Being an internet marketer isn’t just about promoting other people’s products. Sure, there’s money to be made doing that, but there’s even more money to be made selling your own products.
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Of course, selling physical products has a lot of issues, such as production, storage, shipping, staffing and more.
The overheads and risks for physical products can be quite high, so why bother with all that when you can go digital!
There are plenty of reasons why you should consider this option, but if you’re not sure here are my top 10 reasons to sell your own digital products.
1. Startup Costs & Overhead Are Minimal
Seriously, the cost of setting up a digital business, can be incredibly low, pretty much all you need is a computer, an internet connection and some time.
Most digital products that you will sell you can either create yourself or use ready made products like PLR content. Creating the products yourself is definitely the way to get started, and the cost is simply time and effort.
Even selling the products can be free by using marketplaces, free websites and e-commerce sites.
The cost of setting up your own e-commerce site can also be really cheap: some basic hosting and a domain, WordPress and Easy Digital Downloads and you’re good to go!
Of course you will likely run into some costs as the business grows, but it’s easy to get started for under $10 a month – try that with a brick and mortar shop!
2. The Risks Are Few
Alongside a limited if any investment cost, the risks associated with selling digital products are quite few. At worst you would need to refund some people and cover the cost of your website. There’s no actual inventory to be concerned about or shipping costs to incur. In fact the only major issue you need to worry about is the law, especially regarding taxes.
3. Full Control
The absolute best thing about selling digital products online is that you have full control! You can decide what to sell and where, and you get to shape the products to be the best they can be.
It’s also the scariest aspect, but that comes with the territory!
4. Make Once, Sell a Thousand (Or More!)
If you had told people 60 years ago that you could make a product once and sell it a thousand or even a million times, they’d cart you off as a scam artist.
Nowadays though, all you need to do is create a product once and you can sell it as is numerous times.
You may need to do some tweaks and changes, depending on the product, software for example needs regular updates, and even e-books need to be tweaked occasionally to cater for changing information, but these will likely be smaller things that don’t impact too much on your time.
5. Passive Income
Earn money while you sleep! The great thing about digital sales is that they are automated, so you don’t need to actually be there to process the sales.
Passive income is a bit of a skewed term though, because you have to remember that even though the sales happen passively, you still need to actively promote and market your goods, even if you are using a third party marketplace.
6. Excellent Mark-up
Have you ever heard that most meals in a restaurant have anywhere between a 200% and 1000% mark-up?
Digital sales are the same. The cost to produce the content is usually very low, so the actual sales price has a very high profit margin. This is why you see so many internet marketing products with large affiliate commissions; they can afford to do it while physical product sales simply don’t have the room for it.
7. Helps You to Become A Brand
You may have heard it in the past where experts in the internet marketing field suggest that you become your brand. Well selling digital products allows you to do that.
You may have heard of the very successful WordPress plugin “WordPress SEO”. It’s made by a guy call Joost de Valk, more commonly known by his online pseudonym Yoast. He is so well known that the WordPress SEO plugin was eventually renamed Yoast SEO and everything he does has his pseudonym in it.
This is the power of branding yourself, and you can use your products to make your name in your niche.
8. Opportunities for Partnerships & Joint Ventures
OK, so having a digital product doesn’t automatically mean that you’re in a better position to find partnerships, but it makes it a damn sight easier.
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You can easily add your product as a download bonus for others with little work, and no infrastructure needed (because they will just add it into their own e-commerce system).
9. A Powerful Affiliate Program
Mentioned briefly above, because you have a higher profit margin, you can afford to provide better affiliate commissions. This is turn leads to more people willing to promote your product (people are inherently greedy) and thus increase the number of sales you get.
Sure you get less per sale, but increase the overall number of sales and widen your market at the same time. It’s a winning situation.
10. Leverage Other Platforms
Even though setting up your own e-commerce site really isn’t that hard or expensive, sometimes you want to take advantage of existing traffic.
Digital products allow you to easily add the product to multiple online marketplaces, such as:
- Amazon.com for ebooks
- Themeforest for website templates
- Google Play and Apple App Store for apps
- Creative Market for design elements
- and many more
These marketplaces have pros and cons. The biggest pro being you get a lot of free targeted traffic that should be interested in the type of product you’re selling.
The major con is that they will take a chunk of your sale amount, and it’s usually quite hefty – 35 -50% or more is not unheard of.
What Sort of Digital Products Can You Sell?
The other great thing about selling digital products is that there is a wide variety of things you can produce and sell:
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Photos
- Music and sounds
- Software
- Design elements
- Memberships
- Online events
- Online tools
The Bottom Line
However you look at it, selling digital products is relatively easy, and has the potential to be very profitable.
If you are just promoting other people’s work, you really should consider starting to promote your own as well, as it is an excellent alternative revenue stream.
Even if you suck at producing content, you can always hire a freelancer to do it for you and release it under your own name (make sure you agree that with the freelancer though!).
Have you ever released your own products? How did it go? Let me know in the comments.
