For many creators, figuring out how to monetize their work is a constant challenge. If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably got your content game down and have built an audience online, but you wish you were making more money.
While you could grind out more hours creating content in hopes of going viral, there’s a better and more sustainable way to make money online without burning yourself out: creating and selling digital products.
Read on to learn what digital products are, why many creators are selling them, and how you can make your own. To keep this resource at your fingertips, download our Digital Product Launch Checklist.
What are digital products?
A digital product is anything you can sell online that doesn’t require manufacturing, shipping, or inventory space. If you can make it on a device (like a phone or computer), sell it on a device, and use it on a device, it’s probably a digital product.
Digital products are a huge part of what we consume every day, from downloadable templates and guides, to online courses and membership subscriptions. They have gained a ton of popularity in the last few years, and the market for them has exploded right along with the boom of the creator economy.
Build, market, and sell digital products all in one spot with The Leap!
Why sell digital products?
Selling products in general is something every content creator should consider after they’ve built an audience. Whether you’re creating content full-time or as a side hustle, you should think of content creation as a business. Businesses rarely stick to a single product or service; they’re always looking for new opportunities to grow and bring in more revenue. Here’s why you should treat selling digital products as your next opportunity.
It creates resilience
Marketing budgets are often first to get cut during a recession, meaning lucrative brand deals could become rarer. If brand sponsorships are a big part of your income, that can be really stressful. When you sell digital products, you’re creating a new income stream that can shore up losses on the brand deal side of things. Now more than ever, it’s important to diversify your revenue streams as a creator.
You’re in control
Whether it’s YouTube updating its monetization policies or TikTok discontinuing its Creator Fund, it doesn’t take much for your income as a creator to be impacted by factors completely beyond your control. Selling digital products gives you that control back. No matter what kind of digital download you choose to sell, you decide what you sell and how you do it.
You’re giving your audience more value
With digital products, you can bring a lot of value to your audience. Creator educators like Miss Excel, for example, often create courses, guides, and other digital products that fit naturally with the free content they offer. That free content is great, but offering products is the natural next step for creators who want to give more to their community.
Low cost of entry
When selling physical products like merch, you’ll usually need a lot of help and money to go from your initial idea to a finished product. Digital products are a lot cheaper to produce, easier to get to your customer, and don’t need to be physically stored anywhere. That means you can launch a digital product more quickly for a lot less. And if you use The Leap to create and sell digital products, it’s all free!
Simple logistics
Anything that happens between you creating a product and your customer receiving can be referred to as logistics. In the world of physical products, these logistics involve manufacturing, sourcing vendors, warehousing, transporting goods, and more.
You don’t have to deal with any of this with digital products, because they don’t require repeated production, physical storage, or shipping. They’re accessible online in just a few clicks. You only need to create a digital download once, and it can be sold over and over.
Higher profit margins
With digital products, you can keep more money in your pocket. Because your initial investment is lower, you can whip something up and get it out the (digital) door with less money. And the costs of delivering that digital product to your audience are a lot cheaper, too. That means you can keep more money from each sale rather than giving it to a list of suppliers, manufacturers, and other vendors.
Easily scalable
“Scalable” is a business term that defines how easy it is to grow something quickly — usually a service or a product. Digital products are way more scalable than physical products. Since the logistics of selling digital products are simpler and more straightforward, and the investment required to scale is smaller, you can go from offering just one product to a whole range of products a lot faster.
Additionally, because there’s no inventory to manage, you don’t have to worry about finding creative ways to deal with increased demand. While physical products require additional costs and infrastructure as demand increases, digital products don’t.
4 steps to sell digital products online
Selling digital products may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. With this step-by-step guide, you can have an easy-to-follow resource at hand for when you’re planning your launch, whether it’s your first product or your 10th.
1. Research
The first step to selling digital products online is to figure out what you’re going to sell, of course. Even though digital products are easier to create than physical goods, you need to make sure the juice is worth the squeeze.
Identify the best digital product for your audience
Before you start building your product, you need to know who you’re creating it for. You could create the best Excel template out there, but it won’t really get you anywhere if no one in your audience uses Excel. Try using community and polling features on your platform of choice to get a sense of what your audience wants.
Not sure where to start? Check out what creators in your niche are selling.
Do some keyword research
Once you’ve decided what product you’ll be selling, you need to know what to call it. Sure, you might think of it as an “income and expense worksheet,” but your potential customers might call it a “monthly budget tracker.” To increase the reach of your product, you can use a tool like Google Trends to find out what keywords get the most search traffic and use these keywords when talking about your product.
Plan your product from idea to launch
Now that you’ve done your research, it’s time to figure out the production process. Try to get an idea of what resources you’ll need to create this product, whether that’s tools, skilled help, or cash. Give yourself a generous deadline, and plan out how you’ll promote your product when it’s done.
2. Create your digital product
This is the hard part, but it can be a lot of fun too! You’ve made your plan, and now it’s time to actually create something your audience will get excited about.
Start small
Avoid doing too much at once — you don’t want to burn yourself out without ever finishing your product. If you are a beginner in selling digital products, start with a bite-sized idea rather than an elaborate and time-intensive one.
For example, you can create a simple template, a shorter ebook, or a mini-course instead of a full-fledged one. This is your opportunity to learn the process and figure out the kinks.
Build your digital product with The Leap
Since digital products already cost a lot less to produce than physical products, you might as well try to push that advantage to its limit. Instead of using expensive, complicated software, save costs by building your digital product with The Leap.
The Leap is a free, AI-powered tool that can help you turn an idea into a marketable digital product in minutes. Whether you’re looking to build a mini-course, tutorial, or guide, The Leap will walk you through the process step by step. Within minutes, The Leap can generate a bunch of digital product ideas for you, and even get you started with a draft.
Build, market, and sell digital products all in one spot with The Leap!
3. Set up your online store
Congratulations, you’ve created your first digital product! Now, it’s time to sell it.
Before you send your product out to the world, you need a way to get it to your audience and have them pay for it. How? You can do so easily by setting up your own online storefront on The Leap.
Step 1: Add your digital product to your store
When you use The Leap to create your digital products, you’ll get a sales page that’s automatically generated and added to your Leap online store.
Got an existing digital product? Or did you build your product elsewhere? No problem! You can sell any digital download on your Leap storefront by pasting a link to wherever it’s hosted.
Step 2: Edit your product landing page
Draw the attention of your potential customers by writing a detailed and compelling description of your product. Don’t forget to upload an eye-grabbing image to your sales page!
Here’s an example of a product landing page from creator Kate Terentieva, who sells a mini-course on “How To Become a Creative Director.”
Step 3: Set a price
On The Leap, you can offer your digital products at three different pricing options, including:
- Lead magnet: Offer your product for free in exchange for someone’s email address.
- Fixed price: Decide exactly how much you want to charge for your product.
- Pay what you want: Let your customers decide how much they’d like to pay for your product.
Step 4: Customize your online store
The Leap offers a variety of customizable themes you can choose from to give your online storefront a unique look. You can also personalize your store by uploading a profile picture and a cover image. Additionally, you can link out to your Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more using built-in social media icons.
For a visual reference of what a Leap storefront could look like, check out this example from creator Kate Terentieva:
Step 5: Share your online store
Once you’ve finished building your Leap storefront, be sure to share a link to it with your audience. That means including your storefront link on your social media bio, content descriptions, and really anywhere else your audience might find it.
4. Promote your product through content
You’ve successfully created a digital product and you’re ready to sell it. Now it’s time to market it to your audience! Here are just a few ways you can promote your new digital product.
Mention your product in your content
You don’t want to use every piece of your content to promote your product, but you should definitely mention it when it’s appropriate. Publish at least one post that just talks about the product, then bring it up in other content when it makes sense. Use your best judgment here.
Create content about the product you’re selling
Adding to the point above, if you want to boost your sales, try integrating your digital product into your content strategy. Talk about the problems your product solves or create content about similar solutions, and naturally, you’ll have opportunities to promote your product.
Include a link to your product in your content and social media bio
This should be a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to forget it! Make sure you add a link to purchase your digital product to the description or caption of your content. On YouTube, for instance, most creators insert links to their products in the description of each of their videos.
To make it easy for your audience to find your digital products, you should also include a link to your online store in your social media bio.
How to market and sell a digital product
You’ve made your product and you’ve started mentioning it in your content. Now here’s how you can market and sell it to your audience — and even people who aren’t part of your audience yet.
Build an email list
As a content creator, you’ve probably built an audience on your social media platforms of choice. But did you know there’s a better way to reach your following for important updates like a product launch? Email marketing might seem a bit old-school, but it still works.
Offer free resources as lead magnets
One of the easiest ways to grow your email list is by offering your audience free resources (or freebies) in exchange for their email addresses. With The Leap, you can do so by setting your digital product as a “lead magnet.”
Send out regular newsletters
To keep your audience checking their inboxes, deliver valuable content by email regularly, the same way you would on other content platforms. That way, when you announce your next product launch by email, they’ll already be used to checking in there — and will be more likely to make a purchase!
Promote your newsletter in your content
You can turn a good portion of your regular audience into an email list just by promoting your newsletter through your usual content. Just make sure that your newsletter offers something valuable that they’re not getting elsewhere.
Dip your toes in paid advertising
If you want to invest a bit of money into your digital product business, try advertising it. Every platform you can create content on has some way for you to advertise — though some are more worthwhile than others.
Try advertising on social media
A single sponsored post can go a long way. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to try this out. Rather, treat it as an experiment with a small budget. Whether your platform of choice is TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or something else, look into commissioning an ad or two for your digital product.
Look into Google Ads
Google Ads get displayed in Google search results, on websites and blogs throughout the web, and in a ton of other places. That can potentially give your digital product a lot of visibility.
Partner with other creators
Who doesn’t love a good collab? Try securing sponsorship spots with other creators in your niche, work out an exchange where you promote each other’s products, or plan some other type of collaboration. Treat your fellow creators as collaborators rather than competitors, and you’ll go far!
Don’t promote your products in all your content
Before you start selling digital products, your audience expects to see only one thing when they go check out your platform: free, valuable content. Of course, there might be a sponsored post or two, but generally they just expect to be entertained or educated. Once you start selling products — and promoting them with content — you’re faced with a new challenge. You have to promote without seeming like a total sellout. The key? Limit how often you promote.
Find the right ratio
There’s no perfect ratio for how much of your content should promote a product to how much should just provide the same free value you’ve always given. The best approach? Create as much non-promotional content as you can between pieces promoting your product. No matter what number you think slots in there, it’s probably not high enough.
In his book, $100M Leads, entrepreneur and content creator Alex Hromozi says you want to get to a point where your audience goes out of their way to ask you to sell them something. But, if you need to pay rent, he says you can also insert quick mentions of a product within your content, though this works best on long-form platforms.
Experiment and test
The best approach to this sort of thing is to test something out, look at any analytics you have access to, and determine whether your test worked or not. For example, start with three pieces of valuable content before making content promoting your product for a few months, then look back on your stats. Did you get enough sales? Did your content’s performance start lagging? Answer those questions, and you’ll know if you should just keep at it, slow your roll, or give more value.
Create a free version of your products
One of the best ways to promote a digital product is to create a free version and offer it to your audience — with an obvious path to the paid, upgraded version. Think about all those free trials for subscriptions that you’ve had and how often you ended up subscribing to the paid service. This is a bit like that, except you’re not counting on your audience to forget to cancel that trial; you just want to be there, at the ready, when they choose to upgrade.
Any digital product can be sized down or offered for a limited time. A template can be made simpler or a course shorter. For this to work, the free version has to still offer a ton of value. Just not as much as the one you expect people to pay for.
Get referrals
For any business, a healthy stream of referrals is a sign that their product or service is finding its market. Without referrals, they have to constantly try to bring in more customers to replace the ones they’re losing — or have just already bought with no intent to buy again.
The same is true for your digital product.
The simplest way to get referrals is to just ask. You could send a quick message to every buyer right after they make a purchase, or check in with them a few weeks later and make the ask.
The most effective way to get referrals is to give something in exchange, like a discount or a free product.
8 Digital product ideas to sell online
Ready to get started? Here are a few ideas for digital products you can sell to get you on your way.
1. Templates
Digital templates can come in many different forms, but they all serve the same purpose: they’re a fill-in-the-blank solution for common problems. You can create a template for almost anything — think résumé templates for jobseekers, digital wedding planners for brides and grooms-to-be, worksheet templates for teachers, Instagram Stories templates for brands and content creators, and expense tracker templates for anyone looking to manage their finances. The possibilities are endless.
Selling thoughtfully designed templates online could be incredibly lucrative. Creator Easlo, for instance, started making and selling templates that can be used on the productivity tool Notion in 2021. As of 2023, he’s made his first million dollars largely thanks to his template sales.
To start selling, think about what people need and come up with a template that can help make their lives easier. Once you’ve created the template, you can sell it by launching an online storefront with a free tool like The Leap.
Wondering what templates you can sell?Access our free Notion Template Ideas Database for 120 popular examples!
2. Ebooks
Writing an ebook is a great way to share your knowledge and expertise. The startup cost is minimal — you simply need to spend the time to write the content and potentially hire an editor. No matter what your niche is, you can easily find a topic or two that people will be willing to pay to learn about.
Once you’re ready to publish your ebook, you can then use a free online storefront tool like The Leap to sell it. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it.
3. Online courses
Popular among content creators, selling online courses is a fantastic way to make money online. If you have knowledge or expertise to share with others, you can package it into a course and give your audience access to it for a fee.
Just look at Miss Excel, who started her creator journey by sharing Excel spreadsheet tips on TikTok in 2020. Nearly four years later, she’s built a $2 million business selling multiple online courses on how to use Excel and other software.
Since you only have to plan, record, and publish your course once and can then sell it repeatedly, online courses can be a great source of passive income.
Pro tip: If you’re new to building online courses, consider starting small by creating and selling a mini-course. With The Leap’s AI-powered digital product builder, not only is it quick and effortless for you to build a mini-course, but the bite-sized format also makes the course content easily digestible for learners. Try The Leap to build your own mini-course today.
4. Guides and tutorials
Guides and tutorials are simple, lightweight alternatives to online courses that you can create quickly and that your audience can get through easily. With guides and tutorials, you’re essentially sharing bite-sized versions of your expertise.
These digital products make for effective lead magnets, i.e. resources you can offer for free in exchange for someone’s email address. By collecting those contacts and building your email list, you’re able to seamlessly promote higher-priced products to your potential customers in the future.
Interested in creating and offering your own guide or tutorial? The Leap’s AI-powered digital product builder can help bring your idea to life in minutes — try it yourself!
5. Digital tools
Digital tools can be anything that helps someone achieve a specific task more efficiently. Whether it’s a photo-editing preset, a Procreate brush, or even a mortgage calculator, you can distill your expertise or skill into a convenient tool to serve others.
6. Printable art and craft patterns
Whether you’re an artist, graphic designer, or knitter, your skills are the gateway to creating digital products for your audience. If you’re a painter, you can sell downloadable art prints to those looking to decorate their spaces. And if you’re a knitwear designer, you can sell patterns of your unique designs in PDFs.
Not sure what to sell? Take this free mini-course to learn how to research and plan which digital products to sell.
7. Digital services
Do you have a skill someone would be willing to pay for? If you’ve been creating content for any length of time, you’re guaranteed to have at least one. Whether it’s content creation, video editing, or coming up with a content strategy, you’re bound to find people in your audience who could benefit from those skills.
8. Licensed art
Do you have photography or digital art skills? Maybe you’ve got a bit of graphic design training? There are tons of companies, creatives, and other creators out there who need art for their projects and would be ready to pay a pretty penny for it. All you’d need to do is spend a bit of time producing it, put it together for your audience, and you’ve got yourself a profitable digital product!
Start selling digital products with The Leap!
Whether you’re looking to create your first digital product or trying to scale up your creative business, The Leap is there. With an AI-powered product builder, an online storefront for processing payments, and a link in bio page, you can get everything you need to sell your digital products.
Click here to start creating and selling digital products with The Leap. It’s free!FAQ
How can you create digital products to sell online?
One of the biggest advantages of digital products is they’re a lot easier to produce than physical products. In just six steps, you can have your own digital products to sell:
- Research the kind of product you want to sell.
- Build your product.
- Set up an online store to sell your product.
- Promote your product with content.
- Build an email list.
- Try paid advertising.
Stuck on the “build the product” step? That’s where The Leap comes in.
The Leap is a free, AI-powered tool designed to help creators build digital products in a snap. Even if you have absolutely no idea what to sell, The Leap can help you get from the thought of “I should sell digital products” to a full-stocked online storefront, quickly and easily. Try it yourself today.
How do you make money online selling digital products?
At the core of it, when you start selling digital products, you make money as soon as people start buying them. But to give your product the best chance of success, you need to set the right price and build a strategy that gets it in front of the right audience. Here are some ways you can do that:
- Build a value ladder. That means creating a series of products that offer progressively more value as they go up in price. That way, you’ll have something for every customer.
- Pick the right pricing model. Choose between a value-based (pricing based on what your product offers), cost-based (pricing based on what you paid to make the product), or competitor-based approach (pricing based on the competition).
- Choose the right promotion method. Many creators assume that all they have to do to promote their digital products is slapping a link to them in their social media bio. In reality, there are ways you can promote your products through your regular content without alienating your audience. Here are just some ideas.
What are the best digital products to sell?
Some of the best digital products for creators to sell include:
- Templates
- Ebooks
- Online courses
- Guides and tutorials
- Digital tools
- Printable art and craft patterns
- Digital services
- Licensed art
Follow The Leap on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for more monetization tips for creators. We also make a newsletter.
Further reading
- 15 Digital Product Ideas To Sell for Every Niche
- How to Price Your Digital Products for More Sales
- How To Promote Your Digital Products: 10 Ways To Boost Sales
- How To Make Passive Income Selling Digital Products
- 15 Profitable Digital Products To Sell Online (+Real Examples)
- How To Create a YouTube Business Plan (+ Free Templates)
- How To Write Digital Product Descriptions for Your Online Store (Tips + Free Template)
This article was originally published in January 2024, and updated in December 2024 with additional information.
