9 Types of Digital Products to Sell on Your WordPress Website
Nowadays, you don’t have to own a physical store – or even have physical products, for that matter – to make sales. Our world is getting more and more digitized by the minute, so it’s only natural that there’s a rapid emergence of all sorts of digital products to sell online.
Of course, you can use the help of various online platforms to create and promote your digital goods and make a substantial profit along the way. And the best thing about it is the fact that you won’t have to worry about having to distribute your products or any shipping costs or taxes. Your products are virtual, after all, so you really get to make the most out of your sales.
Now, while WordPress is an excellent platform for selling both virtual and physical products alike, you do have to decide on what products you want to offer to your potential customers first before you go on your way to set up a platform for the cause. Without further ado, we present you with some of the different types of digital products to sell and promote on your WordPress site. Check them out:
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If you specialize in a specific subject or you simply wish to share some of your knowledge with the world, there is no reason not to try and make a profit out of it. And creating an online course is, without a doubt, a great way to do this. Luckily, due to the highly flexible and scalable nature of the WordPress platform, building an online course with WordPress is quite possible, if not highly recommended. Of course, your first step should be choosing your topic of choice according to the skills you already have, and then continue from there. This means deciding on your audience, planning out your content, choosing the appropriate online learning WordPress theme, and finally, making sure to market and promote your courses in a deserving way.
Finally, to learn some tips for promoting your online courses we suggest that you also check out our article on the same subject.
Online subscriptions have become one of the best ways to get money online. Essentially, with subscriptions, you allow users access to a certain product or service by having them pay for a weekly or monthly subscription. These can be anything from different types of training and/or educational materials to webinars and various types of digital services. You can even use subscriptions to give access to some exclusive content (be it written, video, or audio content) to users who would be willing to pay for it.
To learn more on the subject at hand, we suggest that you read our article on how to add subscriptions to your WooCommerce shop.
Selling e-books is one of the most profitable ways to earn money on the web. Be it a health and fitness manual, a self-help guide, a cookbook, or any type of literature or fiction in a digital format, you can rest assured that e-books will help you make those much-needed online sales with ease. You can choose whether you want to put your e-book up for download on your official site, advertise it on a social platform, or have it available on another digital marketplace (like Amazon, for example). Or, you can even use all of these options to expand your online reach as much as possible.
In order to publish quality content and establish themselves as an authority in your field, bloggers and publishers need to always back their claims with data. But finding proper and applicable data and research is often harder than we think. Plus, if they really want to go the extra mile, they’re not gonna repost the same data that every other blog does. And they most likely can’t conduct their own research.
This is a need that can easily be filled by putting data behind a paywall, ie. selling data and research as a digital product. A lot of people will rather pay a sensible sum of money for quality data than spend hours or days looking for it in the nooks and crevices of the internet. Leverage this fact by organizing and selling information from your own industry or the results of your own studies.
NFTs are another thing you can look into if you want to make money using digital products. An abbreviation of the phrase non-fungible token, NFTs usually stand for digital objects, or rather, assets, that are being sold online – most often using some kind of cryptocurrency. You can use these non-fungible tokens to sell anything from videos and art all the way to tickets and even in-game items (i.e. game avatars, character items, etc.).
Even though many digital items that can be bought as NFTs can often be simply downloaded for free, the real appeal behind NFTs comes from the fact that it actually provides the buyers with blockchain-certified ownership over the digital items, or the so-called “bragging rights”. What also makes NFTs so valuable is the fact that they also allow you to get royalties on future sales of the same item. So, a person who now owns an NFT (that you sold to them) can sell it to another person, but since the transactions will all be there on the NFTs blockchain, it will always be easy to verify the original seller.
To learn more about the topic of NFTs and how you can use WordPress to make money from these growingly popular virtual assets, we recommend that you check out our article that covers the subject in more detail.
Audio products are particularly popular as they allow people to multitask. For example, they can go for a walk or a jog while listening to their favorite podcast, or they can enjoy some tunes while performing house chores or commuting to and from work. And of course, there are many different kinds of audio products you can sell online, including anything from audiobooks and lectures all the way to music and podcasts.
Needless to say, if you decide to sell audio files online, your choices are truly limitless. Of course, depending on the type of audio product you have, you can also use different platforms to sell, market, and share your files, like different audio streaming services (Apple Music, Spotify, etc.). You can also easily add these audio files to your WordPress site and even embed a playlist if you’d like. Just make sure that these audio files are available only to those who pay for the products first to make a profit.
This is a relatively uncommon digital product to sell but one that actually makes a lot of sense for many industries and creatives. Swipe files are documents or bundles that contain a set of valuable assets required for a particular task, goal or industry. For example, graphic designers can offer swipe files with icons, graphics, wallpapers, etc. These can be marketing assets, data bundles, nutrient lists, sets of readymade gym sequences, exercise sets for schools and universities and so on. This can go all the way to parenting swipe files with indoor activities, school lunch ideas, crafts and so on.
If you are a developer and know how to work with code, then using these skills to make sales should be a no-brainer. Depending on the type of programs you specialize in and other specific skills and/or interests you may have, you can create all sorts of apps or software-based products, like mobile apps, web extensions, or even plugins and widgets.
For example, if you are familiar with WordPress, you can create a WordPress plugin that will contain some options that will add to the platform’s functionality or even enhance some of its existing features. Keep in mind, however, that the third-party WordPress plugin community is vast and quite competitive. So, to make your products stand out, your best bet would be to offer a so-called freemium product. This means you should upload a free version of the plugin to the platform like the official WordPress plugin repository (WordPress.org) and then also have a website where you will be able to promote the premium version of the plugin. The free plugin should have some of the essential or basic features so that your potential customers can get a glimpse of the product and see if it works for them. Then, if they like it, they can go ahead and purchase the premium version of the plugin to get access to more advanced features and functionalities.
Our own Qi Addons for Elementor plugin is a perfect example of what we’re talking about here. It’s a freemium tool with over 100 premade widgets created to help users build just about any element or section on their WordPress site. There’s the ability to download some of the widgets for free or get all 100+ widgets in a bundle (both free and premium ones) by purchasing the pro version.
You can even lure the customers in by offering some extra services (i.e. unlimited support) and make sure there are different types of pricing plans available to be able to accommodate various standards and budgets. By giving multiple options to your customers, you give off an air of professionalism and also increase the potential to stand out among your competition.
If you’re a web designer, illustrator, or similar kind of creative that is passionate about their art-making, you can easily turn your talent into profit and sell some digital art online. You will be able to sell anything from online graphics like logos, backgrounds, and icons to photos, online fonts, and different kinds of illustrations.
Regardless of the type of digital art you’d like to sell, creating an online portfolio will help you easily present your skills to the world and get you one step closer to earning income from your creativity and talent. You can use an online portfolio to provide people with a few notable examples of your work while also giving potential customers all the info they need to get in touch with you. Of course, you can also easily sell your art online using WordPress. If you’re determined to create a full-fledged eCommerce site to sell your digital products, you can also look into some of the great eCommerce site examples available on the web for some inspiration.
Aside from a digital portfolio or eCommerce site, there are also many popular digital marketplaces you can use to upload your digital art for sale, like TemplateMonster, or Etsy. Ultimately, you can even connect some of these marketplaces to your WordPress site. If you’re interested in learning how to integrate Etsy with WordPress to get the most out of both platforms, we’ve also got an article that covers this subject, so make sure to check it out.
Wrapping Things Up
From digital art and e-books to audiobooks and subscriptions, there are virtually no limits to the types of digital products you can market and sell online. You just have to choose the specific field you are interested in, and then you can use all your skills and talent to thrive in the said field and make some well-deserved profit in the process. Also, thanks to the sheer practicality and flexibility the WordPress platform possesses, you will be able to use it to start an online store in no time and showcase all the assets of your digital products in the best way possible. And if you have trouble deciding on the type of digital product you want to present on your WordPress site, then the list of products we’ve mentioned above might be a good starting point for you.
