10 Steps to Start Selling Digital Products Online Without Investment

Are you here because you have an interest in selling digital products online in 2022? Then, in this article, I’ll give you my practical advice on selling digital products without much investment.

Digital Products are one of the best ways to generate some passive income by working only 1-2 hours daily. This is because digital products don’t require an inventory to store, and once you create them, you can sell them repeatedly.

All these things attracted me and ultimately got me into this digital products business.

A few months ago, I started selling digital products online, “The Template Market”. And as the name suggests, I used to sell templates there.

Till now, I got 457 sales for the templates. Now, there are many examples of digital products that you can sell online on different platforms.

But in this article, I will give you the 10 best practices for selling digital products and generating a passive income.

So, without wasting your precious time (which you don’t have), let’s dive right in.

1. Selecting Your First Digital Product

When selecting your first digital product, you need to be a little cautious. Because there are so many different types of digital products out there, and not all of them are profitable.

You need to decide and pick one niche and start working upon it.

For me, it was the “Instagram Canva Templates” which I used to sell. And I’m so happy with my decision as it was the first product that gives me my first $20.

Later, when it started to grow, I scaled my business with other digital products as well.

I would highly suggest you avoid this temptation to sell every digital product the right way (if you can’t manage). Instead, select one digital product at a time and start selling and promoting it.

Once you can generate some revenue, then only move to another product.

For selecting a niche, you can check out this article. 

2. Check its Market Viability

Before moving further, the next step is to check the market viability of your digital product. 

For this, you can simply go to Etsy or CreativeMarket and check out what others are selling and what digital products are trending.

For instance, let’s take the example of Digital Planner. If you want to sell digital planners, type on the search bar of Etsy or CreativeMarket “Digital Planner”, and see what kinds of digital products are bestselling products.

You will find so many different ideas in the digital product niche only. Select one product and start working upon it.

3. Profits in Selling Digital Products

The profits of selling digital products online are unlimited. Because there is no physical product, you don’t need an inventory to store your products.

There is no doubt that the margin is very high in selling digital products. It all depends on your price point.

The average cost of digital products like digital planners and templates on Etsy & CreativeMarket is in between $5-$40.

This is an optimum price for customers as compared to the high ticket price to avoid any risk.

4. Setting a Budget to start selling Digital Products

Digital Products only need your time, effort, and creativity. There is no need to spend money on creating digital products.

That is the beauty of selling digital products online.

But still, in order to make sales quickly, you have to spend some amount of money to run ad campaigns.

As there is no need to spend money on products, therefore, all your money will spend in running social media ads. So, it totally depends on you how much you can spend per month.

An excellent monthly budget starts from spending $100 initially and then increasing your budget as you start getting sales.

5. Start Designing your Products

Once you have finished all the steps mentioned above, it’s the perfect time to design your products.

You can use the popular platform Canva to create any kind of digital product. Be it an Instagram template or a digital planner, you can create digital products from scratch and then sell them online.

Canva has all the features that can be used to create beautiful social media templates, infographics, Pinterest, Facebook, Digital Planners, and many more.

There are other platforms like Adobe Illustrator and Affinity Designer, which can create digital products.

6. Set-up a Website or Sell on Marketplace

In this step, you choose either your own website or an already established marketplace like Etsy or CreativeMarket.

If you think that which one would be more profitable, so both ways have there pros and cons.

If you want to sell digital products on your own website, you can either purchase a web-hosting from Hostinger or buy a plan from Shopify.

Hostinger provides hosting for as low as $1.39/month, whereas Shopify starts from $29/month.

Or,

If you want to sell on Marketplaces, then you don’t need any hosting or website. Simply visit Etsy or CreativeMarket’s official site and create an account as a seller. They will charge you a nominal monthly fee in order to run your store.

Creating your own website

Pros

By creating your own website, you have the advantage of flexibility.
You can customize your store in whatever way you like.
We don’t need any approval to open our store.
You can market your products under your own brand name.
You can scale your shop at whatever level.

Cons

You have to market it by spending a lot of money.
Low customer reach in the starting.
Requires money to set-up a website.

Selling on Marketplaces like Etsy and CreativeMarket

Pros

Don’t require any money to set up your store.
High Customer Reach due to the brand name of Etsy and CreativeMarket.
Don’t require a lot of money to promote or marketing.
You can easily get your first sale.

Cons

High Competition by selling on Marketplaces.
Can’t scale your store.
Less Flexibility.
Need an approval to open your store.

7. Build your Brand

To build your own brand for your digital products store, you have to follow a proper and consistent pattern of using fonts, colors, logo and design.

If you have different social media accounts then, use only one or social media template design. Don’t over do mix & matching, otherwise you’ll left an ugly looking feed.

If you are not good at designing, you can buy a beautiful Instagram Canva Template pack that will save your time and help you build a brand.

Just have a look from here.

8. Marketing your Online Business

Marketing is the essential part of any business. Without marketing, you can’t expect any growth because you need to show yourself in front of people.

For marketing your digital products, you have to choose a social media platform. For selling digital products online, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram would be perfect.

Therefore, as these are visual platforms, people are actively searching for digital products like Templates, Planners, and Graphics.

You can also go for Influencer Marketing. You can collaborate with already existing influencers on Instagram and YouTube.

I have also seen people today doing some virtual summits in which they call famous personalities and talk about how they grew their online businesses. People, of course can watch and ask questions for free.

This strategy can work for selling any products online. It’s not just for only digital products, you can host a 3-4 day virtual Sumit where you can teach people how to grow their businesses. It really work well in terms of conversion rate.

9. Expected Cost to Start a Digital Products Store

Well, it totally depends on your marketing budget whether you want to spend $10 or $10,000. As you already understood, apart from a website and marketing ads, you no need to have any cost because you’re selling digital products.

Still, I can give you a rough idea. You can expect around $100 maximum to start, the rest all depends on your marketing.

10. Expected Challenges in selling Digital Products Online

The expected challenges which you may face in selling digital products are just like any other business. There is a lot of competition already exists in the market.

Therefore, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to create your own USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

You must clearly define yourself how you are different from any other business in your field. For instance, if you are selling digital planners, what unique thing you provide to your customers that no other person is providing.

You can plan and make a proper strategy in order to market your digital products.

3 Apps to Consider for Selling Digital Products

There are some apps that you can consider to sell digital products.

1. Sendowl— You can use Sendowl to sell digital downloads, memberships, subscriptions. It also goes comes at a good price of $15/month for 30 products.
2. Gumroad— It is again a great way to sell digital products through subscription, memberships and downloads.
3. Digital Downloads— Shopify’s free app to sell digital products from your own store. Your customers can easily download their file once they confirm the payment.

Where to sell digital products online?

Now, another big question is where to sell these digital products online? So, I have already mentioned the two platforms earlier: Etsy and Creative Market, but I haven’t forgotten to mention social media platforms. 

1. Sell Digital Products on Instagram

Instagram is one of the best social media platform to sell any kind digital products. Because of its easy-to-use interface and high use base, you can sell anything kind of products.

You can use Instagram to sell digital templates, planners, digital notebooks, tools, graphics, photographs, and many other things.

2. Use Facebook Ads for Selling Digital Products Online

You can use Facebook Ads to market your online courses, ebooks, templates, and many other products. You can make a particular segments of your targeted people on the basis of their demographics, age, geographic location, etc.

2. Use Pinterest

Pinterest is another great social media platform. I love it because it pushes the traffic directly to your website. In this way, you get chance of conversion and you can make a lot of money.

I have seen people using Pinterest (mostly bloggers) to sell their online courses, affiliate products, and other digital products.

So, you can try any one of these or become an omnichannel marketeer.

Conclusion

Last but not least, if you are interested in starting your own digital product store, then first try to sell on existing platforms like Etsy and Creative Market. This would help you in getting the idea that your digital product has some potential to make sales.

Once you establish your customer base, you can later shift your online business to your own website or an online store.

I hope you liked this post; if you have any doubt, then please feel free to ask me in the comments below.

Also Read:
1. How To Sell Digital Products From Your Blog? [The Ultimate Guide]
2. 21+ “Profitable & Trending” Digital Products To Sell Online In 2021
3. Instagram Templates: The Ultimate Guide With Free Templates
4. How To Become A Social Media Influencer? [10 Easy & Simple Steps]