what is a Digital Product or digital download?

A Digital product is a kind of product that are delivered electronically. For e.g. eBooks, Music, software, and digital designs etc falls under digital product category.

A Digital download item is a product that one can sell or buy online without handling a physical shipment or delivery. For. e.g., you bought an antivirus license from a website. You will receive a confirmation email with license key. Download the antivirus app and put the license code, you are done.

 

Best platforms to sell digital downloads online

You can sell digital products through numerous ways online. Create your own website using WordPress, Shopify, Wix site builders and give a start to your business.

If you decide to not create your own site, then you can sell digital products through sites like Etsy, Creative Market, and Gumroad. Out of these three option, Etsy is the best platform to start your digital downloads business.

Why Etsy to sell Digital downloads?

Easy Documentation and instant Approval process

Etsy account creation and shop opening is pretty easier. Fill out your basic individual/business details and get access to start listing on Etsy. You can create as many listings you want on Etsy.

Simple Listing interface

Etsy shop interface is simple and easy to access. You can start listing your products by your own without hiring an expert for this purpose.

 

Etsy Fees and Commission

 

Listing Fees

Etsy charge $0.20 USD/listing to the customer whether you are selling a digital download or a physical product. Once your listing gets sold, it will again charge you $0.20 USD for the listing renewal. If you listing do not made any sale in the four months, you will again need to pay $0.20 USD to renew the listing.

Sales Commission

On each sale, Etsy deducts 7% platform fees + applicable taxes.

 

How to Sell Digital Downloads on Etsy

 

Start with a niche selection

Digital Downloads market is a wide market. Etsy features a million+ digital products listed by thousands of sellers. One cannot sell everything. So, it is recommended to pick a niche to start selling on Etsy.

How to pick a niche for digital downloads

 

Etsy Search

Search for “digital products” on Etsy, you will find different listing on the Etsy search page. Open few of the listings and check the seller’s shop page. R&D what they are selling. Pick their niche word and again search on Etsy page. Look for top listings and their review/rating count. It will help you analyze the competition of that particular niche.

To make your task easier, we have prepared a list of 1000+ digital products ideas to sell on Etsy. Our list includes monthly search volume data too.

Create your Digital Products

After the niche selection, it’s time to create digital products. For this, you will need a desktop application or online app. Below, I am listing few apps you can consider for making digital products.

Canva

Canva, an Australia based company brought a drastic change in the design industry. This app lets you create digital designs in minutes. It features thousands of freemium and premium graphics, templates, images/photos, fonts, and music to make designs quickly.

The app has an intuitive feature for digital template sellers known as “template link. You can share that link to anyone and they can get a duplicate template copy to use on their account for quick customization.

Adobe Creative tools

Adobe tools such as Photoshop, Adobe XD, Illustration, and Lightroom are the most trusted and famous tools among professionals. You can use these tools to make digital products in a more precise manner than Canva. It is because it has a vast library of fonts, styles etc.

But, creating designs on such tools need good knowledge of these tools as compared to Canva (easy accessible with minimal graphic design skill). Alos, the yearly cost of these tools are much higher.

Microsoft and Google Products (excel/sheets)

Apart from graphic designing materials, you can even sale Powerpoint, Ms word, Ms excel, Google Sheets, Google Doc etc templates. Create templates like daily activity trackers, weekly habit tracker etc similar topics to start selling with.

Create an Account on Etsy

 

 

• Register yourself on Etsy to start selling. Fill your personal details, and set password.  Login to Etsy, You will find an option “Open a shop” in the header section. Click it.
• Selct language, shop country and currency.
• You can either open a shop as an individual or as a business entity. Make your selection as needed.
• Select a username for your shop, enter bank details, ID etc to get started with listing your first product on Etsy. Setup your payment and billing information. You will get approval to sell on Etsy in few days after the card verification.

Publish your product On Etsy

Go to listings sections, click on “add a listing”.

It will pop a new listing interface section.

What type of item is it?

Make a selection “Digital Files”.

Who made it?

Select from “a member of our shop”, “I did”, and “Another company or person”. If you have all the rights to the template then select “I did”. If you reselling another’s digital download product then select “Another company or person”.

When was it made?

Here, you need to select the current year “2020-2023”.

What is it?

Here you have to select out of two options, a supply or tool to make things or a finished product. If you selling an instant download item select “a finished product” else “a supply or tool to make things”.

Click on “Continue” button.

Listing Title

Etsy allows up to 140 Characters title for each listing. In order to optimize your listing, you should prefer important and primary keyword to be included in the first 60 characters for better Google search appearance. Also, adding the primary keyword in the start signals both Google and Etsy about the content’s reliability.

Product Images and video

Like any physical product listing, digital download listings also requires to have images that better describes the product. It helps your listing performs well on Etsy. Highlight key aspects of your digital product and if possible add a video to the listing so that user can clearly understand about your digital product how it works.

Etsy supports up to 10 images and one video upload for each listing. In order to publish the listing, you will need to upload at least one image. Etsy Recommends at least 2000 PX (for the shortest sides) wide image.

To perform your listing images well in Google search result, add Alt text to the images. You can use the primary keyword followed by its attributes in the alt text.

Product Description

The product description section allows the customer to neat and clean describe the product to the customers. You can make the most of it by giving a detailed description of your product. Add information regarding the tool you used to make that digital product, how the customer can edit or download the product etc.

Price and Inventory

Check your competition pricing on Etsy and get an idea how much your product should cost to the end user. Try to keep your product pricing bit low from your competition for some initial sales.

Also, you can define the stock inventory on Etsy. As it is a digital product, each customer will get access to the through PDF. So, you can keep a maximum of 999 stock per listing.

Renewal

As explained above, Etsy charges a listing fee of $0.20 USD/listing. The listings needs to renew after every four months or each sale. So, sellers have the option to keep renewal either manual or automatic.

If you keep renewal manual then Etsy will renew the listing on each sale only until the stock last. If the listing keeps automatic then, Etsy will renew the listing on each sale and after the four months which one comes early.

 

Add title, images, description, listing attributes, sku, category, Tags, product type (physical/digital), and PDF file to be send to the customer after the purchase.

Once done, click on publish and hurray, you have created your listing on Etsy.

Hit Publish

Once you have added all the necessary information and cross checked it then hit “Publish” button. Hurray, your listing is live.

 

Market your product

 

After the listing creation and optimization process, it is time to market your product.

Etsy Ads

Start with advertising your listing on Etsy. Go to marketing section -> Etsy Ads. Select your product listing to advertise. Etsy will display your listing when the user will search for related keywords and tags in Etsy search.

Social Media

Share your listing content on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook groups, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube. Start promoting it through hashtags or advertisement.