces of art by applying their skills onto digital platforms.

Here are a few key takeaways in what we have discussed so far:

Key Takeaways

Making money online selling digital products has never been this easy.

Here are a few key things while selling your digital product online:

1. Digital products can be sold in various forms such as ebooks, printables, digital artwork, audio downloadable files etc.
2. There are several platforms to sell digital products online such as Shopify, Sellfy, Gumroad, Fastspring, SimpleGoods, Sendowl etc.
3. Creating a digital product requires research, building customer base, creating digital product, finding correct channel for sale, gathering correct feedback etc.
4. Making money selling digital products has never been this simple and it requires consistency with patience to be successful.