10 Best Digital Products To Sell Online in 2024

Looking for digital products that you can sell? Selling digital products is a lucrative business model.

Unlike physical products, which have innate complexities like manufacturing, importing, shipping, inventory, local business laws, etc., selling digital products only involves creating the product once and distributing it multiple times. There is no need to worry about shipping or replenishing your inventory, as the products will be digitally downloaded, and you will never run out of stock.

Moreover, you can combine this model with affiliate marketing and display ads to build a diverse income stream.

In this article, we will discuss some of the most profitable digital products you can sell online and show you how to set up a website where you can start selling these products.

10 Best Digital Products to Sell Online

The ten best digital products that have the potential to fetch you good profit are:

1. eBooks & Audiobooks

Ebooks might be a tough niche, but you can stand out by incorporating multiple skills into writing a book. For instance, a vegan cookbook requires skills like cooking vegan food, taking professional pictures, and writing. You can even try converting your ebooks into audiobooks for easy consumption.

2. Online Courses

If you are an expert on a topic, consider creating an online course. You will need to dedicate some time to creating the course, but when it’s ready, it becomes a source of recurring income. Here are some course ideas: music courses, fitness courses, art courses, language courses, productivity courses, cooking courses, and relationship courses.

3. Software

Building and selling software can be good if you know how to code. It can bring you a side income, and when things take off, you can quit your day job and become a full-time entrepreneur. You can continue building the product, launch sister products, or sell your business for a hefty price.

4. Digital Art

Graphic designers have a market out there where they can sell their skills to generate income. You can offer services like selling emotes, badges, and icons to Twitch gamers, logo-making to businesses, and tools like palettes, gradients, and brushes to other graphic designers.

5. Music

People this day listen to music to build a mood, focus on studying or writing, reduce anxiety, and fall asleep, among other things. If you know how to create music, you can use your skills to make music dedicated to specific tasks like running, sleeping, biking, cooking, etc.

You can also create music clips that YouTubers and other video content makers purchase to add to their videos.

6. Templates

Templates for resumes, CVs, social media, PowerPoint presentations, landing pages, emails, HTML websites, KDP, etc., are in great demand. Some of these templates are easy to create and require only a few hours of dedication. When they are ready, they can be sold in bundles to attract more customers and ensure better sales.

7. Font

There is a constant demand for new fonts because of the changing design trends and consumer preferences. That’s why the font is a great digital product to sell online. You can create new fonts using tools like Adobe Illustrator and sell them on existing marketplaces or create your own website.

8. Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are incredible tools businesses use for accounting, tracking, scoring, budgeting, invoicing, etc. A spreadsheet requires years of practice, which is why many businesses prefer buying these documents. If you know how to create spreadsheets dedicated to specific tasks, you can create spreadsheet templates and sell them online.

9. Tickets

Tickets can be sold for events happening online or offline, like carnivals, concerts, conferences, webinars, and classes. This type of digital product is hypertime-focused and can be sold for only limited quantities.

10. Lightroom Presets

Lightroom presets are filters applied to pictures to add a tone and mood to the image. Some filters are well-suited for landscape and outdoor photography, while others are more suited for portrait pictures. You can sell these custom lightroom presets to generate income online.

These are some of the best digital products to sell online. If you are unsure which digital product to start selling, look at the next section.

How to Select Which Digital Products to Sell Online

As discussed in the previous section, the most popular digital products are ebooks, audiobooks, online courses, software, digital art, music, templates, fonts, spreadsheets, tickets, and Lightroom presets.

Will selling any ebooks, software, or online courses be profitable? Unfortunately, no. You must select products based on criteria like uniqueness, demand, problem-solving capacity, and knowledge.

For instance, writing an ebook on creating a website won’t be profitable because tons of free guides and ebooks on the subject already exist. But if you know HTML, CSS, and Javascript, you might write a beginner’s ebook for web developers.

A simple Google search will show existing books you can study to figure out what unique angle you can take when you start writing the book.

You can ask your friends and colleagues and even run a survey on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to learn if web developers would want an ebook on the subject. This way, you will know if there is a demand for the product.

You can also conduct interviews to find out what problems aspirants are facing so that you can offer a solution in your book.

Now that you have an idea of selecting a product let’s build a website where you can sell your digital products.

Selling Digital Products in WordPress With ProfilePress

So far, you have learned about the profitable digital products you can sell and how to select which products to sell.

In this section, we will show you how to set up a website where you can sell the digital product of your choice with the help of our digital downloads plugin, ProfilePress.

It will help set up a payment system and secure your digital download so that only paid members can have access to your digital files. In addition, the plugin will help you manage your customers and offer insightful reports that you can use to grow your business.

Let’s get started with the tutorial.

Step 1: Create a Site

If you already have a website, then skip to the next step. If you don’t, create a website with the help of this guide. It will show how to choose a domain and hosting and set up a WordPress website.

When the site is up and running, return to this tutorial and start following the next steps.

Step 2: Install ProfilePress Plugin

Now, install and activate ProfilePress on your website. If you don’t have it, purchase a copy from the pricing page.

Step 3: Create Membership Plans

After installation, it’s time to create membership plans for your products. For example, if you sell three ebooks on your site, you will need to create three membership plans.

Go to ProfilePress > Membership Plans and select Add New Plan.

On the next page, you should see the three following sections: Plan Details, Subscription Settings, and Downloads & Integration. You will need to fill out all three sections.

Let’s dive deeper into each section.

i. Plan Details

Under Plan Details, you need to write the product’s name and describe the product as we have done in the image below.

You can also set the product price and leave a purchase note for customers who buy the product.

Set the user role you want to associate with this plan. Anyone buying this particular product will be assigned the user role you are setting here.

ii. Subscription Settings

In this section, you have to set the subscription length.

For our demo site, we are selling ebooks. Hence, we choose a one-time payment. But you can select other options like daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and annually.

iii. Downloads & Integration

You can upload your digital file (like ebooks, music or video clips, etc.) and set download limits and expiry dates.

Save your settings and go ahead and create more membership plans for all your products.

On our demo site, we are selling three ebooks; therefore, we created three membership plans.

Step 4: Secure Digital Files

After uploading the product, you need to ensure that only paid members of your site can access it. In other words, you need to ensure that your site members are not sharing downloadable links of your products with their friends and illegal file-sharing websites.

ProfilePress will help you secure your digital products. All you need to do is go to ProfilePress > Settings > Payments > File Downloads> Download Method.

You will see three options in the dropdown menu under Download Method.

To ensure a secure download, select Forced Downloads from the dropdown menu.

But if your files are too big, then select X-Accel-Redirect/X-Senndfile. This will ensure that the customers don’t experience a timeout while downloading.

If you want to set the same download limits and expiry time for all your digital downloads, then you can this that from this page.

You can also choose to allow only logged-in members of your site to download digital products.

If you need more help securing digital files, look at this tutorial.

Step 5: Create a Shop Page & Add Plans

By now, you have created a membership plan for all your products. So the next step is to ensure that the products are available to your site’s visitors on a single page called Shop.

Website builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder offer pre-built templates that you can use, but you must be a paid member to access them.

If you don’t want to buy a website builder, use the free Gutenberg Editor to create a Shop page. Just make sure to add a Buy Now or Add to Cart button under each product as we have done on the Shop page of our demo site:

When the shop page is ready, you must add membership plans to the associated products.

Go to ProfilePress > Membership Plans.

Open the plans and copy the checkout link.

Open the Shop page and paste it into your shop’s Buy Now or Add to Cart buttons.

Anyone who clicks on the button will be taken to the checkout page from where they can buy the product. But first, you need to create a checkout page—more on that in the next section.

Step 6: Create a Checkout Page

A checkout page is necessary as it allows customers to fill in their billing and shipping details before buying the product. To create a checkout page, just go to Pages > Add New and insert the checkout shortcode into the page:

Next, give a title to the page and hit the Publish button.

If you want to add or remove checkout fields, go to ProfilePress > Settings > Payments > Checkout Fields.

Choose a new field by using the dropdown menu and hitting the Add Field button.

To remove fields from the checkout page, choose a field and select the Delete button.

Remember to hit the Save Changes button to save your setting.

Step 7: Set Up the Payment System

In this final step, you will be setting up the payment system. ProfilePress supports major payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay, Paystack, Direct Bank Transfer, Mollie. So make sure you have an account with any of these services.

On your WordPress dashboard, go to ProfilePress > Settings > Payments > Payment Methods.

Select your preferred gateway or payment method to configure it, for example, Stripe. Click the Connect button and process to connect with your Stripe account.

Managing Orders with Downloadable Files

Customers or members can always access the downloadable files or digital products you sell that are included in their membership subscription on the order details page from the My Account page.

… and from the dedicated “Downloads” section on the My Account page.

As the admin of the WordPress membership site, you can view, access, and download the files associated with any order by going to ProfilePress > Orders and selecting the order to view or edit.

Download Logs

You can see a report or log of digital products you sell that have been downloaded and details of the user who downloadable them when you go to ProfilePress >> Dashboard >> Download Logs.

Conclusion

Selling digital products is a great business model because, unlike selling physical products, you don’t have to deal with things like going out of stock, arranging shipping products to customers, adhering to business laws, etc.

Some of the best digital products you can sell online are ebooks, audiobooks, online courses, software, digital art, music, templates, fonts, spreadsheets, tickets, and Lightroom presets.

The best platform for selling digital products is a website of one’s own. However, setting up a website can be challenging unless you have the right tools. ProfilePress is a must-have for businesses selling digital products.

The plugin will help you convert your product into membership plans, set up payment methods, and secure digital files so that only paid members can access them and many other valuable functions.

Give ProfilePress a spin!