These Are The Best Ways to Sell Digital Stuff on the Internet

Selling digital downloads on the Internet can be very lucrative. Unlike physical products that have to be packaged and then shipped to customers, digital products are created once and repeatedly sold to as many customers as you want — without having to replenish the inventory.

This means less work and more money, but only if you do it right. And it is that “doing it right” part which is tricky.

One of the most important factors to consider is to find the right place to sell your digital product. And for that, you could use a tool that will help you streamline your (future?) operation.

Quick Summary

If you don’t want to read it all, here’s a quick recommendation of the top three services we think you should check.

Payhip

An easy-to-use service that will do the heavy lifting in the background, sending your customers emails with details from where they can access the digital products you’re selling — whether they are individual links, subscriptions, or online courses. Some advanced features are included, such as a mailing list, coupons, affiliate marketing, embeddable checkout and shopping cart, and more.

Payhip highlights:
✅ Easy-to-use and easy-to-understand pricing
✅ Free plan has all the features of the paid one
✅ Support for one-time downloads and memberships
✅ PayPal payments included (in addition to credit cards)
✅ Probably the best service to get started

Sellfy

Probably the easiest to use service on the list, claiming that you can use it to build a digital store in under five minutes. At the same time, Sellfy includes support for both physical and digital products. Furthermore, it has a unique print-on-demand feature that lets you offer shirts, hoodies, hats, and mugs. The service will print products as soon as orders come in and then send them to customers — your “job” is only to count the cash at the end of every month.

Sellfy highlights:
✅ Probably the easiest-to-use service on the list
✅ The Print-on-demand feature lets you offer shirts, hoodies, mugs, etc.
✅ Support for one-time downloads, memberships and video streaming
✅ PayPal payments included (in addition to credit cards)
✅ Robust customization options

SendOwl

SendOwl offers many advanced features that are included on the sites of the world’s top stores. For instance, there are 1-click upsells, memberships & subscriptions, email marketing integrations, discount & promo codes, cart abandonment features, and more. You can use SendOwl to sell both digital and physical products, and if you want, run your whole business with it.

SendOwl highlights:
✅ Ability to sell memberships, online courses and video
✅ Flexible payment options, including PayPal support
✅ Pre-checkout & post-payment upsells
✅ Integration with a number of email services
✅ Advanced features very few other services offer

Why should you trust our advice?

Before we delve into details, let us first share our credentials.

We’ve been in this “game” for quite some time, selling ebooks and other digital content for more than a decade. And during the years, we’d like to think we have learned quite a few things. So, when we see a new product or service, we know where to look for its flaws — and, on the other hand, the features that make it “get the job done.” Cause, at the end of the day, the service that lets you sell your digital products should be seamless, letting you set up your virtual operation as soon as possible.

In addition to MediaFire, some of our work includes DHbriefs.com, IntoMobile.com, SustainableAvenue.com, VPNreports.com, to name a few.

If you still need more proof that “we know what we’re doing” – feel free to send us an email with your question, and we’ll try to get you the answer. Fair enough?

Why would you want to sell a digital product?

There are three main reasons why you would want to sell a digital product (or more of them) if you’re still not doing it:

1. It is easy
Just think about what the creation of a physical product entails. First, you have to find a manufacturing partner, create packaging and then pay upfront for some quantity of the product, usually 1,000 units or more. Sure, there are companies that could streamline this process for you, but you will still have to pay upfront a ton of money just to get enough product units. In sharp contrast, selling digital products is easy peasy.

2. It is less risky
As mentioned – with physical products, you will have to pay for the initial manufacturing, fulfillment, and related costs. This means that you’re in red until you move enough units, but what happens if you don’t make enough sales? See where this goes? Because there are no (big) upfront fees, selling digital products is less risky.

3. It is highly profitable
Finally, because you don’t have upfront costs of a physical product, selling digital products is more profitable. You can sell as many units as you want without any additional cost. You will have to put some time and even money into digital product development, but after that – all the money you earn is yours to keep.

What digital products should you sell?

There are not one but multiple different types of digital products that are sold today by entrepreneurs, artists, educators, and other creatives. Some of these include:

• eBooks, reports, and guides
• Online courses
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products
• Audiobooks, podcasts, and other music (audio files)
• Photos
• Videos
• Fonts, logos, icons, and other graphics
• Themes and templates for websites, marketing, and more
• Video games

It is up to you to determine what kind of digital product will best suit your (potential) audience.

For instance, not everyone knows or wants to make videos, so they could instead make ebooks. Similarly, not everyone has the tech knowledge to develop video games.

Luckily, there is a digital product for everyone.

Why do you need a dedicated service?

You can actually do everything without a dedicated service and accept payments with PayPal. But is it enough?

We don’t think so. For the low monthly price and a modest transaction fee (if any), dedicated services will do a ton of work for you. For instance, you will get an email marketing service, the ability to accept credit cards, create mobile-optimized landing pages, issue license keys if you sell software, make coupon codes for occasional promotions, and much more.

The main thing, however, is that these services will help you fulfill user orders by automatically sending emails with links and serving customers with download pages.

The end result is a professional-looking process that by itself will boost your orders. After all, no one wants to leave his/her credit card on a website that doesn’t look legit. And that’s what these dedicated services will help you achieve – look as a legitimate business potential buyers can trust.

We think it’s worth their fee.

How we tested?

We signed up for more services than we care to count, and out of almost two dozen of them – we’ve picked the three that we think are the best.

You won’t make a mistake by getting any of these as all of them will “get the job done.” Still, you may want to keep reading for details to make your pick.

In any case, we’ve set the four criteria for testing:

1. Ease of use
What does the sign-up process look like? What about setting the first landing page? How long did it take us to start accepting sales? And what about ongoing maintenance – was it easy as well?

2. Product type support
Does a service support different types of digital products such as subscriptions and online courses? What about physical products (in case you later decide to add them, as well)?

3. Additional features
Is some form of email marketing included? What about coupon codes? Some services also include affiliate marketing support which can be handy – we also wanted to check that.

4. Price
At the end of the day, it all comes to value for money – so we checked the cost of all services and picked only those that we think are reasonably priced.

Top 3 services for accepting digital downloads

And now, let us explore what we deem to be the three best tools to use for selling digital products.

Payhip

This easy-to-use service is designed to help you quickly establish your online venture and sell ebooks, software, and online courses. In that sense, Payhip goes beyond downloads to also let you sell subscriptions.

As a Payhip user, you get to sell your digital offering from your eCommerce store, blog, or even your social media pages.

Your customers on their end will be able to instantly download the products they bought from you — or get an instant access if it’s a subscription you’re selling.

Payhip will do the heavy lifting in the background, sending your customers emails with details from where they can access the materials. Moreover, if you happen to sell PDFs, it will help you protect your work (intellectual property) by stamping them with your customer’s name — thus discouraging them from sharing the files.

On the other hand, those selling software through Payhip can use the service to issue software keys, helping keep your products protected. And if that’s not enough, there is an option to limit the number of downloads so customers can’t abuse the system.

But wait, there’s more. Payhip also lets you offer coupons and create mailing lists. While the former lets you benefit from periodical promotions, the latter allows you to keep in touch with your customers — thus helping you increase your bottom line.

Finally, with a built-in affiliate system, you can incentivize customers to promote your digital downloads.

🏷️ Pricing: Payhip is available in three tiers: Free, Plus (costs $29/month), and Pro ($99/month), with the only difference being in the fee Payhip takes from each transaction. So the more you pay per month, the less you will pay per sale.

• Free plan – 5% transaction fee
• Plus plan – 2% transaction fee
• Pro plan – no transaction fee

⚖️ Pros & Cons:
✔️ Free plan has all the features of the paid one
✔️ PayPal support (in addition to all major credit cards)
✔️ Ability to sell memberships and online courses
❌ Only digital products are supported (not physical ones)

👉 Click here to sign-up for Payhip today!

Sellfy

Sellfy is probably the easiest to use service on the list, claiming that you can use it to build a digital store in under five minutes. At the same time, it includes support for both physical and digital products. Furthermore, it has a print-on-demand feature that lets you offer shirts, hoodies, hats, and mugs. The service will print products as soon as orders come in and then send them to customers — your “job” is only to count the cash at the end of every month.

Back to digital products… With Sellfy, you can offer all sorts of digital products from ebooks and music files to videos on demand. In the last mentioned scenario, your customers can stream content from your site for a fee — with Sellfy working in the background to prevent piracy as much as possible.

Another cool feature worth mentioning is Sellfy’s landing page builder which lets you customize it as much as you want. For instance, you can insert your logo, change a color scheme, and organize the layout. Heck, you can even connect your own domain name if you want stronger branding. The end result is a page that is perfectly optimized for mobile devices (which is very important these days).

In addition, we should also mention Sellfy’s array of marketing tools that include discount codes (coupons), upselling, pixel tracking, and email marketing — as well as payment options that support Stripe (for credit card transactions) and PayPal.

🏷️ Pricing: There are four options: Free, Starter, Business, and Premium, with the more expensive plans packing more features and support for higher volumes. You can pay on a month-to-month basis or opt for more affordable yearly and two-year options. There are no transaction fees.

• Starter plan: $19/month (two-year plan), $22/mo (yearly), $29/mo (monthly)
• Business plan: $49/month (two-year plan), $59/mo (yearly), $79/mo (monthly)
• Premium plan: $99/month (two-year plan), $119/mo (yearly), $159/mo (monthly)

⚖️ Pros & Cons:
✔️ Print-on-demand products come included with the free plan
✔️ PayPal support (in addition to all major credit cards)
✔️ Ability to sell memberships and online courses
❌ Free plan doesn’t include support for digital products
❌ Limited third-party integrations

👉 Click here to sign-up for Sellfy today!

SendOwl

Another easy-to-use service on the list, SendOwl targets bloggers and social media users who want to monetize on their followings. That being said, the service is available to just about anyone, and this is just where SendOwl’s marketing dollars go to.

Its service comes with the familiar “shopping cart” experience, allowing you to provide your customers with the popular “add to cart” button clicking on which they will be able to continue shopping as they do on Amazon or any other online store.

SendOwl lets you sell both physical and digital products, with the letter including one-time downloads and subscriptions. You can even use the drip content feature to reveal parts of your content over time. For example, newly registered users will get access to only three files and get one additional file every week. This way, they get to experience the value of the subscription and stay subscribed over time.

Also included are flexible payment options, support for multiple languages and currencies, license keys, promo codes (coupons), one-click upsells, and email and affiliate marketing features.

To top it off, SendOwl comes with built-in analytics to help you keep track of your online store’s performance.

🏷️ Pricing: There are two options – the Free plan that will take a 5% cut of your sales and the Growth plan without that cut and with additional bells and whistles, such as the customized templates.

⚖️ Pros & Cons:
✔️ Advanced features, such as drip content, email marketing & more
✔️ Flexible payment options, including PayPal support
✔️ Ability to sell memberships, online courses and video
❌ Bandwidth pricing is confusing
❌ Limited third-party integrations

👉 Click here to sign-up for Sellfy today!

Comparing the 3 service

It’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison, but you should get the idea of which service will work best for the digital product you want to sell:

The final note

All three services will help you set up your digital products business in no time, helping you focus on content development and marketing — instead of doing the hard work of setting up the tech infrastructure for your business.

In that sense, we are sure that between these three services, you will find the one that fits your needs. In most cases, you can start with the most affordable plan and build from there — adding support for additional features and content as you grow.

So get moving and set up your digital products venture today!