How to Make Money Using Digital Products
At the start of 2024, around 5.44 billion people, or 67% of the world, were online. With so many people connected digitally, the size of the digital product market is already huge and set only to grow even more.
From e-books and SaaS to online courses on digital education, there are many different types of digital products that you can sell online.
By 2025, the digital goods market is reported to make $54 Billion annually, and with such a large market and many different types of products, there’s plenty of space for newcomers to make a lot of money.
But how?
In the real world, you need supplies and physical resources to make money from physical products.
Having digital products to sell is a different story.
Once you’ve crafted your course, software, or other online service, you can easily sell the same content or digital product repeatedly with little need for more time or resources, making it an extremely lucrative business for those who can get it right.
With the right plan, the right product, and the right platform, making money online has never been more accessible. Here is everything you need to sell digital products and make money online.
What are Digital Products?
Digital products encompass any intangible, virtual goods or services created and sold in digital format.
These digital products can include virtual items, digital assets, and experiences or services online.
Unlike physical products, digital products can be downloaded, accessed, or consumed online, eliminating the significant costs of selling physical products, such as storage, transportation, and the vast cost of resources to create more of a product.
Some of the most popular digital products include:
- E-books
- Online courses
- Software and apps
- Digital artwork
- Stock photos and videos
- Templates & themes for blogs, websites, etc.
- Music and Audio
- Printables
- Webinars and workshops
- Digital magazines/ newsletters
- Fonts and typography
- Virtual events and conferences
- Consulting and coaching services
- Podcasts and audiobooks
Digital vs Physical – What’s the Difference?
While the world still needs physical products, selling digital products has some obvious advantages over physical goods.
Firstly, they almost universally have much lower production costs, with no costs for manufacturing or shipping. How much this is true will depend on the type of digital product you are selling.
For example, an app may have higher upfront costs to design and maintain such as with coding and graphics, but lower maintenance costs and no costs to reproduce it for multiple sales.
Digital products also allow you to instantly deliver to customers wherever they are in the world, allowing customers to access your product immediately and without shipping costs.
One of the most significant advantages of digital products is their scalability. With little to no additional production costs, digital products can be replicated almost infinitely, offering unlimited sales potential.
This scalability allows online businesses and creators to grow rapidly and efficiently once they’ve found the formula for success, catering to a growing customer base without physical constraints.
In addition, digital products can much more easily achieve global reach. By selling to all five and half billion people online, you open up vast opportunities for market expansion and revenue growth.
How to Create Your First Digital Product
If you’re looking to make money online with your first digital product, you must complete several steps before making your first sale.
Ideation
The first step is to search for product ideas. You might already have a specific type of digital product in mind, but whether you’re brimming with ideas or searching for inspiration, you must conduct comprehensive market research first.
This research will help inspire you with possible product ideas and increase your understanding of which digital products are successful, how they work, and why customers love them.
Gain insights into prevalent topics or pain points within your niche and conduct deep research to understand the needs and preferences of your target audience.
Armed with your research and new market knowledge, the next stage is to brainstorm your product ideas. Your final product idea should combine your expertise and passions with any identified market gaps.
The final step in ideation is checking how well your potential product could work in the market before you spend blood, sweat, and money trying to create and sell it.
Conduct surveys, interviews, or social media polls to gather feedback and gauge interest and demand for your proposed digital product.
Creation
How you approach the creation stage depends greatly on your product and expertise. For authors looking to create software, knowledge of coding is important.
For those looking to create and host online courses, a hosting and creation platform such as Tevello can help revolutionize how you host your course. With the ability to create courses and content in-app, create and manage your own communities, and integrate into Shopify, Tevello is one of the best online course platforms for getting your course off the ground.
Whatever your digital product is, the creation stage will likely be the make-or-break moment for your product. Ensuring you use all the tools available to help you create something special is the best way to
If necessary, revisit your market research to see how similar digital products were created or hosted, and learn techniques from those who have already been on your journey.
Packaging
While digital products do not require physical packaging, how you display and present your services or products online is the critical final step in convincing potential customers to click buy.
Every product element should be inviting and appealing, as even a single issue can put a potential customer off buying.
This means you need to craft compelling sales copy and visuals to illustrate the benefits of your digital product effectively.
Your brand messaging should resonate with your target audience – here you can use your earlier market research to efficiently address potential pain points and demonstrate how your product offers the solutions they need.
Online, your website is your storefront. A messy, unattractive, and unresponsive landing page will turn customers away. Meanwhile, investing in a responsive, professional-looking website is one of the best ways to retain customers once they arrive on your page.
If your website is attractive, clear, and intuitive, customers will subconsciously become confident that your product follows the same pattern of excellence, encouraging them to buy.
Going the Extra Mile To Bring Customers In
If you want to entice more customers to purchase, you can also offer bonuses or incentives. Creating limited-time offers creates a sense of urgency among prospective buyers.
Carving Your Digital Space: Marketing Your Product
With your digital product prepared and your landing page ready, you need to acquire some customers to start making money.
This is where marketing comes in.
Like digital products, there are many different types of effective online marketing, and you’ll likely want to test various strategies before deciding what works. The best marketing strategies will usually include more than one digital marketing avenue.
One of the go-to platforms for online marketing is social media via apps such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and others. These platforms offer plenty of engagement and advertisement tools, and through compelling content and targeted advertising, they can be effective ways to reach new customers.
You can also utilize content marketing through blog posts, videos, or podcasts to build your brand authority and attract organic traffic.
Email marketing stands out as one of the tried-and-tested methods of effective long-term marketing. By building an extensive email list, you can nurture relationships and drive consistent sales by providing personalized updates and promotions.
This allows direct communication between you and interested customers, helping to encourage repeat purchases and long-term customer loyalty.
Scaling and Growing Your Digital Business to Make Money Using Digital Products
Once you pick up sales and establish your product on the market, you’ll likely want to scale and expand. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to scale your business quickly and easily online.
Focusing on your existing products first, one way to scale quickly is to offer complementary products or upgrades to existing customers, increasing your average order value.
Another possibility is to construct automated email sequences or sales funnels that nurture leads. This will allow you to spend less time finding new customers, as an automated system will do the work for you.
Of course, if you truly want to scale and grow exponentially, the most critical step is expanding into new markets and niches.
This involves first finding the perfect adjacent markets and audiences related to your existing business, allowing you to effectively cross-sell your current digital products while building new products for your business.
At this stage, it’s vital to constantly refer to your earlier market research and lean into effective marketing strategies to ensure you are targeting the right audience and customer base when expanding.
The Power of Automation
Just as an automated email campaign can increase your efficiency in gaining new customers, implementing automation across your business can help you scale swiftly while optimizing your time and money.
This automation can come in two forms.
First comes using digital tools such as software and AI to automate email marketing, lead generation, and customer support processes. Second, comes hiring humans. As impressive as AI and software are today, sometimes nothing beats a person.
If the time is right, your business may need the help of a freelancer or permanent hire.
By delegating repetitive or time-consuming tasks to an employee, you can focus on important decision-making and growing your digital business, improving efficiency and productivity.
Whether through a new employee, digital tools, or likely both, automation is the key to large-scale growth.
Are You Ready to Begin Your Online Money-Making Journey?
So, if you’ve been considering creating your first digital product, why not start now? And if you are looking to create online courses, Tevello is the perfect online platform.
Giving you a space to create your own courses and content, manage community spaces, and add progress bars and custom certificates, Tevello has everything you need to get started.
It is also integrated with Shopify to make life easier, helping you reach the most potential customers right away.