What Is a Digital Product?

Digital products are intangible assets or media that can be distributed online without the need to source or manage physical inventory. These products are often delivered in downloadable or streamable formats, such as PDFs, MP3s, videos, software, or templates

9 Profitable Digital Product Ideas to Sell Online

1. eBook

When most of us think of a digital product, an eBook comes to mind. As you probably know, an eBook is the electronic version of a printed book that can be accessed and read on the internet.

Compared to printed books, eBooks are cheaper to produce, more profitable to sell, and much easier to distribute. As an author, you don’t have to depend on a publishing house, share royalties and invest in significant printing and advertising costs.

All of these benefits contributed to creating a huge online market of eBooks, where everyone – not only published writers – can now write a book and sell it!

eBooks have their pros and cons, however, it is definitely a great way to monetize your knowledge online, especially if you are just starting out.

2. Online Courses and Membership Sites

Online courses are our favorite way of monetizing your knowledge and creating a profitable online business.

An online course is a collection of lessons and tutorials that helps people reach a certain goal.

Similar to online courses, membership sites are gated sites that include members-only content: students would pay a fee in order to access content for a longer period of time compared to an online course.

Online courses are by far the most engaging digital product and they offer countless benefits to the creator.

If you are passionate about something and you think you could help other people achieve their goals, why not create an online course?

All you need to get started is online course software. With Platforms you can create beautiful and engaging online courses by uploading multimedia content in your lessons, adding gamification tools, interacting with your students through online communities and much more.

3. Downloadable Templates and Worksheets

Another idea for a digital product is to create downloadable interactive files for your audience. Depending on your niche and area of interest, these can have many shapes and forms. The most popular ones are templates or worksheets.

Generally, these types of digital products are sold as an extra add-on, for instance, if you are an online course creator, you could add a template to your product offerings to offer even more resources to your students.

4. Digital art

Fancy yourself an artist or graphic designer? There’s a big market out there for digital art, so monetize those skills and turn your hobby into a source of income.

For example, new startups are always in need of talented designers to create custom logos for their businesses.

While there are online logo makers that provide an affordable option for small businesses, they can’t match what a skilled graphic designer can create. This allows you to charge a premium for your work.

Other art-related digital products that sell well include stock icons (vector images), brand kits, backgrounds, emotes, badges, banners, and 3D artwork.

Aside from creating your own original designs, you could also sell add-ons for popular graphic design tools. Brushes, gradients, and palettes for software like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Procreate are in high demand right now, so it’s definitely a market worth exploring.

5. Subscriptions and memberships

Starting a members-only site and selling subscription products is another great idea, especially if you’re already an influencer with a large audience.

For example, YouTubers Rhett & Link from the Good Mythical Morning channel opened up a new recurring venue stream when they started the Mythical Society — a private online community that gives subscribers access to behind-the-scenes footage and exclusive content. Because they already had millions of subscribers, sales were pretty much guaranteed.

6. Video content

Consumers these days can’t get enough video content—and they’re willing to pay for it. You only have to look at the success of VOD streaming services like Netflix to see just how big the market for video content is.

If you fancy yourself a director, you can create your own entertaining or educational video content and sell it online.

7. Patterns and printables

There are millions of crafty consumers out there on sites like Etsy looking for patterns and printables to help them with their DIY projects.

You can sell things like sewing patterns, knitting patterns, and macrame patterns, or printables like coloring pages and workbooks.

8. Photography

High-quality photos are always in demand. If you’re an avid photographer, you could turn your hobby into a full-time career by selling your snaps online.

One way to go about this is to sell stock photos on sites like Shutterstock, but it’s a bit of a crowded market and can be tough to break through the noise and make sales. You may have more success selling client-commissioned photos, event photography services (think weddings, birthdays, etc), and portraits.

Whatever direction you want to go in, a good photography portfolio that showcases your best work is a must. This will help you to stand out from the crowd.

9. Photo presets

Another direction photographers can go down is to sell their custom Lightroom presets.

Lightroom presets are essentially filters that add a certain tone and feel to your photos. Buyers can download them and install them on their Lightroom software, then apply them to their photos.

If you have a large audience of people that already like your work (such as a big Instagram following), there’s a good chance some of your fans will want to know your secret and be willing to pay for your presets in order to get the same effect.

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