5 Lessons I Learned by Selling Digital Downloads for 10+ Years

Digital eCommerce is my ardour, and it has modified my lifestyle.

I began providing digital downloads by myself nearly over a decade in the past.

Because the President of Straightforward Digital Downloads, I additionally assist 1000’s of profitable people and companies obtain their desires by promoting digital downloads, like ebooks, software program, paperwork, and extra from their web sites.

From my expertise of promoting digital downloads and serving to individuals achieve this, listed below are 5 essential classes I imagine each beginner vendor must know.

Why Promote Digital Downloads for Passive Earnings?

Whereas there are a number of alternative ways to make a passive earnings on-line, creating and promoting digital downloads is probably the easiest way to make a good earnings with minimal effort.

You Don’t Want a Lot of Site visitors to Succeed

You would make cash by displaying advertising, however there are compromises. With adverts, you’ll want quite a lot of site visitors to make a good earnings. Driving quite a lot of site visitors could be time-consuming and tedious. With affiliate marketing, alternatively, you don’t have management over the product’s high quality.

By promoting digital merchandise, you get full management over what you promote. To succeed, you don’t essentially want quite a lot of site visitors. You simply want to draw the precise viewers who’s involved in your providing.

As an example, one in all our prospects, Sam Parrett from SetSailStudios.com, monetizes his web site by creating and promoting niche-specific merchandise — downloadable fonts, which completely aligns together with his ardour as a graphic designer.

In contrast to individuals who monetize their web sites with adverts, he doesn’t have to fret about selecting a broader area of interest that he’s not acquainted with and publishing content material in that area of interest to draw the next site visitors quantity.

In his case, it’s simpler for him to provide and promote digital downloads in a distinct segment he’s acquainted with than monetizing his website with adverts in a broader area of interest.

Create As soon as and Promote Perpetually

Promoting digital merchandise additionally has a bonus over bodily merchandise.

You’ll by no means run out of inventory as a result of you’ll be able to repeatedly promote a digital product ceaselessly. Which means you don’t want to fret about maintaining stock and ordering or creating extra inventory.

You additionally gained’t must pay for storage or spend time packing and delivery merchandise to prospects. Anybody from around the globe can simply buy and obtain a digital product. Which means you’ll be able to promote from the consolation of your property and with little to no funding.

1. Select a Digital Product Based mostly on Your Experience

Promoting digital downloads is all concerning the product, and your first job is to determine on which merchandise you’ll promote. There are many popular digital products to select from.

eBooks are the most well-liked digital product individuals select to monetize. Nevertheless, you possibly can select to promote music, movies, eBooks, or audiobooks based mostly in your experience.

In case you want inspiration, listed below are examples from our prospects who promote several types of digital merchandise:

• EscapeRoomGeeks.com: They create and promote printable Escape Room Kits for numerous age teams. Prospects buy a equipment (or bundle of kits), obtain the printable belongings, assemble the challenges after which a bunch of youngsters can attempt to resolve them.
• BrushGalaxy.com: Brush Galaxy is a market the place you should buy and promote customized brushes for Procreate (the main digital illustration app for iPads)
• MrsMactivity.co.uk: They promote membership entry to 1000’s of inventive, curriculum-aligned main schooling sources.

When deciding on a product, be certain that to decide on the one based mostly in your experience and the product format you’re snug with.

2. Make Certain Your Product Solves a Drawback

You’ll must create a product that solves an actual drawback. On the finish of the day, potential prospects will solely go to your web site if it solves their drawback.

Ask your self the next questions: Why would somebody purchase your product? What drawback are you seeking to resolve?

I’ve discovered that to reply these questions, it helps to write out a mission statement.

The assertion ought to describe the precise drawback (or issues) you are attempting to resolve.

You may write these as advantages in your web site.

This provides you with a built-in buyer base and be sure you meet your buyer’s expectations through the post-purchase course of.

3. Perceive Who Your Prospects Are

The following query to reply is, ‘Who’re you promoting to?’ I like to recommend spending a while pondering clearly about this and writing precise solutions down on paper.

You need to create an in depth description of your typical buyer. Have a transparent image of what they appear like in your thoughts.

Fascinated by this buyer at every stage will make it easier to keep on observe. Do that when contemplating new options, writing your web site copy, and fixing bugs.

Right here’s an instance from one in all our prospects, Mrs Mactivity Resources, the place they make cash from promoting on-line sources for Early Years educators. The ‘who’ is said clearly on the web site in order that academics can simply see whether or not the sources will meet their wants.

4. Select the Proper Platform to Promote

There are many platforms where you can easily sell digital products.

You may both promote the merchandise on a third-party market or create your personal on-line retailer. Switching to a special platform sooner or later could be hectic, so carry out due diligence earlier than selecting a platform.

Promote on a Third-Get together Market

Third-party marketplaces do make sign-up straightforward and have a low preliminary price. Nevertheless, you’ll find yourself paying excessive transaction charges of as much as 30% for each product you promote.

You additionally don’t personal your personal knowledge; you simply hire it. Your product listings, buyer info, and buy knowledge are all saved on another person’s server. Migrating to a special platform later could be extraordinarily troublesome, if not unimaginable.

You Might Create Your Personal On-line Retailer

Your different possibility is to create your personal digital obtain retailer utilizing WordPress, the most well-liked platform for constructing web sites and on-line shops.

With a digital eCommerce platform like Easy Digital Downloads, you’ll pay completely nothing for transaction charges, month-to-month charges, or itemizing charges.

In addition to that, you’ll personal your personal knowledge. The license keys are all in your WordPress database. The acquisition knowledge and buyer info are in your database. So, if you wish to shift to a brand new web site, then you’ll be able to simply migrate your own data over.

Right here’s how one can create your own digital downloads store step-by-step.

5. Select an Optimum Worth to Maximize Your Income

On the subject of pricing your merchandise, there are three useful ideas to remember.

Make It Simpler for Your Buyer to Make a Choice

The primary key to your product providing is making it straightforward for the shopper to decide. This is useful, particularly in the event you’re promoting quite a lot of merchandise. In that case, it may well grow to be troublesome for the potential buyer to grasp which product they should resolve their drawback.

Numerous our shopper’s shops resolve this with bundling. They group some merchandise collectively which might be related or assist obtain a particular aim. This implies prospects don’t want to select and select which product they need. As a substitute, they simply pay one flat price and get all of them.

Bundles are in all probability the best solution to scale back selection paralysis. In addition they make it easier to create a good pricing page as a result of you’ll be able to simply checklist your bundles as an alternative of getting to cowl your entire particular person merchandise.

They will additionally assist scale back your refund charges. With no bundle, a buyer may select Product A once they actually need Product B. This often ends in a request for a refund. With a bundle, they get each options and may select the one which works for them.

Don’t Race to the Backside With Pricing

Racing to the underside on worth can damage your development.

You will have a competitor who sells 1000’s of PDF paperwork and printables for $1.25. You is perhaps tempted to see that as the worth level you need to be at.

Sadly, such a technique will undercut your development, too.

In truth, companies usually cowl all their prices of their pricing, together with the prices for website hosting, a site title, a software program license, an email marketing service, and extra.

But it surely’s additionally essential to know that there are different further prices, also referred to as tender prices, for working a enterprise, reminiscent of buyer assist. If you’re not charging sufficient in your product, then the primary buyer assist ticket might eat up any earnings you made on the preliminary buy.

So you might want to take note of your tender prices and perceive that these are revenue eaters. Ensure you construct these into your pricing.

Experiment With Pricing

It’s OK to experiment with pricing. You may attempt elevating or decreasing costs a bit of bit to seek out the purpose the place you might be optimizing conversions.

In case your product is fixing an issue, then conversions gained’t be onerous to come back by. However you might want to discover the worth level the place you might be truly worthwhile, and experimenting might assist.

That’s it!

I hope these sensible ideas might help you get a head begin in promoting digital downloads. You may additionally wish to see guides on how to sell videos online or the best WordPress plugins to grow business websites.

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