What is a Digital Product?
What is a Digital Product?
A digital product is a product that’s not tangible and is delivered and experienced through software and tech.
The Benefits of a Digital Product
- - Create once, sell infinitely
- - No scaling headaches
- - Typically cheaper to make than physical products
- - No physical inventory taking up space
In 2020 over 2 billion people worldwide purchased products and services online with sales totaling over 4 trillion dollars. That number is expected to grow to six trillion by 2024. With more and more people realizing they can earn a living online without having to create, and sell physical products, it’s no surprise the digital products space is growing. If you’re new to the world of digital products, you’re probably more familiar with them than you might think. Picture a regular day. You might wake up in the morning, and listen to your favorite podcast, or watch an inspirational or educational video. You might read an eBook on your phone over coffee. Later you might ask Google or Siri what the population of New Zealand is. You come in contact with digital products pretty frequently. It’s understandable if you find it tricky to nail down exactly what a digital product is. There can be some gray areas. You might think to yourself, “What about Netflix? Is that a digital product?” Think of it like this. Netflix is a digital service that allows you to access digital products—TV shows and films. No longer do you need to stick a small rectangular box filled with magnetic tape into a larger rectangular box to watch a movie on an even larger rectangular box.
Types of Digital Products
- - Art
- - Data
- - Music
- - Checklists
- - Newsletters
- - Online courses
- - Membership sites
- - Creative templates
- - Coaching and consulting
That’s just the beginning! Digital products have woven themselves into many parts of our daily lives. Good digital products offer comforting realities.
Reality #1 - You Only Need One Digital Product
It can be really exciting to think about all of the digital products you can offer. However, that list can quickly add up. Next thing you know, you have a super long list of products. It sounds great. However, having too many options can make deciding where to start a difficult decision. One great digital product beats a ton of average products every time. Caitlin Bacher earned over $1,000,000 with one course on SamCart in one year. She's one of SamCart's greatest Success Stories. You can check out her story in the video below, and read more about it here.
Think of some of the most popular books of all time. The first Lord of the Rings novel needed to be written only once. It’s sold over 120 million copies. The series has sold over 500 million copies to date. That first novel sparked a multibillion-dollar film franchise and tons of other related products...not bad for one book. Imagine selling millions of physical copies of a book. You’d need a huge factory to handle printing at that scale. This brings us to our next reality.
Reality #2 - Digital Products Scale Easily
One of the best and worst things that can happen to a business is the need to scale. It’s great, because it means your business is growing. However, it can be a nightmare, because you’ll need more help and money. As an example, let’s take a small pizza shop that has one small wood-burning oven. The pizza’s great. The line to get in is around the block, but everyone who works there is overworked, stressed. The owner can’t keep up with the demand. There’s good and bad here. Demand for the pizza is high...good. However, the owner might need to hire some more people, and get a larger oven (if there’s space for one). The shop might need to relocate a bigger space. That’s expensive...not good. The owner might need to take out a loan, or bring on an investor. That investor can take a large percentage of ownership of the business. Costs for the new space, new team members and that fancy $30,000 oven add up quickly. Think of the TV show Shark Tank. Entrepreneurs go on there to negotiate deals that can often cause them to give up a large portion of their business.
The cost of getting one digital product to one customer is the same as getting it to thousands of them. Imagine that eBook you wrote from your living room in Maryland and someone in Texas being able to download it instantly. Now imagine people all over the world downloading that same book over and over again. You and your customer never have to worry about shipping!
Reality #3 - Digital Products Save You Money
It’s typically cheaper to run a business that sells digital products. Many digital products can be created for free with the only cost being your time. You can create an eBook or an online course. You can create PDF files, and design the artwork for it on your phone for free.
If you’re thinking that you have expertise in something and can write an eBook, or create an online course, but feel like you could use some help with the editing, design, marketing or PDF creation for your eBook or other products, professional help is available. You could even get someone to help write your book with our official partnership with Fiverr. Maybe you know how to create everything you need, but you just don’t have the time. Perhaps you’ve created everything you need, but want a professional to take it to the next level. SamCart’s official Fiverr Marketplace is full of professional freelancers ready to help you get the most out of your product, service or course.
Reality #4 - Digital Products Save You Space
Since a digital product isn’t physical, there’s no need to hold onto inventory. Having a closet full of nice clothes that you bought for yourself to wear is pretty cool. Having a closet (or storage unit) full of nice clothes you’ve been trying to sell for months...a little less cool. If physical products are your thing, that’s great! People sell physical products with SamCart all the time and have been really successful. We’re just pointing out the benefits digital products have over physical ones, because we know it’s the next evolution of eCommerce.
BONUS - Reality #5 - Digital Products Open the Door to Other Products
Meet Jonathan. He likes to paint and sells his physical paintings and digital art prints on the side, but he wants to get more from each piece he creates.
A piece of digital art can not only be applied to physical products like clothing, coffee mugs, notebooks, wall art, stickers, etc., but it can lead to other things
- - An eBook about art
- - Virtual art lessons
- - Coaching calls
- - Printable coloring books
- - Creative backdrops and templates
- - Courses teaching how to create digital art
- - A course teaching how to run a digital art business
Digital products can provide an endless stream of income. Look at SamCart. Our easy-to-use, beautiful, one-page sales templates are digital products that have changed the lives of tens of thousands of entrepreneurs across the globe. We started with just one tried-and-true template, and now we’re in hyper-growth mode (i.e. we’re hiring) at our Baltimore, MD and Austin, TX offices.
Thankfully, we don’t sell pizza.
Digital Products: Quick Recap
A digital product is a product that’s not tangible and is delivered and experienced through software and tech. Digital products have some great things going for them.
- - One great product is all you need.
- - They scale easily (no shipping).
- - They’re usually cheaper to make than physical products.
- - They save space, because there’s no need for inventory.
- - They can lead to other products.
Bring Your Digital Product to Life
SamCart users earn three to five times more than sellers on other platforms. In fact, more than 23,000 businesses have used SamCart to sell over $2 billion of their own products, goods and services. Sign up for a free demo today.
Real team members are at your service seven days a week. Let us know how we can help you. Our Knowledge Base is also a great place to get your questions answered. Stop by our Facebook page. It’s a great place to connect with other course creators from all walks of life and levels of experience. Get the tools you need to launch your business, and start converting ASAP!
