How can you Sell Digital Products on Shopify
Last Updated | September 9, 2024
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In addition to tangible services and products, of which there exist millions on Shopify, you use the Shopify platform to sell another kind of amorphous product — digital downloads.
Selling digital products, such as videos, graphics, art, video games, TV shows, music, photography, and services, is a low-cost, low-hassle way to grow your Shopify revenue stream.
While these Digital products can’t be held, tasted, or touched, they add immense value to the lives of your consumers and are in popular demand. Here, we are going to learn everything there is to know about selling digital products on Shopify.
How do I sell digital products on Shopify?
If you want to make your digital product a success, make sure to do your diligent search and come up with a great idea that solves your users’ pain points and adds value to their lives.
If you are having a hard time coming up with an earth-shattering idea, head over to Facebook groups for a spark of inspiration, peruse through niche-specific forums, or even read product reviews to see where a popular product lacks and how you can fill in the gaps.
Even though you already have a store on Shopify, Shopify doesn’t offer support for digital products without downloading third-party apps.
Once you have come up with an amazing idea for a digital product, created it to perfection and added it to your store, it is time to download third-party apps from the Shopify App store that integrate seamlessly with the Shopify platform to give customers access to their digital goods after they have made the payment.
Also, you need to tweak your email template to reflect the digital nature of your product and how customers can access it after making the payment. Your email message should include a downloadable link from where customers can download their products.
Or if you are selling a service, make sure to include pertinent information about how customers can avail this digital service so that your customers understand how things work.
Shopify supported third-party apps offer users a way to access their digital products after the purchase is finalized. For instance, the Shopify Digital Downloads app allows you to upload digital files as products in your store.
When a customer makes a purchase, they receive a link to download the file. Other amazing third-party apps that facilitate digital products on Shopify include:
SendOwl: This amazingly simple and intuitive app enables you to sell digital products, such as audiobooks, licenses, graphics, and art, directly from your Shopify store.
As soon as a customer buys a non-tangible product from your store, the app automatically sends them a limited download link which users can leverage to access their purchase.
SendOwl’s wide-ranging language support and detailed analytical tools make it a highly functional app. It can be seamlessly integrated with payment systems to empower users to pay as they wish.
Read Also TRUST BADGES SHOPIFY
FetchApp: This is another great app that gives a way to download digital products to your customers without requiring any involvement on your part.
The best part about FetchApp is that you can bundle products with multiple files together and manage your downloads to keep track to who has access to your products and for how long. At just $20/month, this app packs quite a punch for sellers.
Sky Pilot: This special plugin enables one-click digital downloads by integrating them into your customer’s digital downloads order.
As soon as a customer purchases a digital product, this app redirects them to a page where they can easily download their purchase without having to wait for an email containing their product access.
All delivery pages are completely customizable, so you can easily tailor them to your brand’s personality.
Single Music: This app caters particularly to music or audio digital downloads and offers an engaging interface that displays catchy album templates and audio previews to give your customers a sneak-peak into what they can expect.
The best thing about Single Music is that you can host ticketed events and Livestream concerts, which can be watched on your page.
Pro tip: A great idea to drive early sales on Shopify is to collect pre-orders by offering an “early bird” discount. For instance, offer a certain discount to your first 50 customers at the launch of a digital product.
This could be your way of rewarding your loyal audience, a way to introduce your product in front of a new audience and get feedback, or just to get the ball rolling on pre-launch sales. And if you are a new business, nothing says credibility and authenticity than offering a money-back guarantee with your digital products.
This eases hesitant buyers into at least considering your product since they know you’re putting your money where your mouth is.
Why Shopify is the best platform to sell digital products and goods?
Shopify is home to 1 million businesses around the globe and allows them to sell anything they want; even intangible ones. The best thing about Shopify is that if offers all the services that you need to sell your digital products successfully; be it site hosting, updates, and security. Here’s why we think Shopify is the best platform for selling digital goods:
Seamless designs and templates: Shopify allows you to customize your sales experience to align with your overall brand and voice, with various customizable styles and aesthetically pleasing templates, not to mention, a host of marketing tools to tap into aswell. Not to mention, Shopify is easy to use and navigate, so it’s highly user-friendly, even for beginners.
A Plethora of plugins and extensions: Enjoy a plethora of built-in tools that let you enhance the functionality of your store and add custom features, as well as enhance the user experience and drive sales.
Whether you want to integrate a simple return process, enable your customers to create a wishlist, garner real-time traffic and performance analytics, display customer reviews, include a trust badge, include loyalty and rewards programs, upsell and cross-sell products, or keep tabs on how e-commerce store’s page load speed, there are hundreds of plugins and extensions on
Shopify that open unlimited doors of opportunities for you and help you optimize your digital products store.
Availability of Free Apps: Even though Shopify doesn’t support digital goods, it offers plenty of free apps that accelerate your business growth and help you upload and sell digital goods.
Stellar Customer Support: Shopify offers round-the-clock support via live chat, phone, email, and Twitter. If you need information or help, you can find tons of documentation, plus video tutorials and support forums.
Digital Products Review: Shopify lets you display customers’ opinion on their product experience and satisfaction directly on your page.
Mobile Friendliness: With most of your users visiting your store via a mobile device, it comes as a great relief that Shopify is centered on mobile responsiveness your store will look impeccable regardless of the device used to access it.
Marketing and SEO tools: Marketing is the life’s blood of eCommerce and Shopify has tons of marketing tools like social media integration, email marketing, and product reviews. You can even create a discount coupons, and loyalty programs, integrate social proof, and create outstanding landing pages for your Google Ads or PPC Social ads with Shopify.
Read Also the Shopify affiliate program
How can I create to sell digital products?
Steps | Description |
---|---|
1. Choose Your Product | Decide on the type of digital product you want to create and sell. |
2. Market Research | Research your target audience and their needs, preferences, and pain points. |
3. Create High-Quality Content | Develop valuable and high-quality content for your product. |
4. Design and Packaging | Design visually appealing packaging and promotional materials. Create a professional website. |
5. Set a Price | Determine a competitive and fair price for your digital product. |
6. Payment Processing | Set up secure payment processing using platforms like PayPal or Stripe. |
7. Digital Delivery | Plan how you’ll deliver the product to customers after purchase. |
8. Protect Your Product | Implement measures to protect against piracy and unauthorized distribution. |
9. Create a Sales Funnel | Develop a strategy to attract potential customers through marketing and content. |
10. Optimize for Mobile | Ensure your product and website are mobile-friendly. |
11. Legal Considerations | Familiarize yourself with legal aspects like taxes and privacy policies. |
12. Customer Support | Offer prompt customer support for inquiries, issues, and refunds. |
13. Marketing and Promotion | Promote your product through various online marketing channels. |
14. Collect and Analyze Data | Use analytics to track user behavior and sales data for improvements. |
15. Iterate and Improve | Continuously gather feedback and make product enhancements. |
16. Scale Your Business | Consider expanding your product line or exploring new opportunities. |
This table breaks down the process of creating and selling digital products into individual steps, making it easier to follow and implement.
Why I chose Shopify as the platform to sell my digital products?
There’s virtually no end to what kind of products or services you can sell with Shopify, including digital products. The reason most entrepreneurs, including me, choose Shopify to sell their digital products is the ease of setup and customization that this world-class platform provides.
This is a user-friendly platform, which means that even a novice can get their store up and running in no time. Even though Shopify provides all the services and tools that you need to run your online store under one roof, it also offers a plethora of apps, plugins, and extensions that you can use to extend the functionality of your online store.
Shopify has tons of third-party apps that allow you to sell digital goods directly from your Shopify store. These apps provide a way for your customers to download and access their goods and help you keep tabs on who has access to what and for how long.
The best part is that Shopify lets you modify the download pages to reflect the tone and personality of your brand.
What digital products are in demand on Shopify?
Educational Products: A lot of people create online courses on Shopify, especially those who have specific skillset or expertise in a niche and wish to turn it into a form of revenue.
Wherever your skills lie, be it Taichi, physics, linguistics, or baking, you can teach people just about anything, right from your home. Remember that people are forever looking for ways to expand upon their knowledge base and stay competitive in the job market, but physical education isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Even though you will have to invest some effort and time in recording video lectures, planning presentations, creating content, and incorporating quizzes, knowledge checks, and interactive activities, it will pay manifolds in the long run.
EBooks: EBooks are one of the best digital products, whether on their own or as lead magnets to sell your online courses or show your expertise in an area. You can educate people on a particular subject, pass on tutorials on how to do something, share recipes or tips, or even narrate stories.
EBooks have a clear win over physical books because you don’t need to look for a publisher or even have to distribute to libraries or bookshops post-publishing.
Membership Site: No matter what digital product or service you are selling, people are going to pay a one-time fee to gain access to them.
On the other hand, when you launch a membership site, you can create product bundles and garner recurring revenue from paid subscription.
However, this approach only works when you have a growing library of premium content that interests your users, for instance you can group together a course, its related books, and materials in one bundle and customers will pay a recurring fee to get access to all the new content that you keep adding.
Stock Photos: Bloggers, content creators, and even web designers are forever in need of high-quality images and photos to complement their services.
Professional photographers and digital artists can create compelling photos, graphics, logos, infographics, fonts, wall papers, backgrounds, and even templates and sell them on Shopify.
Digital Asset Licenses: Whether you are a musician, a videographer, a photographer or an artist, you can upload tons of licensable digital assets that other people can capitalize on. By selling those licenses, you allow other creative to use your work as their own.
If you are a high-quality content creator, you can charge for your photos, videos, music, software, and more.
Music: If you are a musician or an artist, you can monetize your skills and sell your art on Shopify. Be it selling ringtones of your favorite tunes to selling digital albums to creating creative covers of singles, you will find a bevy of audience waiting to spend.
Digital template: You can create a template of anything that falls outside the normal scope of work for your audience or facilitates them to do their jobs better.
For instance, you can create and upload resume templates, mobile app templates for newbie developers, invoice templates for business owners, templates for marketing collateral such as flyers, brochures, and business cards, or even fonts and icons for designers.
How Can you sell services on Shopify?
Most people believe that Shopify is a product-based eCommerce solution, but you can also sell services on Shopify. Services such as online bookings, virtual consultations, online courses, home services, and even event support.
To begin, think of your service as a product and create a product page for it, complete with information about how it can benefit customers and the benefits and outcomes it hopes to provide. Set variants and options for custom requests.
For instance, you could have three courses of 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and one hour each, or you offer services in multiple locations. You can set the price to change depends on the option the user chooses.
You should also leverage third-party Shopify supported apps, like the form builder and booking apps. Set up your Shopify store, pen down a compelling about us page, create individual service pages, and get started.
What are some examples of digital products on Shopify?
There are tons of astounding digital content that is popular on Shopify. For instance, check out the amazing digital album of one of my favorite Music artist “Into the Great Divide”.
The best part is that they even sell physical goods along with digital ones on the same platform. Similarly, the Luxe Lens sells breathtaking stock images, as well as templates and tools for designers.
“Relaxing White Noise” is another Shopify store that sells white ambient noises to help you fall asleep and unwind. Whether you like falling asleep to the pattering of the raindrops or the whir of the vacuum cleaner, the store has it all.
Another store, “A Book Apart” sells amazing EBooks for web developers with some premium content that you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Similarly, Pixie Faire Doll is an adorable store that sells patterns for stitching doll clothes.
FAQs
How can you resell digital products?
Most the digital products are copyrighted and for your own use only but you can Resell Digital Products like videos, EBooks, and software by joining an affiliate program that offers them and using that affiliate code on a website.
How Can I sell Printables on Shopify?
If you can design beautiful printables, you can sell them as a digital products on Shopify. Shopify has tons of free third-party apps that facilitate printable businesses and offer a way for your customers to get their hands on their purchases.
Can I pay someone to build a website?
Yes you can hire and pay someone to build a website for you if you are a non-technical person. Many people work as freelancers and offer such services. There are online platforms like upwork and fiverr which have service sellers in almost every required niche.