Ecommerce websites are taking the customary trade and retail businesses to a next level. The buyers are now looking for convenient ways to buy the products. The ecommerce website have successfully provided them the whole market at their finger tips.
Over the last decade, the demand and market for digitized products has inflated a lot. And therefore if you are thinking of starting an online business, there is a great scope. Digital files in the form of audio, images, ebooks, documents, softwares and applications are downloaded and uploaded in a large number everyday. For selling such digital products, there are ecommerce platforms which automatizes the process and makes it easy to protect the documents online and only allow them to be downloaded when the customer pays.
Digital ecommerce stores like mp3 downloads portal, for ebooks or any other documents, or for games and app store. These products are intangible and are available for download.
What kind of products can you sell online?
The following are the most common types of digital goods that can be sold online. These products are in form of electronic documents/files. Later, we will also discuss the popular ecommerce platforms for selling digital products.
ebooks and pdf documents
The most popular of the digital goods is “ebooks”. So, you can sell the digital ebooks using your online shop. The people who love to read now prefer to carry the digital copies of their books in their mobile devices. The hard copies of the books are difficult to carry while the digital copies are so easy to be transported. You can carry hundreds of books in your pocket and take it wherever you go.
Audio and Music
Internet is the greatest source of music. Most people prefer to download music online instead of buying CDs and disks. So, you can sell music online. There are many website that sells music and songs online. Music can be of many type : Songs, ring tones, instrumental music, etc.
Images, graphics and photographs
If you are a graphics designer or a photoshop expert and you’ve got the art then you can create and sell designed images, vector graphics, logos, icons, etc. online. The photographers can also sell the images online using the digital download tools available.
Videos & Video games
Not just images and audio, you can also sell videos online. Videos in the form of movie, documentaries, tutorials, etc. Accept the payment from the customers and allow them to download the requested video from your website.
Softwares and applications
You can sell softwares for both, computer as well as mobile phones. The best example here is – How you buy photoshop and install it in your desktop. Such products are provided in form of .exe (executable) or zip files. They are the installation files that the users can download and install.
Online Courses
Online courses are a way of delivering knowledge and specialisation through the internet. There are plenty of online educational websites, or LMS(learning management system). These systems offer online courses that you can pay for to get access.
Themes, plugins, logos, graphic designs, etc
This is the age of CMS and web platforms. The companies who design the themes, WordPress templates, add-ons sell them online. These themes are available as zipped files and they can be downloaded by the users from the theme provider’s website. The themes and plugins can be free or paid.
So, these are the products that you can sell online. Now, we will discuss the best platforms that you can use to sell your digital products online. These products are designed to let you sell your products effortlessly. Most of the platform allows you to concentrate on your products while they handle the order processing and selling process.
Ecommerce platforms for selling digital goods online
sellfy
Selling digital goods with sellfy is very simple. If you already own a website you can start selling downloadable products online buy integrating a button or you can create a storefront using sellfy.
Sellfy is used by a large number of artists and creators who sell their products and make moneyeasily. Sellfy also lets the visitors find great digital products online. It is a great place if you are a graphic designer or a musician and looking for the most convinient place to sell your products online.
Visit this page to view the pricing plans of sellfy. They charge a fixed monthly fee plus a little transaction cost.
Sendowl
Sendowl lets you sell your downloadable products online. It is a flexible, easy to use and transparent system for selling digital products online. It also has the feature of pdf stamping, free updates downloads, an affiliate system, and integrates with the best payment processors like PayPal. All you’ll need to do is get the button from sendowl on your website.
You can try their free trial version for 30 days. After that, you can choose from their monthly subscription plans. Click here to check out their pricing plans. Sendowl does not charge you based on the transactions or the sales you make.
DPD
With DPD all you need to do is upload your products and place the button you get from DPD, that’s it! DPD, like any other platform listed here, aims to help you sell products conveniently, without worrying about the background processing of the order and its fulfilment. So as a seller, all you need to do is to concentrate on your products.
DPD works with a wide range of Payment processors and supports a large range of marketing and analytics tools.It allows some basic customisation, easy upload and safe processing. Click here to check the available pricing plans. However, the good news is – You won’t have to pay per transaction charges.
Pulley
Pulley is a service from BigCartel to enable you to sell downloadable goods online. If you are not a bigcartel user, Pulley provides you with a button to sell your products online. Pulley comes with the basic ecommerce features included, it does not complicate the process with high-end features. Pulley is quite simple to use and implement.
We recommend you to take a 14 days free trials before you subscribe. Click here to view the pricing plans of pulley. It does not charge you any per transaction fee.
WordPress and WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the best ecommerce solution for WordPress. WooCommerce is one of the best and complete ecommerce plugin. It is very easy to use and flexible. Moreover, it is free! WooCommerce is a complete solution for selling your products online. It lets you easily upload the product through an intuitive form and then sell online.
WooCommerce is for selling physicals as well as downloadable products. WooCommerce lets you add features to your website using the extensions. View all the extensions here. However, you can sell your products without including any of the extensions. They are only for advanced features and enhancements.
Here is a brilliant tutorial on how you can sell your digital products using WooCommerce. Also refer this one.
Shopify
Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms that lets you sell physical as well as digital products. Shopify can be enabled for selling digital products using the Digital downloads app available in the app store. It is a free app, you just have to pay the shopify fee according to the plan you choose.
Downloading and installing this app in your Shopify website makes it ready to sell your digital products. Shopify is easy to use and has flexible subscription plans. Even the people with very little or no technical knowledge can use shopify to sell their products online.
Fetchapp
Fetchapp is a highly integrable ecommerce platform for selling downloadable goods. It is designed to work with the most successful and popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WordPress, Goodsie and BigCommerce.
Fetchapp accepts a nominal monthly fee based on your storage requirements. There are different plans you can choose from. See all the plans here. They also have a free plan if you have a very little storage requirement.
Fetchapp is easy to use and there are many plans you can choose from. Once you subscribe, you will be allowed to use all the fetchapp features with the allotted storage.
Easy digital downloads – For WordPress
If you want to sell your electronic documents and medias using WordPress, Easy Digital downloads is the solution. As the name suggests, it is specially designed to let you sell your digital goods. Easy Digital downloads is a complete solution for selling such products.
The plugin is totally free to use. However, you will have to pay for the additional extensions or add-ons. You can get these extensions and add-ons if you want extra features like advanced analytics tools, more payment gateways, etc.
Easy Digital downloads provides you with a shopping cart for selling Digital products along with the features like download tracking, reports, discount codes, etc. There is no limit to the downloads you can provide.
ejunkie
ejunkie provides you online ecommerce tools to sell your digital products. Here’s a screenshot from the e-junkie website to show you the simple four-step procedure to start selling digital products online.
You can start with the 7 days free trial before you actually subscribe and pay. So take your time and experiment with the platform. If you don’t like it, you can stop using it without ever paying or you can continue using it if you subscribe by paying the fees.
It also has an affiliate program. This will enable you to encourage your buyers to promote
your products on their website and blogs.
E-junkie charges you a monthly subscription fee and that’s all. There is no extra/hidden charges and no monthly limitations of bandwidth or transactions. They have a straightforward and clearly defined pricing plans. You can check their pricing plans here.
Gumroad
Gumroad is a unique and accomplished ecommerce solution for selling your digital products online. Along with the digital products, you can also sell your physical products through Gumroad.
You can also offer discount codes, create license numbers and sell multiple version of the same software. Visit this page to view all that you could do with Gumroad.
Gumroad directly interacts with the credit card companies. It does not use the PayPal payment processor whereas most of such companies does. Gumroad does not charge a monthly fee, instead it charges you for the transactions as well a nominal fixed cost (5% + $0.25 per sales). So, you will only pay for the sales you make.
Conclusion
So these were the digital products and the best ecommerce platforms through which you can sell them. With digital goods, there will be no shipping and shipping charges. That way, selling digital goods is much easier than with selling shippable products. There are platforms and softwares that makes it very easy to sell these kind of products online.
We’ll love to hear from you. You can leave your reviews and opinions in the comment sections below.