‘How to sell digital products online?’ – if you have this question, let us give you an example.
Sharan Hegde, a finance influencer with 300K+ followers on LinkedIn and over 2M followers on Instagram, runs One Percent Club. It is a community that aims to empower more people with personal finance literacy.
But why are we telling you all this?
Sharan is one of the most popular names in the Indian creator economy. His digital products, such as courses and master classes, are hugely popular among India’s GenZ audiences, and no wonder he is making a lot of money out of them.
If you want to achieve similar or even close results, we have you covered. In this article, we will explain some of the best strategies for selling your digital products online, along with examples from top Indian influencers.
Let’s get started.
Disclaimer: All the creators’ names we have used in this blog post are only to show real-life examples.
Content Index
- What is a Digital Product?
- How to Sell Digital Products in India? 5 Steps and Examples
- Conclusion
- FAQs
What is a Digital Product?
A digital product is an intangible asset sold and distributed online. You don’t need to store it, ship it, or worry about end-users returning it. Digital products are either downloadable, like PDFs, videos, and templates, or come with lifetime access, like online courses and ebooks.
For example, Sharan Hegde’s course, Personal Finance Maestry, is sold through his community, One Percent Club. The pre-recorded course is a digital product with six modules, 64 lessons, and 10 hours of content.
Physical vs. digital products: what are the differences?
If you are confused between physical and digital products, here are a few quick differences between them:
How to Sell Digital Products in India? 5 Steps and Examples
‘How to sell digital products online in India?’ If you are looking for answers, here are five steps to make this happen:
Are you ready to sell a digital product? Find the answer to this question
All successful digital creators, whether Sharan Hegde or Ankur Warikoo, have one thing in common: a powerful social media presence.
Believe it or not, simply having an expert in a particular field is not enough to convince people to buy your digital product. You have to win their trust. Before you start working on your digital product, ask this question yourself:
Do you have a powerful social media presence?
This could be in any one or multiple platforms. It could be any known social media platform like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. But ensure that your impact on a large group of people is positive and that they believe in your ability to add value. If they believe you, they will purchase your digital product too.
Find your niche/expertise
With so many digital products and resources already available, you must find the spot between your expertise and your target audiences’ needs. For example, Sharan Hegde’s niche is personal finance. He is a proven expert in this field and has a strong community that believes in his knowledge of personal finance, and hence, they buy from him.
To find your niche, you need to:
- Analyse your target market deeply, and interview your target users to understand their deepest queries that are unanswered
- Match these queries with your expertise to analyse what digital product will be most suitable
Research, research and more research
Your research doesn’t stop after identifying the niche—it only begins. Once you find your niche, the next step is to find a digital product idea that will be sold.
When planning your digital product, you need to make two decisions simultaneously:
What will be its type?
This means it will be an educational resource like an ebook, a live course, a pre-recorded course or a cheat sheet/template. To plan this, do the following:
- Observe your audiences closely. Run polls on social media to understand what would they want to invest in
- Observe top creators and influencers in your industry to assess what kind of digital products they sold in the past and if they were successful
- What kind of product are you comfortable with? If you enjoy recording videos explaining complex concepts and frameworks, go for a video course. Similarly, if writing is your strength, go for an ebook
According to a latest report, courses are the most sold digital products in the top 21 niches:
What will be the topic?
You have a niche, you have decided on your digital product type, and now it’s time to freeze the topic. For example, if your niche is self-help and you decide to write an ebook, that’s only half of your roadmap.
Self-help or any niche already has several tutorials, some of which are even free. Why would someone want to purchase your product unless it really appeals to them? The topic of your digital product has to be very specific.
To identify it, do the following:
- Conduct 1:1 interviews with your ideal audiences and ask questions about their struggles. Allow them to be as specific as possible
- Run surveys through newsletters and social media platforms to get an idea of broader-level queries of users
- Read existing digital products available in this niche to identify the gaps that could prove to bring new ideas to you
Sell through third-party platforms, social media or personal website
Once your digital product is ready to reach the audience, it is time to sell it. There are various sites to sell your digital products in India. Here are the simplest and most common channels:
Third-party platforms
You can sell digital products on Topmate, Gumroad, and Payhip platforms. All these platforms allow you to create multiple products and set up pricing for each. These sites allow you to add product descriptions, videos, testimonials, and timed discounts to boost conversions.
Social media
You can also sell your digital products through social media. Promote your digital products through LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and similar platforms, and add payment links to enable customers to pay directly for your products.
Personal website
Finally, you can sell your digital products from your website. All you need to do is create a landing page, describe your product (for example, if it is a course, explain the modules) and integrate it with a payment gateway so customers can purchase the product directly.
Strategically price your products
Before launching your product, you need to price it properly. Your pricing strategy should combine the perceived value and your financial goals.
For example, if you aim to earn at least ₹10,000 from a digital product and feel it will generate medium value for your audiences, you can sell it for ₹500 and promote it aggressively so that at least 20 people buy it.
But this is the simplest way to price your product. In reality, there are lots of other factors involved like:
- What currency are you selling in?
- What’s the financial capability and mindset of your target audiences?
- What’s the cost and effort involved in creating the digital product?
All of these also add up to your digital product.
Here are a few common ways to price your digital products:
Pay-as-you-wish pricing: This pricing strategy enables a digital seller to increase their sales by not having a fixed price for their resources. They either fix a minimum nominal price that the customers have to pay or leave it entirely to the customers. Customers can purchase the product for ₹0 or pay any amount based on their perceived value.
Cost leadership: Another way to price your product is to make it crazy cheap. That means, even if it is worth at least ₹500, based on the time and effort you put into it, you fix the price at ₹100 or less. In this case, you want to position the digital product as exceptionally valuable at the cheapest possible price. That way, your potential customers won’t risk missing this pricing.
💡Pro Tip: To boost maximum sales, you can nudge FOMO and offer this price for a limited period. Afterwards, you can increase the price.
Product bundles: Bundling your digital products can also prove profitable. Suppose you are selling an ebook. You can offer two different types of pricing: 500 for just the ebook ₹ and 1000 for the ebook bundled with a 1:1 mentoring session ₹. If you impact your audiences, they will opt for the bundle.
Also, offer discounts in all pricing strategies to boost order volume.
Make the payment process seamless
Finally, it all comes down to the seamless payment process for the end users. Here are some of the tried and tested ways to accept payments from your digital products:
Payment gateway integration: If you are selling digital products on your personal website, choose a payment gateway that perfectly integrates with your eCommerce platform. For instance, Nimbbl, a payment gateway for eCommerce stores, integrates with Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, and WordPress.
Integrating it into your website enables fast checkout and makes the payment process seamless OTP-free. Customers can opt for any payment method, whether UPI, cards, buy now, pay later, or net banking, and the checkout is complete within seconds.
Payment link generator: Nimbbl also allows you to generate payment links for each transaction. You just need to fill out the following fields in the tool, and it will automatically share an email with your customers requesting the payment.
Nimbbl also allows you to generate payment links in bulk. In that case, you need to share the following details with their team:
| Inputs needed from the blogger/online merchant: payer_first_name payer_last_name payer_email_address payer_mobile_number total_amount invoice_id notification_channel_email notification_channel_sms sms_template_name email_template_name expires_at currency |
Conclusion
We hope you found the answer: “How to sell digital products in India”?
Creating, promoting and selling a digital product is not as easy as it seems. If you plan it well, you can make a decent profit and consider it a new income stream. Similarly, randomly creating a product and preparing to sell it without a strategy may become a huge disaster.
Above all, create an optimised and streamlined payment accepting system so you don’t have to receive too many ‘payment failed’ messages. The higher your payment success rate, the more your revenue will be.
Want to know more about Nimbbl’s payment system?
FAQs
What is the best platform to sell digital products in India?
There are several options: third-party platforms like Topmate, Gumroad, and Payhip; social media platforms; or your website integrated with a payment gateway.
How do I start selling digital products online?
There are five steps: 1) Ensure you have a strong social media presence, 2) Find your niche/expertise, 3) Research product ideas, 4) Choose a selling platform, 5) Price your product strategically.
Is it profitable to sell digital products?
Profitability depends on your audience, product quality, and marketing strategy. With the right strategies, you can make it a profitable business.
How to sell PDFs online in India?
PDFs can be sold as digital products through the same channels mentioned: third-party platforms, social media, or your website. Ensure you have an integrated, seamless payment process.
What product is sold most online?
Courses are the most sold digital products across the top 21 niches. You can also sell templates, ebooks, etc.
