Digital eCommerce has changed my life in amazing ways. It gave me opportunities I never thought were possible.
When I started selling digital downloads more than 10 years ago, I saw for myself how powerful this business model can be.
Today, I’m the President of Easy Digital Downloads, and I’ve helped thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their knowledge into digital products that make money.
These products include eBooks, software, online courses, and documents — all sold through WordPress websites.
After years of selling digital products and helping others do the same, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
In this guide, I’ll share five important lessons that can make a big difference in your success. These tips will help you avoid common mistakes and grow your digital product business faster.
Note: This is a guest post by Chris Klosowski, the president of Easy Digital Downloads, the best digital eCommerce plugin for WordPress. This is an expert column that we publish every other Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.
Key Takeaways: 5 Lessons for Selling Digital Downloads
- Focus on your expertise: Choose a product format and topic you already know well to ensure quality and ease of creation.
- Solve a specific problem: Products that solve a clear pain point for users are easier to market and build a loyal customer base.
- Know your audience: Create a detailed customer persona to guide your features, marketing copy, and product development.
- Own your platform: Building your own store (e.g., with WordPress) avoids high marketplace fees and gives you full control over your customer data.
- Optimize your pricing: Use product bundles to simplify decisions for customers and ensure your pricing covers “soft costs” like support.
Why Sell Digital Downloads for Passive Income?
While there are several different ways to make a passive income online, selling digital downloads is a great choice.
It allows you to make a decent income with less ongoing maintenance than other business models.
You Don’t Need a Lot of Traffic to Succeed
Many beginners start with display ads or affiliate marketing. However, selling your own products has distinct advantages over these methods.
Here is a quick comparison of the most popular business models:
| Monetization Method | Traffic Needed | Control Over Product |
|---|---|---|
| Display Advertising | High Volume | Low |
| Affiliate Marketing | Medium Volume | None |
| Selling Digital Downloads | Low (Targeted) | High (100%) |
With ads, you need massive traffic to make a full-time income. With affiliate marketing, you have no control if the product owner changes their terms or lowers quality.
By selling digital products, you get full control. To succeed, you don’t need millions of visitors. You just need to attract the specific audience interested in your offer.
For instance, one of our customers, Sam Parrett from SetSailStudios.com, monetizes his website by creating and selling niche-specific products. He sells downloadable fonts, which perfectly aligns with his passion as a graphic designer.
By focusing on a specific niche, he doesn’t need to chase massive traffic numbers like ad-supported sites do. He simply creates products for a specific audience he understands.
Create Once and Sell Forever
Selling digital products also has an advantage over physical products.
You will never run out of stock because you can repeatedly sell a digital product forever. That means you don’t need to worry about keeping inventory and ordering or creating more stock.
You also won’t need to pay for storage or spend time packing and shipping products to customers. Anyone from around the world can easily purchase and download a digital file. That means you can sell from the comfort of your home and with little to no investment.
1. Choose a Digital Product Based on Your Expertise
Selling digital downloads is all about the product, and your first job is to decide on which products you will sell. There are plenty of popular digital product ideas to choose from.
eBooks are the most popular digital product people choose to monetize. However, you could choose to sell music, videos, eBooks, or audiobooks based on your expertise.
If you need inspiration, here are examples of how different businesses align their products with their specific audiences:
| Business Name | Product Type | Target Audience |
|---|---|---|
| EscapeRoomGeeks.com | Printable Escape Room Kits | Kids and Families |
| BrushGalaxy.com | Custom Procreate Brushes | Digital Illustrators |
| MrsMactivity.co.uk | Educational Resource Membership | Primary School Teachers |
When deciding on a new product, make sure to choose the one based on your expertise and the product format you’re comfortable with.
2. Make Sure Your Product Solves a Problem
You’ll need to create a product that solves a real problem. At the end of the day, potential customers will only visit your website if it solves their problem.
Ask yourself the following questions: Why would someone buy your product? What problem are you looking to solve?
I’ve found that to answer these questions, it helps to write out a mission statement.
The statement should describe the specific problem (or problems) you are trying to solve.
You can write these as benefits on your website.
This will help you attract the right customers and make sure you meet their expectations during the post-purchase process.
3. Understand Who Your Customers Are
The next question to answer is, ‘Who are you selling to?’ I recommend spending some time thinking clearly about this and writing actual answers down on paper.
You should create a detailed description of your typical customer. Have a clear picture of what they look like in your mind.
Thinking about this customer at each stage will help you stay on track. Do this when considering new features, writing your website copy, and fixing bugs.
Here’s an example from one of our customers, Mrs Mactivity Resources, where they make money from selling online resources for Early Years educators. The ‘who’ is stated clearly on the website so that teachers can easily see whether the resources will meet their needs.
4. Choose the Right Platform to Sell
There are plenty of platforms where you can easily sell digital products.
You can either sell the products on a third-party marketplace or create your own online store. Switching to a different platform in the future can be difficult, so do your research before picking a platform.
To help you decide, here is a quick comparison of the two approaches:
| Platform Type | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Third-Party Marketplace | Easy to sign up Some existing traffic | High transaction fees (up to 30%) You don’t own the customer data |
| Your Own Store (WordPress) | Full control over data No platform fees (higher profit) | Requires initial setup You are responsible for marketing |
Why I Recommend Your Own Store
While marketplaces are easy to start, you rent your audience rather than owning it. Migrating later can be extremely difficult.
Your other option is to create your own digital download store using WordPress, the most popular platform for building websites and online stores.
With a digital eCommerce platform like Easy Digital Downloads, you will pay no additional platform fees. You only pay the standard processing fees charged by your payment gateway (like Stripe or PayPal).
Besides that, you will own your own data. The license keys are all in your WordPress database. The purchase data and customer information are in your database. So, if you want to shift to a new website, then you can just migrate your own data over.
Here’s how you can create your own digital downloads store step-by-step.
5. Choose an Optimal Price to Maximize Your Revenue
When it comes to pricing your products, there are three helpful principles to keep in mind.
Simplify the Buying Decision
The first key to your product offering is making it easy for the customer to make a decision. This comes in handy, especially if you’re selling a lot of products.
A lot of our client’s stores solve this with bundling. They group some products together that are similar or help achieve a specific goal. This means customers don’t need to pick and choose which product they want. Instead, they just pay one flat fee and get all of them.
Bundles are probably the easiest way to reduce choice paralysis. They also help you create a good pricing page because you can just list your bundles instead of having to cover all of your individual products.
They can also help reduce your refund rates. Without a bundle, a customer might choose Product A when they really need Product B. This usually results in a request for a refund. With a bundle, they get both solutions and can choose the one that works for them.
Don’t Race to the Bottom With Pricing
Racing to the bottom on price can hurt your growth.
You may have a competitor who sells thousands of PDF documents and printables for $1.25. You might be tempted to see that as the price point you should be at.
Unfortunately, such a strategy will undercut your growth, too.
In fact, online businesses often cover all their costs in their pricing, including the costs for web hosting, a domain name, a software license, an email marketing service, and more.
But it’s also important to know that there are other additional costs, also known as soft costs, for running a business. This includes things like customer support (the time you spend answering emails).
If you are not charging enough for your product, then the first customer support ticket may eat up any profits you made on the initial purchase.
Experiment With Pricing
It’s OK to experiment with pricing. You can try raising or lowering prices a little bit to find the point where you are optimizing conversions.
If your product is solving a problem, then conversions won’t be hard to come by. But you need to find the price point where you are actually profitable, and experimenting may help.
I hope these practical tips can help you get a head start in selling digital downloads. You may also want to see some other guides selling digital downloads in WordPress:
- How to Sell Digital Downloads on WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)
- How to Create a Digital Product Marketplace in WordPress
- Most Popular Digital Products You Can Sell Online
- How to Sell Videos Online With WordPress (Step by Step)
- How to Sell Music Online in WordPress (Step by Step)
- Ultimate Guide to Selling Fonts Online with WordPress (Step by Step)
- How to Add Ebook Downloads in WordPress (Step by Step)
- How to Add a Customer Reviews Page in WordPress
- Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Referral Program in WordPress
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Mrteesurez
Nice Article.
We you use third party marketplace, you will tap into their existing audience and also you don’t burden yourself with site maintenance.
But If you have the technical knowledge required, you can build your own online store.
Also for the pricing, you can just set high price initially and then reduce it based on your customer behavior and market trends.
A Owadud Bhuiyan
Thanks sharing the tips. I’m always think about passive income and this articles help me understand regarding the digital product.
Day by day, people are getting more interest in digital product.
Jiří Vaněk
Thanks for the valuable advice of Mr. Chris Klosowski. It’s always nice to read the perspective of someone who has been in the field for many years and is successful in it. Additionally, if these tips like here are still free. These guest articles are really great and informative.
Moinuddin Waheed
Best article on selling digital downloads online.
Having a digital product not only efficient and easy but also good as we need to have one time investment only and then can sell again and again.
I have planned for many ebooks and was thinking of Amazon Kindle and other places to sell which might be good but having my own platform will build a brand and authority. Thanks for this guide, it will help me plan in the right direction.