What Is A Digital Product? How To Make Them Work For Content Creators
If you’re a content creator on TikTok or Instagram, you might be making money through brand deals. But what if you could create something once and continue to make money off of it for years to come?
Enter: digital products.
As a digital content creator, odds are you are the expert in your niche. That means that you have specific skills and insights that your audience is searching for.
In this post I’m going to guide you through what a digital product is and how you can use them to create an additional income stream for your business.
What is a Digital Product?
Digital products are any type of content that is delivered electronically rather than through physical media. E-books are the most popular format of digital products, but the sky is the limit. Anything you create digitally can be considered a digital product: Google Docs, spreadsheets, Notion templates, Canva templates—you name it.
Digital products have many benefits over selling physical products with the main one being that it’s digital!
There is no need to store inventory.
You don’t have to worry about shipping or supply chain.
You can do pre-sales to see if your audience is interested.
If it doesn’t work out you won’t be sitting on a mountain of wasted money.
The best part? As long as a digital product remains relevant, you can continue to use it to create income and most importantly, provide value to your audience for years to come.
What are some examples of digital products?
There are so many great digital product ideas for every niche, you just have to get creative! Here are some of my favorite examples of digital download ideas that you can sell on your own website or Etsy.
E-books (cookbooks, guides, and more)
Tutorials and guides (travel guides, capsule wardrobe, home cleaning checklist)
Presets for photography
Canva templates
Notion templates
Asana templates
Google Docs (think email scripts, landing page copy, travel itineraries, checklists)
Google Sheets (budgeting spreadsheets, wedding cost planner, savings tracker)
Stock photos
Digital product mockup templates
Website templates (Squarespace, ShowIt, WordPress)
Digital files for crafting (SVG files for crafting, patterns)
Digital art printables
Digital files for designers (textures, backgrounds, vector illustrations)
How do I know what digital products to sell?
I see a lot of people refer to digital products as a “get rich quick” scheme so I really want to emphasize that for a digital product to be successful, it has to be high quality and impactful.
A good rule of thumb I like to follow is that if it’s something that the average person could recreate themselves or find an equally good free template, it’s probably not going to be the product for you.
Digital products to avoid
If you look on Etsy you’ll find literal 1000s of checklist templates that are selling for less than $3. That’s going to be a long road to actual profits.
The key to a successful digital product in my book is to provide value and insights that only you can provide and package it up beautifully in a way that is easy for your audience to digest.
Example of a a good digital product in action
For example, instead of selling a list of what to do in Hawaii, make it more specific. Put yourself into the shoes of the person planning a trip? What are their pain points and how can you alleviate them?
They might be overwhelmed trying to organize each day to make the most of their time. They might be wondering when to go to what beach for the best sunset.
A day-by-day itinerary with each stop on a timeline, your review and insider tips, where to stay, and what to pack provide a lot more value. Maybe you have experience traveling with kids so you market the guide to be specific and relevant to that audience.
The main thing is to understand your audiences problem and use a digital product to immediately alleviate that problem.
If you liked this post, save it for later!
I hope this list of digital product ideas inspires you to learn more about different types of digital products to sell and how you can use them to monetize your business. If you liked this digital product guide, save it for later by pinning one of the images below.
Was there a digital product idea on this list that would be a perfect match for your niche? Let me know in the comments below!
