What are digital products? How to sell them in 2024

What are digital products?

If you have the itch to go into business for yourself, but don’t have a specific product already in mind, you might be wondering how you can join the ranks of successful online business owners. 

One option is to sell digital products.

They offer the opportunity to build an entire business without the need to think about inventory, warehouse space, and shipping costs.

Digital products offer a solid, passive income opportunity because you can, depending on the product, create something once and sell it over and over again without producing additional inventory, handling order fulfillment, or continuing to spend on product updates and maintenance. It’s an ideal venture if you want an effective way to generate an online income with as few points of friction as possible.

Sound like a great opportunity? 

If you build on an ecommerce platform like WooCommerce, you’ll benefit from built-in digital product sales functionality. You’ll also get unlimited customizability and complete ownership over your online presence. That’s why millions of stores around the world trust Woo. 

Today, we’ll walk you through the different types of digital products you can sell, how to choose the ones that best align with your creativity and business goals, and how to create and sell your digital products online.

A digital product is an intangible good accessed via an electronic device — things like ebooks, online courses, songs, games, artwork, and software. 

After a customer purchases a digital item, a business delivers the virtual product in a downloadable format via email or another method. For example, a video game add-on might appear inside the game. Or the password to a digital membership library might appear on the post-purchase “thank you” page. 

New business owners can decide to sell digital goods alone, or eventually mix in physical products to complement their digital assets. And existing physical businesses can likely find a way to add a few profitable digital products to their lineup to increase their reach and revenue potential. 

Now we’ll look into the various types of digital products you can sell online and the best ways to present and monetize them. You can offer one-off digital downloads, give your customers the option to purchase bundled digital products at a discount, sell digital memberships and monthly or yearly subscription options for recurring revenue, and more.

Online courses

Remember when sitting in a physical classroom was your only option? Today, lifelong interests and new skills are learned wherever you have an internet connection. 

You can create courses and make money from sharing your passion, and you don’t need to be a world-renowned scholar, college professor, or even a certified teacher — all you need is recognizable talent and a desire to share it. 

So, what unique skill do you have? What’s something you’re deeply passionate about that you’d love to share with others? Turn your experience into a digital business and host weekly or monthly live classes or webinars.

Don’t feel comfortable on camera or simply don’t want to present live? Consider offering a pre-made online course where you can share your knowledge through downloadable texts and pre-recorded videos.

Build your website with WordPress and WooCommerce and use the Sensei Pro extension to create and manage your own online course.

You’ll be able to sell paid courses as a product directly through your site and even create memberships and subscriptions for recurring revenue. You’ll also benefit from video course templates, quizzes to test and grade student progress, prerequisites for students to access advanced content, flashcard image hotspot functionality, and more. 

Want to learn more about selling online courses? See how to set up Sensei LMS in our guide: How to Sell Online Courses.

Podcasts and ebooks

Like online courses, podcasts and ebooks can help you monetize your knowledge. More than 76 million people in the United States listened to podcasts in 2024 — a figure that’s increased by over 27 million since 2020 and could reach nearly 114 million by 2029.

And it’s the same story for ebooks — with digital readership revenue extending past $50 billion annually.  

Authors can use the built-in digital products offering for WooCommerce to sell their books online. Podcasters can also use WooCommerce with integrations like Audio Player for WooCommerce and WooCommerce Memberships. These let creators sell individual, premium media files or offer memberships for exclusive podcast content.

Memberships and subscriptions

One of the best things about online courses, podcasts, ebooks, and many other digital products, is the ability for business owners to sell them on a recurring basis. This provides more steady, predictable income and can truly allow for a very hands-off approach to business management. 

Your customers can sign up for membership or subscription for as long as they want to keep access and your primary job (beside marketing) is to create the content in the first place or continue to drip out new content each week or month to keep people subscribed as long as possible. 

Digital products for real-world memberships

Digital products can also be super useful for managing clubs that have in-person events and meetings. The Kansas City Parrot Head Club, for example, hosts charitable and social events each month for its approximately 200 members. Annual memberships, and renewals, along with tickets for specific events are managed through their site. 

WooCommerce once again shines in this area with two key extensions: WooCommerce memberships and Woo subscriptions. Together, they work to create a membership option with recurring billing capabilities. 

WooCommerce Memberships allows you to provide controlled access to gated areas on your site with libraries of exclusive content, access to exclusive communication channels, and discounts for other products available on your site. 

Woo Subscriptions allows you to charge recurring payments for auto-shipped products at regular intervals — but it also unlocks the recurring billing option for memberships so you can charge customers a set fee each month (or other appropriate interval). It also allows for members to manage their subscription and pause or cancel on their own. 

The best Patreon alternative 

If you like the idea of providing a membership option to followers or creating a community of supporters who get rewarded for supporting your creative work, you may have considered Patreon or YouTube channel memberships. 

The problem with these platforms is that you’re limited in design and product offerings (having to conform to their setups for delivering and publishing content) and are beholden to their terms of service. 

Instead, look at WooCommerce as the best Patreon alternative. You can provide memberships with recurring billing and gated content, but have full ownership of the platform you build and can customize it in any way. 

Digital artwork and printable downloads

Artists have a lovely opportunity to create digital products. And their online offers don’t have to conflict with their physical work. 

You can sell graphic designs to stock photo sites for other creators and marketers to use in their work. You can sell art designed to be computer or phone backgrounds. You can sell digital files of artwork for customers to print on canvas, copy for school worksheets, or use in almost any way imaginable. 

Turn watercolor art into phone wallpaper. Offer printable downloads of your digital art as greeting cards. Create posters that your customers can print themselves and frame however they’d like. The options are really only limited by shoppers’ imaginations.

For example, let’s say that you sell an illustration of a college football stadium. While you can certainly offer it in prints that you physically ship to customers, you could also offer it as a printable, digital download. 

Football fans could print it from their home computer, or even upload it to a service like Shutterfly to professionally print it on everything from mugs and wine glasses to notebooks, laptop sleeves, and magnets.

You can use WooCommerce to display and sell all of these things or even offer something more unique like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), complete with a Certificate of Authenticity, by adding the Verisart extension. 

Licensed digital assets

Creators often love to expand or modify another artist’s idea. It provides inspiration — a jumping off point — to create something new. And graphic designers working for creative agencies, advertisers, or other organizations find it advantageous to use premade assets where possible to work more efficiently instead of creating everything from scratch. 

Consider providing digital assets for other creators to license and use in their own works. Unless you only offer exclusive licenses, your one-time creation can be licensed over and over again for years — leading to consistent revenue long after you actually did any work. 

Here are some examples of licensable digital products:

While you can license these assets from your own WooCommerce site with an extension like License Manager for WooCommerce, you should also consider offering them through a marketplace that has a built-in traffic source of people looking to purchase licenses. These kinds of marketplaces include: 

• Canva
• iStock 
• Adobe Stock
• Unsplash
• Getty 
• Envato Elements
• Shutterstock

These platforms offer exposure, but charge a commission for each sale in exchange. Many stock image sites, like Unsplash and Pexels, offer a mix of options for users, including royalty-free photos or premium images. Users can download and use royalty-free images with no fee (some attribution requirements and usage restrictions apply), while premium images have variable pricing depending on how the image will be used.

Commissioned works as licensed digital products

You’re not limited to licensing pre-created works. If you have artistic talent with a track record of performance, you can sell commissioned projects in almost any form imaginable. Record a voiceover, write and record custom music, create a graphic design based on a written request. These kinds of creative services are sold all the time on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. 

Music, video, and audio

If you’re a professional singer or musician, even if you just like writing and recording music in your spare time, you can sell full songs for download or offer snippets for customers to use as ringtones. With Audio Player for WooCommerce, customers can listen to your songs or ringtone snippets before they buy.

Paid newsletters

if you have talent, knowledge, and experience — in almost any niche imaginable — you have expertise to share with an audience. You may share this on a blog to generate organic traffic, and that’s great. But you should also consider providing exclusive access to premium content. You can do this through a membership offering, but another popular option is to create a paid newsletter. 

Once you’ve demonstrated your expertise and built a following, you can write a newsletter at consistent intervals (like weekly) and charge for access. And this doesn’t have to be educational — anyone with a following (for any reason) can drip content to followers in exchange for a fee. 

Learn more about how to create a paid newsletter through a website and platform that you fully own and control. 

Software licensing

Don’t forget that software is a digital product! Build out your app idea, create a plugin for WordPress, or develop a SaaS program. These kinds of things are usually a pretty big endeavor, but they’re still digital products with lots of potential to generate revenue. 

WooCommerce is the ideal platform for doing business online. A major part of that? The library of extensions available for online store owners to quickly add functionality to their site. Qualified developers can contribute their extension to the marketplace. Learn more here.

Digital gift cards

Digital gift cards are a great way to add a convenient product option to your store. So even if you do sell physical products, add an online gift card option for another revenue opportunity without having to deal with additional inventory, SKUs, and fulfillment headaches. 

If your store runs on WooCommerce, you have access to a great extension that can make this whole process a snap.  

Digital services

Do you offer consulting or other services? You can deliver these virtually and let customers schedule their session or appointment with WooCommerce Bookings. 

Now that we’ve reviewed some types of digital products, let’s take a look at some real stores that are selling digitally online, all with WooCommerce.

French Today

French today offers all sorts of instructional material to help people learn how to speak French the way it’s really used in daily life. They offer audiobooks based on a variety of experience levels and niche subjects (like verb drills), a monthly audio magazine subscription, personalized Skype French lessons, and even learning apps.

CLS by BARBRI

This online store offers online education for individuals seeking a career in the legal field. Students can choose from a variety of courses and search for the right fit based on the school they’re attending, their location, their topic of focus, and more. They also have a bookstore where visitors can purchase the digital textbooks needed for their courses. 

Each course is offered entirely online, and students can work through the subjects on their own time. In addition to more traditional payment methods, CLS by BARBRI allows customers to pay monthly (or in a set number of installments) to make things easier. 

Cosmos Magazine 

Cosmos is a print science magazine that’s delivered quarterly to dedicated subscribers. Their goal is to make science accessible to everyone, regardless of their experience and knowledge level. And they do this through high-quality photos, top-knotch writing, and clear explanations. 

In addition to their print magazine, they also have an online digital edition that’s updated on a daily basis, along with digital versions of all of their back issues. Finally, they have a membership available that includes access to the digital version of the magazine, along with exclusive features. This is an excellent example of how print and digital can exist side by side.

FilterGrade

FilterGrade is an online marketplace that offers a huge library of digital assets for creators — Lightroom presets, photo overlays, Photoshop actions, and more. Each product is available in a few different license types, with different pricing for each.  

TipoType

TipoType offers a catalog full of high-quality fonts that customers can use for their digital and print creations. Each font is available in a variety of styles and has several license types depending on the customer’s use case. 

They also offer custom services, such as custom font licensing, unique font adaptations, and extended language coverage.

HousingWire

HousingWire is a digital library of information specifically for the real estate industry. There are individual and group licenses available, and customers can choose between a monthly or yearly subscription. There are also enterprise plans for larger businesses.

A HousingWire membership provides access to real estate news, market data, housing research, exclusive in-person events, and a newsletter just for subscribers.

The Sweet Setup

The Sweet Setup has more than 60,000 digital subscribers to their website, which offers paid courses, reviews, and articles around productivity. Available courses cover everything from time management and productivity to making the most of specific software.

The Focus Club Membership offers access to all of the tools and courses available on their site, along with a digital community and monthly office hours.

There are a variety of places you can sell digital products online. Let’s explore a few options, starting with the one that provides the most freedom, control, and flexibility.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful ecommerce tool built specifically for WordPress. It offers absolutely everything you need to sell digital products, including product listings, checkout and cart functionality, payment gateways, and digital download support — all for free! 

If you do want additional functionality, you can choose from a huge library of extensions that provide tools for software licenses, subscriptions, memberships, and more.

Here are just a few of the reasons that WooCommerce stands out from the other options on this list:

• It harnesses the power of WordPress. WordPress is the most popular website platform available, and WooCommerce is a plugin built by Automattic, the team behind WordPress.com. When you use WooCommerce, you benefit from all the great features of WordPress, like the drag-and-drop block editor, powerful content creation tools, and incredible flexibility. 
• You have full control and ownership. With WooCommerce, you have full control over the look and feel of your site and products. You’re not beholden to any design or size restrictions, and no one can take your products down. This isn’t the case with other platforms.
• There are no exclusivity agreements. Some third-party platforms allow you to sell your digital products on their site — and only their site. This isn’t true with WooCommerce. Sell products on your own store and on other platforms, if you’d like.
• You keep more of your hard-earned money. WooCommerce doesn’t charge any listing fees or take a percentage of your sales.
• It’s endlessly flexible. You can sell anything you want, design your online store however you want, and use extensions to create virtually any type of functionality. 
• You can sell a variety of product types side by side. Sell digital downloads next to online courses. Offer virtual consultations alongside software licenses and even physical products. The sky’s the limit.
• There’s powerful support and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. WordPress and WooCommerce are surrounded by a passionate community made up of other store owners just like you. Connect with them through online forums, Slack channels, Facebook groups, and in-person meetups.

WooCommerce is, by far, the best way to sell your digital products online. Want to learn more? See how it compares to other options like Etsy and Patreon.

Stock sites

If you create digital assets like stock photos, illustrations, or videos, there are some good options for selling on third-party marketplaces. These include:

There are some benefits to these types of marketplaces. For example, you gain access to a larger, built-in audience that’s searching for what you have to offer. 

But take the time to fully understand what’s involved with each platform. Some have exclusivity agreements, while others don’t. Some have higher fees than others. Some allow you to set your own prices, while others set them for you. And keep in mind that competitors’ products will be shown right alongside your own.

If you want to benefit from the built-in audience of third-party marketplaces while still building your own store, you certainly can with WooCommerce. As long as the marketplaces don’t have exclusivity agreements, you can list your digital assets there, along with your own store. 

Etsy

Etsy is a great platform for small online business owners, especially creatives, who could benefit from a built-in audience of buyers. Sellers can list both physical and digital products in their shop. However, as with anything, there are both positives and negatives. 

Here are some of the benefits of Etsy:

• A built in audience. Your work is displayed to a built-in audience that already has a lot of trust in the platform.
• Built-in promotional opportunities. Your products are recommended to others who purchased similar items.
• Advertising tools. You can harness powerful advertising tools to reach a new audience.

Here are some of the downside of Etsy:

• Etsy charges for your listings and/or shop. While you can host as many products as you want, Etsy charges a $0.20 fee for each listing. If you upgrade your account from Basic to Etsy Plus, you can list up to 15 products without the listing fee. However, Etsy retains 6.5% of each sale, which can really eat into your profits.
• Product types are very simple. You won’t have much flexibility when it comes to the types of products you sell. For example, it’s not possible to sell online courses.
• You don’t own your storefront. At the end of the day, your products and business are at the mercy of a larger marketplace.

And remember, you can also sell on Etsy alongside your WooCommerce store. The Etsy Integration for WooCommerce extension syncs listing information between both stores, so everything is always up to date.

Patreon

Patreon is a site for creatives, influencers, and others to offer subscription-style perks to fans and followers, or Patrons. The site lets you set up membership tiers with varied access. You can even create a free tier with content that’s accessible to anyone signed up for your updates.

Patreon was once the go-to place — especially for creatives just starting to build a name for themselves — that married creative individuals with people who want to support creative endeavors. 

But in the last few years, creators have lost what made Patreon so great in the beginning: control over what they can and can’t post. The loss of control and Patreon’s seemingly exorbitant fees have made this once-great creator platform just another channel that doesn’t have creator interests at heart.

WooCommerce is the best Patreon alternative, and more creators are turning to it every day. 

Pros of Patreon:

• There are pre-built profile templates. If you don’t have a unique vision for presenting yourself as a creator, this is a bonus of Patreon as you can simply fill out the information and launch a page about as quickly as filling out a new page profile for a platform like Facebook or LinkedIn. 
• Familiarity with potential fans. Your followers have probably heard of Patreon and may feel more comfortable joining through this kind of pre-built platform. That said, most influencers have built enough trust with their followers that this will be a non-issue.
• Inexpensive to get started. You can get up and running quickly and with very minimal costs. 

Cons of Patreon:

• There are pre-built profile templates. Patreon owns and hosts all of their own code, so you’re not able to add custom functionality and design elements you may want as a creator. Your pages will, more or less, like everyone else’s.
• High fees. You’re going to be giving a high percentage of your income to Patreon as a “thanks” for their service. These fees will follow you forever. 
• You’re beholden to someone else. Make sure you read and abide by Patreon’s terms and conditions very carefully. A wrong move — or even the perception of or false report of a wrong move — and you’re income stream could be down for a while (or forever).

So you’ve decided to build your digital foundation using WordPress and WooCommerce, right? Good choice!

WooCommerce offers seemingly endless extensions that can help you build a profitable business, like:

• Sensei Pro for creating and managing an online learning program.
• Memberships for subscriber-based sites and businesses.
• Subscriptions for recurring payment capabilities to access premium content (which you can combine with memberships to replace your Patreon account!).
• Digital downloads for selling any standard digital file as a product (native WooCommerce functionality).
• Digital gift cards to add a digital product to any existing physical or virtual organization. 
• WooCommerce Bookings to sell virtual customer sessions and appointments.
• Mailchimp for straightforward email and SMS campaigns and advanced automation and segmentation tools as you grow.

And every business owner also needs to be thinking about marketing. Thankfully, WooCommerce has that more than fully covered with a plethora of marketing extensions. Some of the top options include: 

No matter where you are in your online digital products venture, generating ongoing sales is always important. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Offer great digital products

This one almost goes without saying, but the key to any successful business is offering customers physical and digital products and services that enrich and add value.

Your online digital products should somehow make your customers’ lives better. 

You’ll always compete with other creators and with content that’s freely available on the web, so create something that people have never seen and won’t find elsewhere.

Tease a purchase by giving something for free

It doesn’t matter how much your online digital product sells for — creating a free version is usually a strong way to demonstrate value and ultimately make a sale. Watermark artwork and allow downloads so people can try them out in the application they need. Provide a limited version of your paid newsletter so people can grasp the potential value of the paid version. 

Whatever it is — one of the biggest barriers to sales of digital assets is demonstrating value. Make it easy for potential customers to get a virtual taste and your bank account will thank you. 

Build an affiliate marketing program around your online digital products

Affiliates, influencers, brand ambassadors — different variations with the same end result: these individuals get your name and digital items in front of people you might not otherwise reach. 

And much more importantly than simply expanding your reach, these influencers can speak to a highly-targeted audience with a personal recommendation the audience trusts. In other words, the value potential here is sky high.

What’s the best platform to sell digital products?

WooCommerce is the best platform for selling digital products. Open-source and built on WordPress, business owners have full ownership of their creation with freedom to expand, customize, and build without limits. 

Plus, a strong community of contributors means a library of pre-built customizations and functionality enhancements that can be added on with just a few clicks. You can also custom code anything needed.

WooCommerce is the most widely-used ecommerce platform in the world for a reason, and it’s the best choice to sell digital products. 

What digital products sell the best online?

Some of the top-selling online digital products are:

1. Online learning courses
2. eBooks
3. Music, graphics, and art
4. Stock photos, video, and graphics
5. Memberships
6. Digital apps, productivity tools, and other software 
7. Services and professional consultations

How can I sell digital products online?

All you need is WordPress and WooCommerce! The combination provides all the functionality necessary to design a beautiful website, list your digital products, attract and market to customers, and watch your sales grow. Check out our WooCommerce Customer Stories to see how other businesses (even celebrities!) use WooCommerce to sell their digital products online.

What are the benefits of selling digital products online?

Digital products offer the opportunity to build an entire business without the typical considerations like inventory, warehouse space, and shipping costs. Plus, even digital products that require updates, like software programs and online courses, can still serve as a solid residual income source.