Introduction
Learning? | Banking? | Shopping? | Reading? | Working? | Planning?
Online. You name it and there is a solution for it online in the form of a digital product designed to make life simpler, faster, and better.
And the best part? As a seller, these avenues are the perfect opportunities to sell digital products that will help you monetize your website in no time!
Let’s look at some advantages of selling digital products?
1. No/Low cost of production – Little to no cost of manufacturing the product as one can use multiple free tools to design the product. Adding your own creative touch is a plus.
2. Immediate gratification: Add to cart→Pay—>BOOM! The product has already reached the user’s email/number/device.
3. No cost of shipping: Electronic transfer means absolutely no cost and hassle of shipping the product from the warehouse to the destination.
4. One-time effort for forever results: In case of online courses, books, planners, etc. all you need to do is make the first effort to design/create it all. The same creation will be purchased by every customer going-forward without the need to create a new product
Now that you know how lucrative is the world of ecommerce is, learn how to sell digital products with Shopify!
– The ultimate ecommerce software: While you focus on building a business, Shopify enables you to make easily make your website and takes care of the maintenance, server upgrades, etc all by itself!
– Easy navigation: Extremely friendly user interface makes the shopping experience smoother and faster than ever.
– In-built Features: From Abandoned Cart Recovery to the free AI-suite of Shopify Magic to the new AI-powered Media Editor, you can now put up professional product shots, prompt customers, and do a lot more! These features are few amongst many
– Beautiful theme/design catalogue: Shopify takes ‘your style, your choice’ very seriously by offering a variety of templates to make your website be one with your brand identity
Without further ado, let’s deep dive into the top 10 digital products to sell online with Shopify!
1. E-books
-The only thing you need to write an e-book is your creativity. No paper. No pen. No stress of an untidy manuscript or even a bad cover.
-All it takes to deliver the e-book is ZERO effort from the seller. With the buyer putting in their email address, the book is directly transferred to their email account.
-The best genres in e-books are self-help, fiction, and go-to guides.
– Some pro tips for creating and marketing e-books on Shopify include ensuring that the ebook is responsive, it has clickable elements that increase audience interaction, and it is downloadable in a universal format like PDF/HTML.
2. Online Courses
– In world with people taking jobs earlier than ever and the constant race to ‘bring more to the table’, not just students but also professionals are constantly looking to upgrade their skills. And the common denominator is the lack of time.
– The global online education market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.5%.In a post-pandemic world, you can also offer online courses globally attracting lots of foreign transactions!
– Courses that add to one’s existing set of skills like an online MBA, a remote-only post-graduation course, digital marketing to start your own business, etc are some of the most trending courses. Other courses include short-term hobby courses that help people reconnect to their passions and start side businesses!
– Leverage Shopify’s many integrations to to host and sell courses. Use Thinkific to build your courses as it can be directly integrated with Shopify. Features like unlimited content hosting, easy drag-and-drop, tests, certificates, and live lessons, you can make learning super fun for your audience.
3. Printables and Digital Planners
– Anything that helps your plan your schedule for the day and holds your accountable for the progress counts as a digital planner
– It has your entire calendar in it from details of your whereabouts, food choices, water intake, workouts, certain habits, expenses, etc. SBUs also use them for content-creation planning. Sheets can individually printed or downloaded as a book meant for printing.
– Use Shopify’s professional tools to choose from over 70 responsive design templates that are customimzable based on the theme of your choice. A unified dashboard will help you manage your inventory and customers from one place. You can also connect with other business owners on Shopify Community
4. Stock Photos and Graphics
-From corporates to NGOs to small business owners to influencers to even students, the demand for stock photos and digital graphics is supremely high!
-Bloggers who are usually a one man army, prefer shelling out bucks on quality stock photos that don’t require much editing over actually doing a shoot. Businesses are using social media – a medium that requires CONSTANT content creation. Clearly, marketers are reaching out high-quality readymade assets to reduce the stress and cost. Designers are also prime audiences who often use pre-made digital assets to add to their designs and save the need for cumbersome custom creation.
-The Canvas Shop is a Shopify-integrated merchant that enables you to sell photos online. Use another Shopify app like Locksmith to avoid illegal downloading of your assets.
5. Music and Audio Files
-We love music! As of 2023, we spend 20.7 hours a day on a average listening to music. The entrance of a music subscription model and ad-supported model has also led to a significant increase in music streaming hours.
-Even marketers and filmmakers prefer to buy readymade sound effects as opposed to bearing the cost of production. Audiobooks are also in demand especially with people preferring to listen to books while travelling. Clearly, passive listening is paying off.
– Use Shopify’s theme options to create a website for your business. List the music/audio services by being extremely descriptive. You can also use Shopify’s free Profit Margin Calculator to offer lucrative pricing.
6. Software and Apps
– Computers were a luxury. But, nowadays a digital life is almost second nature to us. Our reliance of computing technology and the desire to have everything in our phones has only increased the need for advanced software and apps.
– Any software that helps people optimize their time by prioritizing tasks, increasing the productivity rate per hour, and offer very specific solutions are trending. While photos can be edited even on social media platforms, the need for apps that helps one edit photos and videos into no less than a professional shoot is at an all-time high.
– Use Shopify’s many integrated apps to manage and distribute software products. For eg: use Shop Pay for getting customers to checkout and pay up while on your page.
7. Templates and Themes
-When it comes to templates, the potential is massive and varied. With the desire to customize everything from your website to a birthday announcement, users love to select from a pool of thousands of designs.
-Small business owners prefer paying for existing templates and themes which can be downloaded, edited, and customized makes their life simple by eliminating cost of production. Web developers also prefer to optimize their time by using themes to set the basics right and offers relatively reasonable services. Bloggers and influencers make for some of your best customers since their entire online profile serves as the starting point and ending point of their business.
-Simply design a theme from scratch using Liquid, Shopify’s templating language. Them match the checklist on the Shopify Theme Store Requirement to be at par with the performance and user experience.
8. Digital Art and Illustrations
-The global digital art market size was USD 4.2 Billion in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 17.39 Billion by 2032, expanding at a CAGR of 17.1% during 2024–2032. Wall art and custom illustrations are in more demand than ever.
-Gone are the days of exclusive paintings in select homes. With digital art, artists can simply create one painting and sell digital copies to people all over the globe! Interior designers use custom digital downloadables like wall art prints to add a distinctive touch to every room.
– All you need to do take high quality pictures of paintings, add detailed descriptions, build and customize your website using Shopify, and add a payment gateway!
9. Memberships and Subscriptions
-Being learning or streaming, subscriptions models are becoming the norm with users paying monthly, yearly, and even fortnightly for premium services. It not only assures recurring revenue but also prevents customers from deflecting to competitor apps.
-Streaming services are leading in terms of subscription. However long-term online courses, gym memberships, online magazines, audiobooks, music, etc are also catching up. These subscriptions/memberships offers a sense of community access that is exclusive and flourishing with new content.
-Conjured memberships offered on the Shopify App Store helps you master membership selling! From exclusive perks to early access to new content to creating a gated community of members, you can get started quickly and easily.
10. Virtual Events and Workshops
-By 2025, 50% of all enterprise virtual events will be held on the video meeting platform commonly used by their organization every day. The future of webinars and online workshops looks bright.
-Global boundaries are slowly eliminating. Concerts are being streamed live from across the globe and users are demanding more access to foreign content, even if it means paying a premium for the same. By monetizing ticket sales of live and recorded events, you can offer access to an exclusive event to literally anyone in the world.
-After you have selected the theme of the virtual event, you can invite more and more people to attend the same by marketing through Shopify. From custom templates to create social media ads to even using its integrated payment gateway to process ticket sales.
Conclusion
Ebooks, audios, memberships, photos, illustrations, software, and more! The world is your stage when it comes to creating a thriving business of digital downloadables online. With no inventory management, warehouse rent, exclusive storage, and shipping cost, you’ve not only reduced your hassle but also greatly optimized the chain of buying and selling. All you need to get started with is your creativity!
Remember to be unique, price competitively, and be consistent in your endeavour! And don’t forget to explore the amazing world of Shopify Apps with over 6000 easily integrated apps to make your business successful.