4 Best Platforms To Sell Digital Products In 2024

Do you want to start selling digital products online?

If so, right now is the best time to do it. This is because there are so many platforms on the internet that make it a breeze to start selling online. For example, using Facebook, you can start selling digital products online.

What can you sell online? You can sell eBooks, music, sound effects, audiobooks, design templates, video games, or any other digital file on your computer.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the best platforms for selling online products.

What Are Digital Products and Why You Should Start Selling Them

Thousands of online businesses make over a million dollars a year selling digital products. And new ones are popping up every day.

There are many reasons why more and more entrepreneurs are building digital products. The biggest of all the reasons is the profit margin. When you sell a physical product, you’ve to spend a lot of money on many things: making thousands of copies of the product, storing the product, marketing the product, shipping the product, updating the product, and hiring lots of people to grow your company.

But with a digital product, once you’ve created it, there are no more costs for reproducing or storing it. You also don’t need to pay shipping costs, and there’s rarely any need to update it. And for most products, you will get very few support questions from your customers. The best part? You don’t need to hire a lot of people. There are thousands of one-man-show businesses that sell digital products. For most digital products, even after you reach a million dollars a year in income, you won’t need more than 2-3 employees to run the show.

All this makes building digital products lucrative.

One of the best examples of digital products doing well comes from a guy named Josh W Comeau. He created a course called CSS for JavaScript Developers:

It’s a course that teaches the CSS programming language to programmers who already know the JavaScript programming language.

To say that this online course did well would be an understatement. This was the first course Josh had ever launched. He made a post about how well it did on a forum called Indie Hackers:

He made over $500,000 selling an online course. And that’s only for the preorders. The course made him over $500k before it even went live.

Success online is all about how hard you work, your skills, and a bit of luck. Your results might not look the same when you launch your first product…

But starting a side income from online products is not difficult. If you keep trying and building many different products, one day, you might find enough success to leave behind your full-time job and work for yourself.

How To Choose The Perfect Platform For Selling Your Digital Products

With so many platforms available, choosing which platform to start with can be difficult if you’re new to selling Digital Products.

Here’s a quick checklist of what you should look for in a platform:

Easy To Learn and Use

Most platforms that help you sell digital products are not beginner-friendly. Many offer hundreds of features and come with a steep learning curve. The platform you decide to sell your products should be built for beginners.

When you’re just starting, you don’t need all the BS marketing tools and features that some platforms offer. You’ll never use them if you’re starting. These tools will initially make learning how to use the platform more challenging.

Starting a new business is difficult and time-consuming. It would be best if you did whatever you could to make it easy on yourself. If you start with a complex platform that offers hundreds of features, it’ll only slow you down and get in your way.

Pricing That Makes Sense

Because Digital Products have a huge profit margin, most platforms charge exorbitant fees. It only makes sense to sell digital products if your margins are thick and fat. So, look for a platform that wouldn’t drown you in fees.

Many platforms look cheap initially, but their fees start to add up quickly. It might not be the best option if a platform charges you a % of your earnings. It might not look like a lot initially, but think about how much you’ll lose monthly when your business starts gaining traction.

It would be best to avoid platforms that charge you based on your number of customers. This is because their fees can multiply as you get more customers. You should also look for a platform that doesn’t penalize you for your success.

It’s Better If It’s an All-in-one Platform

Most platforms only allow you to sell digital products and offer nothing else. These platforms create a separate website (or just a page) for your digital products. This doesn’t make a lot of sense in most cases. You’d have to work with two different platforms.

You’ll need to create your website for your business and deal with the platform where you’re selling your products. And whenever you update the details or description of one product, you’ll need to update it on two or three different platforms.

A better approach is to use a platform that works on top of your website. This gives you complete control over your website and opens up new doors of possibilities.

The Best Platforms To Sell Digital Products

Here are the best platforms for selling digital products online:

ProfilePress

ProfilePress is an all-in-one platform for selling your digital products and paid memberships. It is hands-down one of the easiest platforms to start selling online, and it has all the features you need to build a thriving online business.

It’s a WordPress plugin that you install on your website to start selling digital products. Don’t know what that is? WordPress is free software that you can install on your website. It makes it easy to manage the content on your website. ProfilePress is an add-on (plugin) for WordPress. You can use it to extend WordPress and add new functionality to your website.

You can use it to sell any digital products you want. For example, you can sell services, eBooks, video games, or any other digital file.

The biggest advantage ProfilePress has over all the other platforms on this list is that it also allows you to build a paid membership website. A paid membership website lets your customers pay for a recurring monthly subscription to access all your premium content. You can use this feature to create an all-in-one membership for all your digital products.

The best part of selling using ProfilePress is getting all the advantages of the free WordPress platform. You can add new functionality to your site whenever you want. You also have a complete website, not just a page or a profile on your selling platform.

Because ProfilePress works on top of WordPress, you can add any content to your website. Want to start a podcast on your website to build your audience? You can get started right away. Want to start writing articles to attract new visitors to your website? Write (pun intended) ahead!

Even the platforms allowing you to build a website charge you extra. They might hook you in with a $10 per month package that helps you to build a website. Then, they will ask you to pay an additional $30 or $50 per month to start selling online. ProfilePress doesn’t do that.

Not only that, unlike other platforms, ProfilePress doesn’t charge any transaction fee. Instead, you only have to pay the credit card company’s processing fee. With every other platform, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee for the platform, a per transaction fee to the platform, and a per transaction fee to the credit card processor.

ProfilePress is also the most straightforward option of all. It’s built for beginners and makes it a breeze to start selling digital products online. You can start selling your digital products with ProfilePress in less than 20 minutes. It also doesn’t penalize you for your success by charging you more as your business starts gaining traction.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms on the internet. It’s used by some of the biggest brands in the world. It has made a name for itself as a feature-packed eCommerce platform.

You can use it to sell anything you want — digital or physical. It offers multi-channel selling. That means you can use it to sell on Amazon, eBay, Facebook, your website, and many other platforms.

What I love about BigCommerce is that it has hundreds of unique features and keeps coming out with new ones every few months.

But I am not a fan of BigCommerce because it can be a little too complex for anyone who’s just starting. Don’t get me wrong, BigCommerce can help you sell digital products, and it shouldn’t be that hard to set it all up. But why does it have to be difficult?

BigCommerce’s main target is enterprise customers, but they offer BigCommerce Essentials products. It’s made for any small businesses that are just starting.

I’ve included this platform in our list because it’s feature-packed and loved by entrepreneurs with much experience selling online. If you have years of experience, this platform might be the way to go.

But if you’re starting, you should stay away! The pricing starts at $29/month, which might be much more than what you should pay when just starting online. It also only creates a storefront. That means you’ll need to create a website for your business separately. And if you want to start a blog, you’ll need to start paying for another platform. It’s better to use a platform that builds you a complete website.

Gumroad

Gumroad is a platform built for anyone who wants to start selling digital products online. The most significant advantage Gumroad has over its competition is how easily and quickly it enables you to start selling online.

But that’s also one of its biggest disadvantages. It doesn’t offer a lot of features. It’s a platform where you can create a profile, upload files, and receive payments. That’s all it has to offer.

It’s a great platform, but it’s pretty bare-bones if you are trying to build an online business. It gives you a profile on their platform that displays your products. It is often used by entrepreneurs who have already built an audience and want to cash in on that quickly. Gumroad allows them to start selling their product immediately.

It also takes a hefty cut of 10% on all your sales.

Thinkific

Thinkific is a platform that allows you to start selling online courses. It’s the best place to start selling online courses. It has all the features you’ll need to create an interactive course that your students will love.

If you want to start selling online courses, few platforms can compete with Thinkific. It is an easy-to-use platform that comes with dozens of amazing features. It allows you to sell to an unlimited number of students. There’s no cap on how many students you can have. It also doesn’t charge a per-transaction fee, which is rare in this industry.

It’s trusted by big brands such as Hootsuite, Keap, and Shopify.

It allows you to sell courses online and create a basic website for your business. The Thinkific website builder may not have a lot of features, but it’s an easy way to publish an essential website.

What I don’t like about Thinkific is that you need to get on their paid plan, which starts at $49 per month, to get even the most basic features. Their free plan is suitable for testing the waters, but $49 might be too much if you’re starting. If you want to use your domain name or create coupons, you’ll need to buy a subscription to one of the paid plans.

And if you want to create a membership website, you’ll need to start paying $99 per month.

Conclusion

Selling digital products is one of the best ways to make a living. It doesn’t involve hiring a lot of people. It doesn’t require a lot of capital. Do you have a laptop, internet, and some free time? That’s all the resources you need. Creating a digital product also doesn’t take as much time as creating a physical product would. All this makes building and selling digital products online the perfect business model.

Are you thinking of starting today but can’t figure out which platform is the best? Here’s my recommendation: Go with ProfilePress. It’s built for beginners and has all the features needed to develop and grow a thriving online business. The best part? It’s straightforward to learn.