One of the things that people do these days to make money online is to sell all kinds of products, whether digital or physical. You’ve seen lots of business owners, and marketers post their items on Facebook and even on sites like ClickBank, Alibaba and Amazon, and paid advertising platforms such as Click2sell.co, 7Search, BuySellAds, and others.
With so many avenues for you to try when you are planning on selling products online, which of these should you try? If you are selling digital products such as software, e-books, white papers, and tutorials, which avenue is best for you? Should you just put your products out on the marketplace and wait for someone to buy them or are there advertising campaigns types and strategies that can help you generate more sales and revenues from your digital products?
Main Challenges of Selling Digital Products
Digital products are not like other items that people usually sell on online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Carousell. These are not physical items that people can have delivered to their doorstep or something they can pick up at a meet-up after they express the intent to buy. These are items that can be downloaded by the buyer once payment has been made (i.e., tutorials and guides, courses, e-books, etc.).
With that said, as easy as it may seem to sell these items online given that these are digital items, there are a few pros and cons of selling digital products online. Here are some of them:
Pros to Selling Digital Products Online:
- No need for warehouse and physical inventory space – much like when you do drop shipping, you don’t need to rent a warehouse or allocate space in your garage for your inventory. Since these items are digital, all you need is enough space on your hard drive for these items. You also don’t have to worry about someone breaking into your warehouse or garage to steal your products. There is no need to hire people to handle your inventory for you when deliveries have to be made. In short, you can save a lot of money when you sell digital products instead of physical ones.
- You have unlimited inventory – another good thing about digital products is you pretty much have unlimited inventory. You don’t have to worry about running out of products to sell since what you are selling are downloadable digital items. You don’t have to worry about updating your stocks every time you make a sale. You can keep track of each digital copy you sell by making each item deliverable only through email. This way, you can see how many items you’ve already sold for accounting purposes.
Cons to Selling Digital Products Online:
- Your products can be copied and resold by others – the fact that your items are digital and can be downloaded also means that there’s a risk of someone else selling your products without you knowing. Unless you have a way to keep track of each copy you sell, you won’t be able to stop this from happening since the internet is too big for you to monitor. This risk is something that sellers and marketers face every day, particularly if what they sell products which are considered popular. Each product can be reworded then resold, with the idea remaining as-is.
- Your products have a lower perceived value compared to physical products – let’s face it. When it comes to products that people sell online, those that are tangible are often deemed more valuable than those that don’t have a physical form. An e-book is considered less valuable than a paperback, and an online class is deemed less legit than one that you take in a real classroom. While your product may have real value, even high in some cases, it may be seen as not as worthy of the money you ask for by many potential customers due to this perception.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is, when you sell digital products, there are risks that you have to take. But then again, selling anything online, whether digital or not, always comes with risks. It’s all up to you and how you mitigate those risks and make the most of the situation.
