Selling online is a dream business idea of every aspiring entrepreneur. After all, who would not like a share of a trillion-dollar pie like eCommerce?
So, what should I sell to make the most out of this market?
This question haunts every entrepreneur. Whether you have been just thinking about selling, or have been selling already, you always seek your next product idea to stay relevant in the market. Fail to do so, and someone with a better idea will snatch your pie from the mouth.
That’s eCommerce. It’s harsh and harsher to those with ambitious goals, such as setting up a highly profitable eCommerce business.
Could Selling Digital Products Be an Easier Idea?
- digital products are non-perishable,
- you need not replenish your stocks,
- you do not need a warehouse to keep your stocks,
- you do not need a shipping network to deliver your orders, and
- you can re-sell the same product multiple times to different customers.
- Because it’s easier, you could be facing harshest of the competitions from so many entrepreneurs who sell digital products that are pretty similar to what you are offering.
- The market is full of free-alternatives to almost every popular digital product. So, how would you convince your customers to pay for something with similar free-alternative already in the market?
- Digital Products are easier to pirate and prone to unauthorized distribution. Are you ready to afford expensive anti-piracy technologies to prevent your products from piracy?
Profitable Digital Product Ideas
Fundamentally, selling digital products is not different from selling physical products. You are required to find a profitable niche and build an image within the same. For example, if you want to sell shoes as in the physical products market, you need to conduct market research and discover a profitable niche in the Shoe Segment to make the most of your idea.
You may consider sub-categories such as Men’s Shoe, Women’s Shoe, Kid’s Shoes., or you can dig even deep and find micro-segments such as Vegan Women’s Shoe, Leather Women’s Shoe, and Women Gym Shoe, etc.
Similarly, to sell digital products, you need a niche or a micro-niche that makes sure that:
- you are free of harsh competition from common product ideas and
- yet you get enough demands to make profits from an unexplored arena.
There is no fixed way to decide on a niche. However, if your unique product idea meets the above two requirements, it’s definitely is promising. There are N numbers of segments in the digital products market. Some of the most popular ones are:
- E-Learning: You can sell online courses. For Example, Udemy.
- E-Books: You can sell digital books and magazines. For example, Kindle.
- Stock Multimedia: You can sell stock multimedia assets such as stock photos and videos. For example, Shutterstock.
- On-demand Audio-Video Streaming: You can sell on-demand streaming access to movies, video clips, music, podcast, and documentaries. For example, Netflix.
- Software Solutions: You can sell different software solutions with different monetization options. For example, PC software, SaaS Solutions, Templates, ecommerce platforms, multivendor marketplace software, mobile applications, etc.
Different Revenue Models to Sell Digital Products
You can make money from all the above categories of digital products by following one or all of the following three revenue models:
Free: You can allow your users to use your products without paying, while you can still make money from alternatives sources. For example, if you run a music streaming app, you can allow the users to browse your app free of cost, while you can trigger in-roll, pre-roll, or post-roll ads to generate ad-money.
Based on your product idea, there are many other ways to generate revenue without charging from the customers directly. Showing them Ads is one of them. You can also generate revenue by collecting user data for marketing and research firms.
Premium: This model allows you to actually sell your products and generate direct revenue from the customers. You can put your products behind a paywall and only the paying customers get access to browse or download. For example, Netflix, Audible, Shopify, etc.
Furthermore, you can enhance your premium revenue model by introducing different ways to receive payments from the customers:
- Pay-per-product: Customers need to pay for each product they want to browse or download. For example, Pay-per-videos.
- Bundled access: Customers can make a single payment and access or download multiple products. For example, software bundles.
- One-time-purchase: Customers can make a one-time payment and get life-time access to use or download a product. For example, specific versions of Microsoft Office.
- Subscription model: Customers need to pay a recurring fee to keep using a product. For example, Netflix subscriptions, SaaS solutions like Shopify, Microsoft office 365, Grammarly, etc.
Freemium: As the name suggests, this model allows you to adopt both premium and free models at the same time. You can introduce a lite version of your product for free users that may also come with Ads, while a more powerful version for premium customers. For example, Grammarly free and premium editions, YouTube free and premium versions, etc.
What Do You Need to Build a Digital Product Store?
It strictly depends on your product idea and the business model. Every kind of digital product requires a different approach and solution. For example, you cannot sell software solutions and music streaming using the same approach.
To sell a downloadable software solution, you need:
- an eCommerce platform (e.g. PrestaShop, Magento, OpenCart, WooCommerce)
- a digital product delivery solution (e.g SendOwl)
- a paywall for managing the transactions (e.g. PayPal)
While to sell music streaming you need:
- a website or app interface for users
- a streaming player
- a streaming server
- a Membership Subscription Solution
- a paywall
The requirements to build a platform for selling digital products vary from product to product. Good thing is, you need not find all the required solutions individually, as there is turnkey software available in the market for selling all kinds of digital products. These solutions provide all-in-one resolutions to all your needs.
For example, you can use a Netflix clone script to sell subscriptions for your video streaming platform, SoundCloud clone for music streaming, Amazon clone for selling eBooks, Udemy clone for eLearning courses, and so on. Just find the product you want to sell, decide your revenue model, pick the suitable turnkey solution, and you are good to go.
