Selling digital products is an excellent way to create a lucrative online business. And while there are many websites built explicitly for selling digital items, selling your digital products directly from your own WordPress website offers several advantages—especially if you want full control over your hosting and sales.
As digital products continue to grow in popularity, you’re probably keeping an eye out for the best ways to cash in on this trend. If you’re a digital product creator, this is good news for you!
This guide should help you feel confident in your journey to sell digital products.
What Digital Products You Can Sell?
Digital products are things that you can create and sell online. If your product can be downloaded, streamed, or accessed electronically, then it’s a digital product.
Digital products are anything that can be delivered over the internet via download, email, or other direct electronic methods. Some of the most popular and profitable digital products include:
- E-books and audiobooks
- Software and apps
- Apps, plugins, themes for different eCommerce platforms and CMS i.e. WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, etc.
- Stock photos and graphics
- Infographics, charts, and maps (e.g., digital assets)
- Audio files (music tracks, sound effects, beats, and music recordings)
- Video files (stock footage, animations, video recipes)
- Online courses, workshops, and membership subscriptions (e.g., exclusive memberships, closed networks, e-learning)
- Printables (e.g., planners, templates, spreadsheets, how-tos)
The great thing about digital products is that they have low overhead costs, and can be delivered instantly to customers. Unlike selling physical products, selling virtual files such as downloadable files or online memberships has little to no overhead costs since you won’t need to manufacture, store, or ship your products.
Why Use WordPress for Selling Digital Products?
Okay, so you’re sold on the idea of selling. But why WordPress? Isn’t it just for blogging?
Quite the opposite! It’s actually one of the most flexible platforms available, with a wide range of features that make it perfect for selling digital products, including:
- A user-friendly interface
- Customization options
- A vast library of themes and plugins
- SEO capabilities
- Flexible payment gateways, like Stripe and PayPal
With WordPress, for example, you can sell digital downloads like PDFs and MP3s and lots more on WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads or less direct digital products like online courses and website memberships using WP Pull Members for Stripe.
Now that you know why WordPress is the best choice for your store, let’s talk about how to sell digital products with WordPress.
📖 You might also like to read: How to Monetize a WordPress Blog?
How to Sell Digital Products With WordPress?
You’ll need a few tools to upload and deliver digital products, process and manage payments, and follow up on orders.
First, you will need to set up an account with a WordPress payment processor and install plugins that allow you to upload digital products and handle transactions.
Additionally, you should choose a well-designed WordPress theme, upload your products, and ensure everything is properly configured. Once your store is set up, then you can focus on marketing and distribution to attract customers.
1. Craft a Solid Business Plan
Before diving into the tech stuff, take a moment to ask yourself a few questions:
- What are you selling? Whether it’s an ebook, software, or online course, having a clear understanding will guide the rest of your efforts.
- Who’s your target audience? Know who will benefit from your product to effectively market it to them.
- How will you reach them? A strategy is key, whether through social media, email, or other avenues.
- What’s your price point? Research competitors and understand your value to set a fair price.
2. Set Up Your WordPress Site
After the installation is complete, it’s time to start setting up your WordPress website. This includes choosing a domain name (like myawesomewebsite.com), designing your site using a theme, and customizing it to match your brand.
Choose a Hosting Provider for WordPress
Your digital products deserve a reliable home. First things first, you need to choose a fast WordPress hosting for your site. This is where your website will live on the internet.
There are a ton of hosting providers to choose from, but you’ll want to make sure you choose one that’s reliable, secure, and offers good customer support.
Some popular options for WordPress hosting providers offer one-click WordPress installs, making setup a breeze like Bluehost, GoDaddy, SiteGround.
When you’re choosing a hosting provider, you’ll want to consider your budget, your site’s security requirements, and how much storage and bandwidth you’ll need. If you’re expecting a lot of traffic or will be selling a lot of products, it’s a good idea to choose a hosting provider that can handle that kind of load.
Pick up a Professional Theme
Choose a WordPress theme that’s not just pretty but also functional. Many themes are built with digital product sales in mind, featuring landing pages, checkouts, and more.
It’s a good idea to keep your site’s design simple and user-friendly, especially if you’re selling digital products. You want your customers to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, without getting overwhelmed.
Create Awesome Product Pages
Your product pages are your salespeople. Use high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and testimonials to build trust and interest. WordPress plugins like Elementor can help you design without coding skills.
3. Choose the Right Plugin for Selling Digital Products
WordPress offers a variety of plugins that can help you sell your digital products online. But not all plugins are created equal!
When choosing a plugin, you’ll want to consider:
- How it handles payments
- What kinds of products it can sell (e.g. downloads, subscriptions, memberships, courses, etc.)
- Whether it offers customizable checkout pages
- How it integrates with other plugins and tools
Some popular plugins for selling digital products on WordPress are:
- WP Full Pay: A payment plugin that allows you to create Stripe payment forms and buy now buttons, embed them to your web pages, and accept one-time and recurring payments on your WordPress site without setting up a shopping cart.
- WP Full Members: WP Full Members is an add-on for the WP Full Pay plugin. It allows you to create and manage membership sites with subscriber-only content on your WordPress site. This add-on is particularly useful for those looking to offer premium resources, courses, or tutorials exclusively to subscribed members.
- Easy Digital Downloads: A free plugin that’s specifically designed for selling digital products. It offers a variety of features, including discount codes, custom email templates, and detailed sales reports.
- WP Simple Pay: A Stripe payment plugin for sales payment forms that works without WooCommerce and lets you directly integrate Stripe on your WordPress site and create flexible pricing for all your products.
- MemberPress: A subscription/membership plugin that lets you create and sell membership plans, set up drip content, and restrict access to certain areas of your site. If you’re planning to sell online courses or exclusive content, this is a great option. There’s even a MemberPress Elements integration that lets you unlock unique elements.
- WooCommerce: The most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, WooCommerce can be used to sell both physical and digital products. It offers a huge library of plugins and extensions to customize your store however you like. Plus, it has Easy Digital Downloads integration so you can use both plugins together for ultimate flexibility.
Each plugin has its own set of features, so you’ll want to choose the one that best suits your needs.
Once you’ve chosen your plugin(s), you’ll need to install and set them up on your WordPress site. This usually involves adding your products, setting your prices, and creating checkout pages. The setup process can vary depending on the plugin you choose, so be sure to follow the documentation and support resources provided by the plugin developers.
📖 You might also like to read: How to sell products or services on WordPress without WooCommerce?
Use a Content Restriction Solution for Courses or Membership Subscriptions
If you’re looking to sell digital products that involve paid subscriptions or online membership enrollments, then you’ll want to use a reliable paywall tool like WP Full Pay or Restrict Content Pro to protect your content behind a paywall and only grant access to paying members for your exclusive content.
With a paywall plugin, you’ll be able to collect subscription payments from your WordPress site and restrict access to various membership or subscription levels that you may offer.
For example, you may have a starter membership or pro membership option for your online course or e-learning system. A paywall plugin lets you restrict your media, like exclusive audio lessons or advanced learning modules, for those who pay a premium.
Additionally, you’ll be able to utilize all the additional features a well-designed paywall offers, like custom landing pages after checkout, automated email sequences to onboard new members, and more.
📖 You might also like to read: Password VS Membership Plugins
4. Set Up a Payment Gateway
In order to sell your digital products, you’ll need to set up a payment gateway that can process transactions on your website.
A secure option that WordPress users love is the Stripe Payment Gateway. With Stripe, you can accept credit and debit card payments, as well as other forms of payment like Apple Pay.
Setting up a Stripe account is quick and easy, and there are a variety of WordPress plugins that integrate with Stripe to make the process seamless.
📖 Step-by-step guide on integrating Stripe to a WordPress site.
5. Automate product delivery
Once your digital products are all within your shop and ready to live quietly in their restricted pages and posts, you’ll need to ensure you’re going to deliver them with your shop is reliable, optimized for performance, and most importantly, successful.
For example, video content is not optimal for sending via email due to its increased bandwidth and file size.
Using an email autoresponder is a common way digital product owners automate their product sales delivery. This component will allow you to adequately capture your customers’ communication data which you can then use to notify them of product updates or new paid offerings. Solutions like Restrict Content Pro offer built-in integrations with email autoresponders such as MailChimp, Active Campaign, and more.
Once you’ve configured your ecommerce integration with your email program, you’ll be able to automate your product delivery with any new sale or membership registration that comes directly through your shop or sales pages.
5. Test Your Store and Launch!
Before you launch your online store, it’s important to test everything out to make sure it’s working properly. You’ll want to test:
- The checkout process
- Payment processing
- Email notifications
- Download links for your digital products
Testing is important to ensure that your customers have a smooth and hassle-free experience when purchasing your digital products.
Once everything is working properly, it’s time to launch your store and start selling!
6. Mastering Support, Marketing, SEO
Provide Excellent Customer Support
Happy customers are repeat customers. Implement a ticket system or live chat on your site to address issues quickly.
Build Your Email List
Email campaigns are powerful. Start building your list early with freebies and lead magnets. Platforms like MailChimp integrate with WordPress to make this easy.
SEO Strategies for Visibility
SEO can bring you organic traffic if you use the right keywords your potential customers are using. Use tools like Yoast SEO to optimize meta tags, generate XML sitemaps, and improve readability.
How to protect digital products?
Creators of digital products put a lot of time and effort into developing high-quality, valuable content. Protecting that content from unauthorized distribution is crucial for maintaining its value. Here are some strategies:
- Watermarking content: Embed a visible watermark on visual materials like photos, videos, and graphic designs.
- Digital rights management (DRM): Encrypt digital products, such as eBooks or music, to restrict unauthorized distribution.
- License agreements: Clearly specify the terms of use, redistribution rights, etc. for your digital products.
- Password protection: Utilize encrypted downloads and user-specific passwords to control access to the products.
- Content delivery networks (CDNs): prevent direct file access by distributing content through CDNs.
You can download WP Full Pay plugin for free, create Stripe payment forms, and test Stripe transactions on your WordPress site.