It’s another long day working your 9-5 job, and during your break you open up TikTok to see a 23 year old boasting about how they made bank this month without lifting a single finger – all from selling their digital products online. You think to yourself, if this person can do it, why can’t I?!
Selling digital products is not a hard thing to do – that is if you choose the right niche and digital product to sell. Sure, it may take a bit of time in the beginning to find your groove… but once you experiment and hone in on what you’re good at, selling digital products could be your ticket to financial freedom.
We’re here to let you know the best digital products to sell online so that you can live your life how YOU want. Whether you want to sell digital products online as a side hustle or dive in off the deep end and make selling digital products your main source of revenue, we’ll give you insider tips on the best digital products to sell online in 2024.
Continue reading or jump around:
- What is a digital product?
- Types of digital products to sell online
- How to choose a digital product to sell
- Key takeaways
Related: What is a Digital Product: Understanding the Basics for 2024
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What is a digital product?
Digital products are exactly as they sound – intangible or virtual goods that are sold in an online marketplace. While they may lack a physical form, that doesn’t mean they are any less valuable. In fact, the demand for digital products has skyrocketed in recent years, making this the perfect time to enter into this side of the creator economy. There are many kinds of digital products out there, which we will soon explore.
You might be thinking, why should you sell digital products over physical goods? The allure of selling digital products is plentiful… you don’t need to worry about things such as manufacturing, shipping, inventory, and all the other complexities that come with selling physical products. Selling digital products is a great way to monetize your knowledge and creative skills without any hassle!
Here are the benefits of selling digital products:
- Low barriers to entry – Anyone with access to the Internet can create a successful digital product. The best part is that you don’t need many technical skills or resources to create a digital product that people are willing to pay for. With no physical storefront or employees to manage, you can start to sell digital products immediately after you create them.
- High profit margins – Selling digital products online opens the floodgates to an uncapped earning potential. Digital products have the potential to reap high profit margins, depending on how much time, effort, and energy you invest into the quality of your digital products and how you promote them.
- Easy to distribute – Because digital products don’t require a physical holding space or the need to be shipped to various locations, this makes digital products extremely easy to distribute. Plus, with automation you can reach people across the globe regardless of their locations, expanding your customer base and potential revenue.
- Scalability – The sky’s the limit when it comes to creating digital products! Digital products can be used as leverage for your existing business or you can eventually scale your digital products to accommodate more traffic.
- Provides flexibility – Selling digital products online allows you to earn a passive income, providing you with more financial freedom and therefore flexibility in how you choose to spend your day. Whether you want a little more R&R or time to invest in other streams of revenue, selling digital products will give you more flexibility.
- Creative freedom – One of the most compelling aspects of selling digital products is the creative freedom it provides to entrepreneurs, freelancers, and those looking to express their expertise in unique or unconventional ways.
This list of benefits should be all the incentive you need to kickstart your own journey to selling digital products!
Before we go into depth on the best digital products to sell online, we want to go over some tips that will help you understand the digital product marketplace and turn profits more efficiently.
Find your niche
Venturing into the world of selling digital products can seem intimidating at first glance, however if you know what you are passionate about or where your expertise lies, this will help make the transition a whole lot easier!
That’s not to say that you can’t sell digital products online if you don’t know what your niche is – your niche can take some time to establish, and we’ve put together a comprehensive list of ideas for the best digital products to sell online to get the wheels turning in your brain.
Conduct market research
Conducting market research is an essential strategy to ensure the success of your digital products. Finding out who your audience is and what they want will help fill gaps that you may encounter further down the road in your digital product journey. Knowing your customer also allows you to narrow in on your niche and create a more competitive digital product.
Part of doing market research involves analyzing your competitors. This will give you valuable insights on pricing strategies, marketing techniques, and tips on how to differentiate your product from your competition. Make sure to analyze your audience and competitors regularly to stay relevant in your niche area.
Have a marketing strategy
To earn a passive income, you need to make sales. To make sales, your product needs to be visible to your target audience. To be visible, you most likely need a great marketing strategy! It’s worthwhile to invest some time learning about keyword research and search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to help make your digital products more visible to your audience. When potential customers search for a keyword related to your niche, you want your digital product to be the first one that pops up for them.
Check out this strategic guide on how to create a marketing funnel in 2024 for a more in-depth look into promoting your digital products and capturing new leads.
Related: 10 Best Marketplaces to Sell Digital Products
Types of digital products to sell online
Now that you know the benefits of selling digital products and how to get started, let’s dive into the different categories of the best digital products to sell online in 2024.
We ‘ll cover these five key profitable digital download categories that have proven success rates when in comes to making passive sales online:
- Online courses and training programs
- Ebooks and digital guides
- Software and digital tools
- Digital artwork and creative assets
- Digital templates and resources
Of all digital products, the online education industry has the highest projected growth rate. The eLearning market is set to be worth $325 billion by the year 2025. Developing your own online course or training program is one of the most lucrative ways to earn revenue selling digital products, with an uncapped earning potential. For example, depending on the content of your online course, it could be priced anywhere from $100 to $20,000 and more.
The best part about entering into the online education industry is that you don’t need any prior teaching or coaching experience to be wildly successful. You don’t even need to have a large following (or any) to get started. As long as you’re an expert in your niche or you can demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about, people will be willing to pay a pretty penny for your knowledge. Even if you only have a few people sign up for your course, you can keep the momentum going by building up your email subscriber list with the right marketing tactics.
You may be wondering what kind of online courses are successful… the truth is, any course can blow up in sales with a combination of the right factors: effort, expertise, value, consistency, compelling content, structure, and online reach.
Online courses come in all shapes and sizes and lengths – it depends on the content of the course you’re offering. You could sell your course as a PDF, a combination of modules and webinars, a live experience, or through a membership or subscription. If you launch a training or coaching program, you would typically operate under a membership or subscription basis, or a combination of everything! There are no rules to how you can run your own online course or training program.
Below are some ideas for online courses or training programs that we’ve seen people use to build and scale their success. Also check out our guide on how to pick a fail-proof online course topic.
Examples of niche online course or training program ideas:
- How to make money from social media
- Leverage AI in your business
- How to sew for beginners
- How to write a bestselling book
- Becoming an influencer
- Mindset and meditation training
- Becoming a professional organizer
- How to build wealth
Things like digital marketing, coding, cooking, language learning, photography, career development, fitness, and wellness courses will never cease to be in popular demand. There are endless possibilities for niche course ideas to choose from – just be sure to make an evidence-based decision when researching online course ideas.
We won’t lie, creating and selling an online course or training program does take a lot of effort in the beginning – what you put into your online course is what you get out of it! However, once your course or program is created, it can be sold repeatedly forever. This opens up a passive revenue stream that is highly scalable.
Be sure to check out this step-by-step guide on how to create an online course to get started in your coaching journey.
Ebooks and digital guides are the next best thing to online courses – they offer a way for you to wrap all your skills and knowledge into a bundle to sell, without the extra hassle of creating an online course. Although, who’s to say you can’t do both? Creators often accompany ebooks and digital guides alongside their online courses and training programs to use as leverage for marketing or as an added bonus.
It is pretty straightforward to create an ebook or digital guide that people can purchase and instantly download. This type of digital product generates additional revenue for your business through sharing your passion and valuable information with your audience. Ebooks are flexible, beginner-friendly, and the perfect way to start building your personal brand as you can self-publish your ebooks.
Similar to creating an online course, take time to do market research and find your niche if you’re starting from scratch, or let the goals of your existing business determine your ebook topic choice. You can really write about anything under the sun! “How-to books” and “the ultimate guide” and “the beginners book to…” are some prompts for you to write a motivational, inspirational, or even humorous ebook. Below we have listed a few profitable ebook topic ideas that we’ve seen be successful.
Examples of ebook topic ideas:
- Self-help and personal development books
- Cooking and food books
- Health and fitness books
- Parenting books
- Career development books
- Romance, thriller, and non-fiction books
Digital guides and workbooks are similar to ebooks, but may vary in their format as they are usually more interactive. They almost look like mini-courses that are presented as a downloadable file and can include expert advice, templates, visuals, tools, and more.
Examples of digital guide topic ideas:
- Business and money making guides
- Content creation guides
- Travel guides
- Fitness trackers
- Instruction manuals
- Bookkeeping guides
- Interactive journals
Check out our definitive guide to selling ebooks online and our top 11 ebook creator tools you should have when getting started.
Software as a service (SaaS) and digital tools are some of the most profitable digital products to sell – they have the potential to make millions if successful. They are unique as these digital products aren’t downloadable, but rather web-based applications.
Software products and digital tools typically use a subscription pricing model that involves recurring payments where customers pay a monthly or annual fee for access to the apps or services. This provides a consistent and reliable income for creators.
The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to creating software and digital tools to sell as digital products. Essentially any idea can be turned into an app or digital tool… time to get those creative wheels turning!
Examples of software and digital tools:
- Apps (meditation, game, fitness tracker, travel planner…)
- Virtual reality (VR) games
- Online dating platform
- Streaming service (e.g. Netflix, Spotify)
- Online storage service (e.g. iCloud)
- Task automation (e.g. Mailchimp)
- Project/group management services (e.g. Slack, Asana)
While these kinds of digital products do require more technological skills, if you aren’t very tech-savvy, don’t sweat! You can still develop web-based applications and create a very profitable digital product, you might just need to outsource and invest in a reliable software developer and coding expert.
Digital artwork and creative assets are the best kinds of digital products for those who are highly artistic and passionate about what they create. If you already have an artistic hobby, why not monetize it by selling it as a digital product online? Digital artwork and creative assets are easy to upload and sell – it’s the creation process that may take some time depending on your skill level.
This niche is rapidly growing, with more and more people looking to purchase digital art for either personal or business use. Digital artwork can be repeatedly sold as a digital download or printed on demand. Creative assets such as sound effects, music, and video footage can also be instantly downloaded upon purchase.
Digital artwork and creative assets are typically sold as licensed content because creators own their work. This work can be sold through your own online store or existing online marketplaces, such as stock photo sites. Licensing your content is a great way to generate passive income from the skills you already have by selling your artistic creations.
There is always a high demand for digital artwork and creative assets to help add visual or audio elements to websites, blogs, landing pages, and more. However, this can be a highly saturated and competitive market, so be sure to market your digital products so that they are visible to your target audience.
Here are some examples of digital artwork and creative assets:
- Stock photos and audio files
- AI enhancements
- Video/photo filters
- Ringtones
- NFT’s
- Background music
Remember to protect your digital products with security measures, such as watermarks (especially if you are selling photographs online) so that your creations are not stolen!
Selling easy digital downloads is the best way to diversify your revenue stream. Digital templates and resources offer a simple way for you to earn money, with less effort. Templates are one of the most beginner-friendly digital products to create and sell. Unlike digital artwork and other creative assets, selling digital templates and other resources don’t require any artistic skills.
It is extremely easy to create digital templates and other digital resources – all you need is a tool like Word, Excel, or Canva to create your digital product, and then you can export it to either your own selling platform or list it on a hosting site. Check out our guide on the best platforms for selling your digital downloads and the 10 best marketplaces to sell digital products to help get your started in your journey.
There are a wide range of digital templates and resources that are in demand. Pick something that you’re interested in and develop a niche to get started. The best part is that you can sell multiple types of digital templates and resources if you wanted to.
Here are some popular examples of digital templates and resources:
- Resumes and cover letter templates
- Website and design templates
- Excel, spreadsheets, and powerpoint templates
- Business, recipe, and wedding cards
- Craft patterns (sewing and sketching outlines)
- Colouring pages
These types of digital products are typically priced anywhere from $1 to $50, so you will need to sell a lot more of them than you would with an online course. However, digital templates and resources are highly scalable. They can also be multipurpose and used as marketing tools to leverage when selling online courses or for your business’s landing page.
Related: 8 Steps to Building an Online Course Business (+ Business Plan Template)
How to choose a digital product to sell
We listed the top five categories for the most profitable digital products to sell online. Within each category there are hundreds of niche digital products that you could create and sell.
You can choose to create any kind of digital product that your heart desires. If you are just getting started in your journey, the most easy and beginner-friendly digital products to create and sell are digital templates, with the most advanced being SaaS products. However, you can start anywhere! It just depends on how much time and effort you want to invest into your business as a creator.
Pro tip: You don’t have to stay in one lane!
If you aren’t sure what your niche is yet, test the waters by dabbling in each digital product category to see what you like and what you are good at. A good idea can go a long way. Who knows, you may surprise yourself and develop the next app of our generation or write a best-selling ebook.
Related: 130+ Online Course Ideas & Examples (Plus Tips On How To Get Started)
Key takeaways
Selling digital products online can open the doors to having more freedom and flexibility in your life. You get to experience what it’s like to be your own boss and pave the way to more revenue streams!
We explored the best digital products to sell online, which included:
- Online courses and training programs
- Ebooks and digital guides
- Software and digital tools
- Digital artwork and creative assets
- Digital templates and resources
While each of these categories has different pros and cons depending on your level of expertise and skills, they each have the potential to be successful in their own ways.
Gain new leads and income streams with Digital Downloads on Thinkific. Create, launch, and market your digital products all from one platform. Whether creating a digital download from scratch or repurposing existing content, you can upload a sellable product in no time at all.
