How To Create Digital Downloads For Etsy

Leading with digital appurtenances is the way to become in e-commerce. You don't need to worry about aircraft, manufacturing, or inventory. You lot can set up the profit margins high considering you don't take to summate in the fulfillment costs. And the all-time function? You lot tin customize and change your products as much as yous like.

The trickiest part of creating digital products is finding a niche marketplace for them. If you lot'll try to sell your products to everyone, yous'll sell them to no one.

People will buy a product if it has a quality they care about — exist it a parrot pattern design or a printable affiche with a giant whale wearing a swimsuit.

And then how tin can you create and sell digital products that people volition rave near? Earlier we swoop into the fun process, let'south accost what digital downloads are and what types of digital products you lot can create.

What are digital downloads?

Digital downloads, also known as digital products, are intangible goods that exist in a digital form. Some examples of digital downloads are music files, printables, and digital designs.

Digital art sold by Zee J. Yan — *Digital art sold by* *Zee J. Yan*

All digital downloads are easy to distribute, replicate, and sell without the need of physical materials. Y'all just need a figurer to create them on.

Digital downloads can exist sold for a sure price, exchanged for barter, given away for a donation, or free of accuse. The product price depends on its added value and the time and effort yous put into creating it.

Types of digital downloads

Would y'all believe u.s.a. if nosotros told you at that place are hundreds of digital products you can sell online? Yup. And we bet there are even more. The heaven's the limit when information technology comes to creativity. Here are the almost common types of digital downloads that you can create and sell yourself:

Ebooks (recipes, guides, how-to'southward)
Printables (digital art, patterns, invitations)
Video (lessons, stock footage, cinemagraphs)
Audio (music, podcasts, audiobooks)
Photography (stock photos, mockup images)
Software misc. (game mods, presets, apps)

If you have something to share (knowledge, passion, or talent), you tin plow it into a digital product to sell. How to do that? Read on equally we share tips to create products that'll sell themselves.

How to create digital downloads?

There's a lot that goes into creating digital products — from finding the tools to make your files, to making sure your goods are actually downloadable. But these are all details we're sure yous'll figure out while in the process of making.

Focus on the large film: your digital product + its potential customers. To arts and crafts a digital download that people would really buy, follow the iii steps below.

one. Cheque the demand

Before you get all excited about your awesome digital product thought, check the demand for information technology. Y'all want to be sure people need your production and are searching for it on the web. Otherwise, you can terminate up spending days creating your digital skillful and and then nobody cares for it.

Use Google Trends (GT) to see the involvement in your given product keyword or find related search queries.

Let'due south say yous're thinking about selling printables but you don't accept a articulate idea on the theme.

Blazon in printables, set the search region to your marketplace (nosotros suggest Worldwide for more search results), and ascertain the search time. Since you want your production to be relevant and upward to date with the need, we suggest setting the period to Past 90 days. Striking Enter and gyre down to see the Related queries.

The related query results yous see above are taken from May 20th until Baronial 20th. During this time period, you come across that school, fourth of July and Father's Day printables were trending. Folio ii of the results display myfroggystuff printables, summertime printables, toy story printables, emoji, and superhero printables.

You can accept digital product ideas from the related query results or — if you already have multiple ideas in mind, use GT to distinct the production with near search interest.

Let's say yous've seen people selling school, wedding, and constitute printables — and are now debating which route you'd want to take.

Place the iii keywords in GT and come across which one has the highest search book (most likely the highest demand, too).

As you can see, the highest search book is for schoolhouse printables, meaning, people are actually interested in buying those. You'll too notice there are two peaks where schoolhouse printables take the highest search book and that's in August. So if you launch these printables in May, don't expect killer sales merely because information technology's non the correct season for them.

Wedding and plant printables are also searched for merely they're not as popular. At this point, selling schoolhouse printables seems the style to become, but you'll yet need to cheque your competition and that's pace number two.

ii. See what'southward already out at that place

Selling ice cream in a marketplace where everyone sells burgers is easy. Your production is unique and stands out from the rest.

Now utilise this logic to your digital product idea. For the sake of example, let's stick with the idea of selling school printables again.

In theory, selling school printables is a good idea because nosotros saw a demand for them, right? Well, wrong. There are thousands of other clever people like y'all who did the same research and are now selling schoolhouse printables. And that ways: C O M P E T I T I O Northward.

To check the market saturation for schoolhouse printables, yous tin can do a Google search or check what people are selling on Twitter and Instagram, or marketplaces like Etsy (a popular marketplace for printables).

Y'all tin now come across that there are well-nigh 70k schoolhouse printables to choose from. Each an every one of these products would be your competition. Yikes.

If you find your digital product idea surrounded past competition, you have two options for your products:

Detect a new, less saturated marketplace — switch to selling mode printables, for example;
Define the marketplace to minimize contest — sell unicorn school printables rather than only school printables.

Allow's stick with the school printables market and check the competition for selling unicorn-themed printables.

Equally you lot can see, we just narrowed downwardly the school printables market place from 70k to 1,5k. You'll be far more than successful if you sell your products for a special niche, like in this example — for kids who honey unicorns.

Pro tip! Once you find your niche market and see the products you lot'll be competing with, check their reviews! Those are a peachy source to acquire about your target audition—what they liked about your competitor's product, what they disliked, and then use this information when working on your ain products.

Your main takeaway here is to check your competition on whichever platform you want to sell on. Brand sure you enter a market with room for your products and so your customers have an easier fourth dimension finding you.

3. Create your product

The most fun function of creating digital products is the function where you unleash your inventiveness and actually create the products.

Equally we mentioned earlier, this part of the creation procedure is unique to every product type. Nosotros trust you already take the correct tools to make your digital download. If you don't, no worries — here are some gratuitous tools to start working with:

Krita — an open source painting program;
BeFunky — an online photo editor and collage maker;
Fontstruct — an online font creator tool;
Audacity — an open-source digital sound editor, recorder, and mixer.

*Audio sounds sold past* *Gamemaster Audio*

Practise you lot know any other free tools to create digital products? Or maybe some you'd love to share with fellow creators? Let everyone know in the comment section!

At present that yous know how to create digital downloads, let's effigy out how to sell them.

Where to sell digital downloads?

When it comes to selling digital appurtenances, in that location are a lot of platforms where you can do that. The choices are overwhelming but by and large, it's either an online marketplace or your own personal online store. Hither are the pros and cons of selling on an online market:

Cons

Tough competition. The chances of customers buying your products are smaller because there are thousands of other products to cull from.
Product listing fees. You'll be charged a fixed price when yous add a product.
Transaction fees. Some marketplaces or their supported payment methods will charge a transaction fee.
Lack of customization. Edifice a reputable brand on a market is difficult. Y'all tin can't stand out from other sellers because in that location aren't many options to customize your merchant's profile.
Difficult to build an email listing. You can't streamline the procedure of gathering your customer emails. Your just option would exist to manually ask each and every ane of your customers if they'd similar to be added to your electronic mail listing and then manually add their emails.

Pros

Piece of cake and costless to sign up. Usually, you lot fill out a sign-up grade and that'south it. Add your products, payment details, and y'all're good to get!
Existing traffic. People trust marketplaces and utilize them daily to find what they're looking for. In theory, this means that more people are likely to go over your products.

So what about list your goods on your personal shop? Here are the pros and cons of selling on your online shop:

Cons

Subscription fee to start with a platform. Most east-commerce platforms work with subscription plans, around $xx a calendar month if yous desire to sell on them.
More than work to drive traffic. You'll have to invest time to preach well-nigh your store so people can detect it and buy from y'all.

Pros

You can build your brand identity. Yous can customize your store as yous want it.
Build email lists. Assemble your customers' email addresses and connect with them via marketing campaigns.
Go along all your revenue. You don't share a percentage of your sales or pay for listing your products.
No direct competition. When your customers enter your store—all optics are on YOUR products. You don't have to compete with anyone on your ain website.
Chance to connect with your buyers. You tin can add various tools for your online store like a shopping cart button or a conversation for customers to talk about their experience with your goods, etc.

Here'south a more in-depth comparison between selling digital products on your ain online store versus a marketplace similar Etsy. Leaving the judgment remember to you! If you plan to open a shop and start selling digital downloads, we're here to help you lot out.

When you're done with creating your very own digital products, click here to create your Sellfy store. We'll requite you a free xiv-day trial so you tin fully explore what Sellfy has to offering.