A digital product is designed with coded language and manifests itself in the form of software. Or you can say it is any mobile app or any software designed to solve any designated problem for a particular group of people or try to achieve something. Let’s learn how to sell digital products with WooCommerce.
The world is constantly changing, and this new commodity is happening in the market. Digital products are one of those commodities. This product includes the following.
- Online courses and webinars,
- Kindle books,
- Audiobooks,
- Software programs,
- Web elements like Shopify or WordPress themes,
- Printables,
- Membership sites, and
- Workbooks, etc.
All this brings huge potential to sell these products on your WooCommerce platform. This article guides you on how to sell digital products with WooCommerce.
Before selling these products, we must enlighten you about the benefits of selling these nonphysical products on your WooCommerce platform.
Benefits of Selling Digital Products
If you want to sell your skill or creativity globally, digital products can make your dream come true. With every passing day, entrepreneurs develop digital products, with the benefit of a few clicks shipment worldwide.
Since digital products are not physical entities, they hold various advantages over physical products. Following are a few of them.
No Additional Costs
Selling digital products stay light on your funds; there are many things you don’t need to do like
- No inventory required
- No raw material
- No packing protocols
- No shipping
And you also appreciate saving all the expenses you save, which you can avoid by not being a brick-and-mortar entity.
- No rent
- No air-conditioning
- No security
- No need to have a POS
- With just a few co-workers dealing with businesses worldwide, developing new products and after-sales services can be added as the business grows.
- Ecommerce platform cost far less than brick-and-mortar store and gives a global reach of customers.
Above, we mentioned a few advantages of selling digital products. Following are a few benefits that digital products offer themselves
Attributes and Benefits of Digital Products
Unlike physical products, digital products hold many advantages for their users.
- Nothing last forever, but digital products do.
- No overhead costs like shipping charges.
- Instant delivery and use.
- They are futuristic and help you keep pace with the time.
- It gives you the freedom to use it; whenever, wherever.
In this article, we guide you on how to sell digital products with WooCommerce. If you are already selling physical products, selling digital products becomes much easier since there is little difference.
Selling digital products is even easier because you don’t need to keep any inventory or hassle with shipping problems.
Why WooCommerce
There are many eCommerce platforms in the market, so why choose WooCommerce for selling digital products? Following are a few reasons why
- WooCommerce is the most popular yet most widely used eCommerce platform. WooCommerce powered 21% of eCommerce stores worldwide. This massive user base validates its selection to sell digital products.
- WooCommerce has many top-of-the-line native plugins to sell digital products. All you are required to do is download and install the plugin. With a few clicks, you can start selling your digital products. With WooCommerce, you can control the download limit of your digital products.
- With WooCommerce, creating downloadable digital products is a cakewalk, enabling you to start selling with a few clicks.
- WooCommerce is extremely flexible and customizable and gives you complete control. You can adopt any feature to optimize your digital store.
- WooCommerce supports multiple payment methods to facilitate customers worldwide.
- It also offers multilingual support, enhancing the user experience for more conversions.
Now that we know about digital products and WooCommerce, it is time to learn how to sell these products with WooCommerce.
How to Sell Digital Products With WooCommerce
First thing first, install the WooCommerce plugin and activate it. After activation, you can create pages and constitute a setting for digital products. You can do this by logging into the WordPress admin panel. Here you can proceed by steering to WooCommerce >>settings on the setting and find the option to configure the WooCommerce setting for digital products. You can update the following settings.
- Click the general setting tab and set downloadable items to 1
- Click the shipping tab to disable the shipping
- Click the inventory tab to disable the inventory
- Click the email setting tab to set notification emails to your liking, or use the email template.
- Click the payment gateways tab to choose the payment option which you desire. Disabling direct bank transfers or cheque payments and opting for PayPal is recommended.
Create Categories
WordPress admin panel helps you to create product categories before you add products to them. For this, you need to go to products >> add a product which will lead you to the product creation form where you can add a product title, a description that can be long or short, set a category, add an image, and the price of the product.
To make your product downloadable, scroll down to the product data section, choose a simple product option, and check virtual and downloadable options. You can assign prices in the regular price field.
You can now create a product download path by clicking downloadable files, then clicking on the upload file option and copying the URL link. Click “save” to confirm. Now, you can paste the URL of the digital product and upload it on the file path field.
You can set the time for the download to expire to avoid multiple downloads of your product.
Configure File Download Method
To properly transfer your digital product to the customer, you must go to the downloadable product tab to select a download method. We recommend selecting force download or X-Accel-Redirect/X-Sendfile; these options secure your product from unauthorized file download. Force download enables file download without loading the file URL in the browser.
You can apply file access restriction by checking grant access to downloadable products after payment.
Setting Up The Checkout Page
You want to make a few changes: remove the sidebar on the cart checkout option from your WooCommerce pages. This can be done by going to the WordPress admin panel, navigating to pages >> all pages, clicking edit on-page attributes, and choosing full width and update from the template drop-down. This eliminates the sidebar from the page.
Following the above guidelines, you can start selling your digital products immediately. Still, suppose you want to take your digital store to the next level or add features to attract customers and increase conversions. In that case, plugins are available to aid your WooCommerce digital platform.
But many plugins are available in the market, and selecting the one to suit your need can be challenging. To ease you off that challenge, we share knowledge of a few top-of-the-line WooCommerce digital plugins you can integrate with your platform to get more sales.
How to Sell Digital Products With WooCommerce Using Plugins
1. Easy Digital Download
It is one of the most popular platforms for selling digital products with WooCommerce. Recognized for its lightweight and brisk performance, you can sell your product from the blog. The dashboard is simple to use and loaded with all the necessary features to start selling your digital product right after integration.
It has a shopping cart that enables your customers to buy multiple products. Also, offer coupons with codes to offer discounts for products downloaded.
Features
- Provide sales reports and analytics for improvement.
- Enables you to sell products right from your website.
- Supports multiple payment methods and also provides extensions for more options to ensure more conversions.
- Offers multiple downloads.
- Offers a cart for multiple purchases.
- You can monitor download activity.
- EDD is free to use with basic functions. The Premium version costs you $99.50.
2. Paid Download Pro
It is an all-in-one digital product-selling platform where you can sell digital products quickly and efficiently. It offers to create an encrypted link for your digital product assuring safeguards against nonvalidated downloads. Paid Download Pro also offers multiple payment methods to ensure business opportunities worldwide.
Features
- It is easy to install
- Accepts payment through almost all payment gateways.
- Generates encrypted download link with expiration limit.
- You can download large files through its X- sendfile feature.
- Offers multilingual support.
- WordPress-friendly.
- A regular license is $22, and extended use for 12 months costs $6.38.
3. Download Monitor
It is a new business owner’s dream come true; even a tech novice can handle selling digital products and tracking downloads. It is effortless to install yet easy to operate. The plugin is light, simple for regular use, and flexible enough to add extensions for more complex operations.
Features
- Allows you to use the WordPress interface to remove, edit, and add downloads.
- Gutenberg block support.
- Supports various file formats.
- Mirror support for download is available. You can also use Dropbox, Google Drive, and Drive.
- Allows you to use meta tags and category tags for downloads.
- You can track buyers and downloads.
- Protect files from unauthorized downloads.
- Members-only download feature available.
- Costs you $39 per year.
4. WordPress iSell
This is another great plugin to sell digital products with WooCommerce. A perfect match if you are looking for a more secure platform. With this plugin, you safely sell digital products; the download links are encrypted for security. This plugin allows you to sell videos, ebooks, PDFs, etc.
Features
- Integrates with PayPal.
- You can sell a variety of digital products.
- You can automate link sending after payment is made.
- Offers a simple and intuitive interface.
- Encrypted download links.
- You can add a CTA.
- You can create custom orders.
- It is developer-friendly and can be coded for complex use.
- It is free to use.
5. Paid Memberships Pro
This is out of a box solution for subscription products, online courses, premium content, etc. It allows you to restrict users other than members from accessing some of your content or any content you don’t want to. Moreover, it is straightforward to install and set up and very user-friendly.
It offers a restricted content feature. Integrations of dozens of add-ons are also available, making it flexible.
Features
- You can sell members-only content by restricting nonmembers.
- You can create a hierarchy of membership following perks and benefits.
- You take advantage of recurring payments, subscriptions, and one-time payments.
- Offers multiple payment gateways.
- Offers integration with hundreds of plugins and add-ons.
- Automate with zapier.
- You can import members’ data.
- Offers sales analytics.
- The basic version is free. The premium version can cost up to $247 per year for a single website.
Conclusion
In this article, we went through the basic principle of how to sell your digital products with WooCommerce and introduced you to some top-of-the-line plugins. Now, it is up to you to use the power of WooCommerce alone or integrate plugins to run your digital store.
We sincerely wish you every success in your digital products business and beyond. GOOD LUCK!
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