5 Ways To Sell Your Digital Products Online, Even For Free!

If you’re ready to take the next step and learn how to sell your digital products online, we’re so happy to be with you on this amazing journey! And trust us, we were once where you are now. Figuring out how to start and implement the process is the reason that many people often find themselves standing frozen in time. 

We refuse to let that happen to you. And we want to help you live like we do where you can earn money from your products and retire early just like John was able to do. We’re blessed that we get to treat every day like a Saturday because of how we’ve set up and scaled our online business.

And don’t get us wrong…we LOVE to work but we also love that we can take a day off and literally do anything that we want as well. And we’re happy to help you achieve your life of freedom too. 

In this post, we’ll cover the different tools to use online to be able to sell your digital products. We’ll go through our top 7 choices, list out what we’ve used ourselves, how to get started, what to do, and go over the pros and cons of each as well. 

Just be aware that there are many different types of software you can use to sell your products.

Unlike the ring, there is no one tool to rule them all.

And make certain to read all the way to the end where we’ll give you our personal recommendations and opinions on where we feel strongly about where you should initially get started. 

5 Ways To Sell Your Digital Products Online

Before diving into the digital products, make certain that you do take the time to check out our latest offering, the Little Product Launch Kit. We literally tell you how to create products and what to do to get them ready to sell fast. 

Okay, shameless plug over…;-) Onto our recommendations for the best ways to sell your digital products online. 

ThriveCart

We actually use this to sell everything that we have because it’s powerful, simple is a one time cost, has funnel and learning management capabilities.

We moved from doing our transactions from Teachable to ThriveCart as it provides a much better user experience by being able to offer targeted products with more flexibility.

It also has really great automation and the ability to tag buyers and customers so that they can then dive in and make the best choices for their needs. 

Since we have over 30 products that we sell, ThriveCart helped us to do a ton of upsells and down sells, which is awesome. When we started using ThriveCart, we immediately saw a $500 lift per day just from adding their funnels.

Pros of using ThriveCart:

• Can have unlimited products
• Excellent for creating upsells or down sells
• Great for offering special deals and bonuses
• Funnel building, shopping cart and learning management system all in one!
• One time fee!

The other really cool part about ThriveCart is that they have a stellar affiliate program. And if you don’t currently get a ton of traffic to your site, this is a great way to incentivize people to promote your products to them to help drive traffic to your site. 

The negatives of using ThriveCart are that it does have a big upfront investment. 

However, since their cost is a $495 one time fee, you literally just have to pay for it once and then you get to use it for life. Better than paying thousands per year for other software with monthly fees. It does a great job of getting the job done and is super duper simple. 

If you want all of the free bonuses on ThriveCart and to learn how to use it – just go through our affiliate link and make your purchase.

ConvertKit

Convertkit is normally just an email marketing platform but that has all changed. They added an e-commerce side to it so that you can now sell your digital products like printables, ebooks, coaching classes, etc. directly on their platform. 

You’ll have the ability to do your email marketing and selling of products together. 

And even if you’re on the free version of Convertkit, you can still collect payments for sales as well! That’s sop awesome! 

The negatives that come along with this is that there isn’t a funnel capability, but besides that, it’s a fairly simple process that can easily convert to sales. 

If you want to learn how to create printables and sell them through Convertkit for free, here is the course for you!

SendOwl

We used SendOwl about 5-6 years ago and this is where I sold my first digital product EVER. It was an ebook and I was so proud of it. 

SendOwl makes it super simple to upload digital products and typically takes about 3 minutes or less to do. Once the product is uploaded, you’ll get a specific link that you can then add to your blog post, your email sequence, or post on social media that will drive people to click it and in the end, hopefully, purchase your digital file. 

The cost associated with SendOwl is about $15 per month, but this will allow you to customize your products and have 30 of them available for purchase at any given time. 

The cons of SendOwl need to be considered as well. Some of the biggest negatives are:

• Transaction fees
• No option to build a robust funnel to be able to upsell or down-sell your customers
• No course creation option
• Not the best checkout experience for your customers

Even though this is on our list, it’s NOT really one that is at the top of our recommendations. It works but it just flows kind of funky. When the customers click on your link, it takes them to a blank page and that might have them put up a red flag about feeling safe inputting their credit card information. This, in turn, means that you’ll lose sales. 

We’ve also found that compared to other online digital platforms, it’s not very high converting, either. 

WooCommerce

If you’re a fan of plug-ins, you might find that you really enjoy WooCommerce. It’s created by the makers of WordPress and it runs directly inside WordPress as well.

All you literally have to do is click a few buttons and you’ll have a store on your site, AND it’s free to set up as well. 

BUT…the devil is in the details. 

The plugin is pretty powerful as it can help you sell products, sell bookings, and literally do almost anything that you need. BUT keep in mind that if your site goes down or crashes, this means that this is also going to go down as well. 

This means that you’ll have to have the knowledge on how to get it back up and running and that takes time and energy. This also means that you’ll want to back up your site a lot and as we all know, extra plug-ins can really slow down your site speed as well. 

And now that I’ve been a total Debbie Downer, there are positives to using this plugin also.

• No fee for using but as you grow, you’ll have to invest
• Able to do a multitude of options

While this isn’t our favorite, it does get the job done. We also don’t feel that the product pages are easily optimized. They’re limited and the flow of them does tend to feel a bit boxy as well. 

However, if you have this already and it’s working for you, stick with it.

Etsy

We all know and love Etsy, right? It’s extremely popular and super easy to start. You can literally go right now, create a free account and in 30 minutes upload a PDF or digital file to start to sell. (this doesn’t mean you’ll make a sale but you’re getting your foot in the door to start!)

Etsy is awesome if you don’t have a blog yet or are just wanting to list a few printables or an ebook. It’s a super-duper simple platform that is used to drive sales.

And if you take your time and get to know how to do keyword analysis and take great pictures, your products have a great chance of doing well. 

There is a cost associated with Etsy, however, every time you load a product. They’ll charge .20 per item listed and do charge a 5% transaction fee as well. 

And if you have a blog, you can link directly to your Etsy store easily, too. 

The biggest issue that we have with Etsy is that there is a ton of competition. People might click on your product link to go check out your Etsy store but then see all the other options to buy as well. So selling directly from your own platform or through your own funnels, gives you the highest conversion rate and profitability.

Check out the Printables by Number course on the ins and outs of how to create and sell printables. 

Which digital online platform is right for you?

While this ultimately has to be your choice, we do have our recommendations as well. 

If you’re just getting started and you’ve never sold before:

Use Convertkit and Etsy at the same time

You can signup for Convertkit for free and start selling your small digital product today! It will take you a few minutes and you’ll have a BUY button right on your website! Whoo hooo!

At the same time, you can list your product on Etsy too. It can’t hurt to list it on both platforms.

When you combine that with Convertkit, you can then focus on building your email list and also listing specific products at the same time.

Our other recommendation and idea to think about is:

ThriveCart

The reason for this is that some people fall off right in the beginning as it’s hard to get started and scale their sales and business. And if you sign up for something free, you aren’t taking the steps that you need to invest yourself completely or hold yourself accountable. And if you’re not invested, your motivation to keep going just might stop.

But remember…It’s always darkest right before the dawn, right?

If you’re serious about growing your business or you’re ready to level up, we highly recommend getting ThriveCart. (you get the bonuses if you use our affiliate link, thank you!)

It’s a one time investment (saving you thousands in the long run), it can build strong funnels and it has a learning management system built in! It’s simple and powerful and can keep you focused on the right things – delighting your audience – not getting stuck in the tech.

But Rememeber….

We’re not here to tell you exactly what to do. You have to consider your budget and the risk factors that might happen as well. 

And ultimately, the tool isn’t what is going to make or break your success. Creating amazing products and connecting it with the right audience are the true secrets!

Let me know in the comments below what tool you decide to use! I wish you tons of success!