So you want to sell digital products online?
I’ve been in this space for years, and I’m going to break down everything you need to know about selling digital products, from the foundational steps to the best platforms you should be using.
Let’s dive right in.
The Foundation: What You Need Before Choosing a Platform
Before we get into specific platforms, let’s talk about the essential components you need to successfully sell digital products online. I don’t want to state the obvious, but you need these fundamentals in place regardless of which platform you choose.
1. A Traffic Source
You absolutely need a traffic source to sell digital products. This can be either organic earned traffic or paid advertising. Without traffic, none of these platforms will work for you – it’s that simple.
The type of traffic source you choose will also depend on your product’s price point. If you’re selling something low-ticket like a $27 course, template or access to a community, you can typically can make sales by linking directly to your offer – no funnel needed.
However, if you’re selling something more expensive like a $497, $597, or $997 course, you’ll need some type of sales funnel leveraging email marketing.
2. A Sales Funnel (For Higher-Priced Products)
A typical sales funnel might look like this 👇
“Watch my masterclass,” “Get my cheat sheet,” “Here’s an ebook,” or “Sign up for my email newsletter.” You want to use some type of lead magnet to get people on your email list first.
Once they’re on your email list, you can send them through a sales process. This could be as simple as a one-time offer page.
When someone signs up for your free cheat sheet or course, they’re taken to a one-time offer page where you present them with a special deal.
What should your one-time offer (OTO) be?
That depends on your audience, and you’ll need to test to find out what works. Sometimes it’s effective to give a substantial coupon code to your main offer.
Maybe you’re selling a $597 product and you offer a 50% off coupon code and use something like Deadline Funnel. Other times, you might create a completely separate product that’s only available on your one-time offer page for $7, $27, or whatever price point makes sense.
3. A High-Converting Sales Page
You need to create a sales page that converts visitors into customers. Here’s the structure I recommend:
- Problem identification: Quickly establish what problem your product solves
- Unique solution: Present your specific solution to that problem
- Proof of concept: Explain why and how your solution works for your target audience
- Social proof: Include examples and testimonials showing your solution works
- Bonuses: Highlight additional value like bonus ebooks, guides, cheat sheets, or courses
- FAQ section: Keep it short and sweet – about 5 frequently asked questions that address genuine concerns
- Final call to action: A clear, compelling CTA right above your footer
4. A High-Converting Checkout Page
After users click “buy” or “add to cart” on your sales page, they should be taken to a checkout page that converts. A good checkout page includes:
- Clear product title and image
- Bullet points summarizing what they’ll get
- Simple form to fill out
- Consider incorporating bump offers and upsells
The strategy here depends on your product price. For example, if you’re selling a $7 ebook, how do you increase cart value? You might add a $27 course as a bump offer; something users can add with one click without being redirected to another page. This takes your cart value from $7 to $34.
After they purchase, you can present a final upsell, perhaps a $47 product that complements what they just bought. The key is ensuring your upsell feels like a valuable add on, not like something they need to get the full value from their original purchase (your customer will feel ripped off).
5. Product Delivery
Finally, you need to determine how customers will access your product. Typically, you have two options:
- They get a user account on your platform
- They receive a download link via email
Your choice depends on what you’re selling – whether it’s simple downloadables like ebooks and templates, or comprehensive video courses.
The 9 Best Platforms for Selling Digital Products
Now let’s dive into the platforms themselves. I’ll cover the pros and cons of each so you can make an informed decision.
1. Teachable – Best for comprehensive product
Teachable leads my list, and while it’s primarily known as an online course platform, it makes my list because of how their current pricing structure works. With Teachable, you’re essentially building a complete website that becomes your digital product.
Pricing Structure
Teachable has updated their pricing to include two plans:
- Starter Plan: $29/monthly annual, 7.5% transaction fee, one published product.
- Builder Plan: $69/monthly annual, 0% transaction fee, five published products.
I find the starter plan quite limiting since you can only sell one thing with a 7.5% transaction fee. The Builder plan by contrast is much better value.
Published product?
Here’s what they mean by “published product.”
A coaching offer now counts as one product, a $7 ebook counts as one product, and a 20-hour video course counts as one product.
This makes Teachable less ideal for low-ticket items since you’re limited to five products in total. If you upgrade your account to their “growth” plan ($139 a month/annually) then you can have 25 products so low ticket becomes viable.
When to Use Teachable
Teachable is fantastic if you want to use those five product slots to build out five different comprehensive courses, bundle them together, and sell your entire website as a higher-ticket offer ($397-$597) or as a membership as a community forum function is also built into Teachable.
Key Features
- Upsells and coupon codes
- Abandoned cart recovery emails
- Built-in affiliate program (on builder plan)
- Community function
- Professional website design capabilities
Teachable’s Back Office Service
One underrated feature is Teachable’s back office service, which handles details you might not realize you need to manage:
- Automated affiliate payouts
- Tax form collection (they’ll send you a W9 once you sell over $600)
- PayPal integration
- Buy now, pay later options
You also get helpful tools like abandon cart recovery, bump offers and upsells.
2. Thinkific – Best for multiple low ticket courses
Thinkific is a strong competitor to Teachable and in many ways better, especially for certain use cases. They’re my go-to if I was was looking to sell low ticket courses ($27-$97 price point).
Pricing
- Basic Plan: $36/month annual, unlimited courses, one community, no transaction fees, five digital downloads, five coaching/webinar sessions.
- Start Plan: $74/ month annual, Course bundling, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited memberships, HTML/CSS editing capabilities
When to Use Thinkific
Thinkific is the better option if you’re selling low-ticket products. If you want to create $47 courses, $97 courses, ebooks, and coaching offers at various price points, you’ll be much happier with Thinkific as you’re not limited by the number of products you can sell.
The basic plan gives you unlimited courses with no transaction fees, which is a huge advantage over Teachable’s starter plan. You also get abandoned cart recovery and basic sales tools.
Key Advantage
While I prefer Teachable for building comprehensive course websites with bundled offerings due to their back office feature and better marketing tools, I’d use Thinkific for selling multiple courses at low price points that I link to directly without using a funnel.
3. Sam Cart – High converting checkout pages
Sam Cart excels at creating high-converting checkout pages and serves as a comprehensive shopping cart solution that integrates with various other platforms.
You can host your video courses and digital downloads with your account, access to their high converting checkout page, create sales pages, all product sales pages can have a custom domain and on top of that you get the ability to add in bump offers and customize the whole checkout experience.
Pricing
- 7-day free trial
- $59/month initially
- Scales to $164/month once you’re making $10,000/month
Key Features
- Checkout Anywhere: Embed checkout functionality on any website
- AI-powered pages: Design landing pages, checkout pages, and lead magnets quickly
- Slide-in checkout: Users click a button and a checkout form slides in from the side
- Custom domains: Each product can have its own branded domain
- Bump offers and cross-sells: Maximize cart value
When to Use Sam Cart
Sam Cart is perfect for low-ticket products where you want to sell a wide range of items like PDFs, checklists, cheat sheets, digital guides, templates, and video courses. The bump offer functionality is particularly powerful for increasing average order value.
4. Thrive Cart – One time fee!
Thrive Cart is similar to Sam Cart but with a key difference: it’s a one-time purchase rather than a subscription.
Pricing
- Lifetime Account: One-time fee (no ongoing subscriptions)
- Pro Upgrade: $295/year for advanced features like multiple bump offers, UTM tracking, and crypto payments
Key Features
- High-converting checkout pages
- Bump offers (one with basic plan, multiple with Pro)
- Custom checkout page design
- Video course hosting (you provide your own video hosting)
When to Use Thrive Cart
Thrive Cart is ideal if you want to sell low-ticket offers with bump offers but prefer a one-time payment over ongoing subscriptions. It’s perfect for simple $7 ebooks, $27 video courses, and similar products.
Drawbacks?
Thrive Cart can host your digital products and has a “learn” feature built in for video courses. So you can have video courses with Thrive Cart.
However they don’t provide video hosting, they also don’t provide sales pages so you’ll need to use Carrd.co, WordPress, Lead Pages or whatever you go to landing page builder it.
5. Shopify – Ideal sub domain integration
While Shopify is primarily known for e-commerce and physical products, you can absolutely sell courses and digital downloads through their platform.
Pricing
- Basic Plan: $19/monthly annual, great for getting started with digital products
How It Works
Shopify uses an app store model where you add functionality through apps:
- Digital Downloads App: Free app by Shopify for selling digital files
- Courses Plus: For creating and selling video courses
- Sky Pilot: Alternative for digital downloads
- Locksmith: For content access control
When to Use Shopify
Shopify works well if you want to integrate digital products into an existing e-commerce setup, or if you want to create a subdomain like shop.mywebsite.com powered by Shopify while maintaining your main website elsewhere.
6. Fourthwall – Product shelf optimization
Fourthwall is a completely free platform for uploading and selling digital products, courses, and memberships. Best of all? This platform integrates into the product shelf on YouTube and other platforms.
Pricing
- Free to use
- 0% fees on physical products
- 3% fee on digital products
Key Features
- Integration with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube
- Product shelf integration on YouTube
- Unlimited content hosting for memberships
- Full brand control
When to Use Fourthwall
Fourthwall is excellent if you’re just starting out and want a free platform or if you’re looking for a way to sell low ticket products on YouTube or Tiktok. It’s particularly useful if you have a strong social media presence and want to integrate product sales directly into your social platforms.
7. WooCommerce – The DIY option
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that adds e-commerce functionality to your website. As part of that functionality, support for selling digital downloads is included.
Key Features
- Free plugin
- Digital product support
- Extensive marketplace with both free and paid extensions
- Order bump functionality (through extensions)
- Complete customization control
When to Use WooCommerce
WooCommerce is ideal if you already have a WordPress website and want to add e-commerce functionality to sell things like templates, themes, checklist, simple stuff.
It offers the most customization options but requires more technical knowledge to set up and maintain. I also don’t like the whole checkout process with WooCommerce. It could be better optimized for conversions.
8. Gumroad – Email marketing and low ticket products
Gumroad gets criticism for its 10% transaction fee, but it offers significant value for that cost as far as I can tell. You can offer free products as a lead magnet, send out broad cast emails to your list and sell products at a low ticket price point or as a “pay what you want” prodcut.
They also support digital downloads, audio and video courses.
Pricing
- 10% transaction fee on sales you drive
- 30% transaction fee on sales from Gumroad’s marketplace
- No monthly fees
Key Features
- Sell virtually anything (ebooks, courses, memberships, audio, etc.)
- Basic email marketing included
- Tax obligation handling
- Pay-what-you-want pricing options
- Subscription products
When to Use Gumroad
Despite the 10% fee, Gumroad offers excellent value because you get basic email marketing, tax handling, and can sell virtually any type of digital product. It’s particularly good for low-ticket items like $7-$29 courses and ebooks.
9. Stan Store – Mobile first
Stan Store is a mobile-first platform optimized for social media marketing. Sell coaching, products and courses easily. Their sales pages however are pretty mediocre.
Pricing
- Creator Plan: Basic features, can build email list but can’t send emails
- Creator Pro Plan: Email marketing, automations, unlimited funnels, coupon codes, affiliate payments
Key Features
- Mobile-optimized design
- Link-in-bio functionality
- Email marketing (Pro plan only)
- Booking functionality
- Social media integration
When to Use Stan Store
Stan Store is perfect if your traffic comes primarily from mobile social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or X (Twitter). It’s designed as a comprehensive link-in-bio solution.
Honorable Mentions
There are a whole host of other platforms so here is a quick run down.
Skool.com – Community first option
- $99/month
- Community-first platform with courses
- 2.9% transaction fee
- Requires external video hosting
Mighty Networks – Like Skool but more brandable
- Flexible pricing based on needs
- Community + courses combination
- More customization than School.com
Kajabi – The do everything platform
- All-in-one platform ($71/month starting)
- Includes CMS, email marketing, and digital products
- Higher price point but comprehensive features
Podia – Alternative to Teachable and Thinkific
- Mover Plan: 5% transaction fees
- Shaker Plan: No transaction fees
- Includes email marketing
Pensight – Good alternative to Stan Store
- $29/month Pro Plan
- Mobile-first platform similar to Stan Store
- Email marketing included at lower tier
Executive summary: Making Your Decision
The platform you choose depends on your specific needs, so let me recap my thoughts.
→ Teachable – Best for a mid range, one time free product that is a bundle of courses. Solid checkout page, and you get your own affiliate program and their “back office” that takes care of taxes and payment. Community included.
→ Thinkific – Best for selling multiple low ticket courses. Nice sales pages, good checkout page. You create a course website and all courses are part of that. Community included.
→ Sam Cart – Best for selling low ticket products with their outstanding checkout page and bump offers. Can host your video courses too and you can make sales pages with Sam Cart. Can brand each product with a unique URL.
→ Thrive Cart – The one time fee champ. Also great for low ticket. You’ll have to source your own video hosting and sales page builder (Carrd, LeadPages or WordPress are ideal).
→ Fourthwall – Integrates with the product shelf here on YouTube. If you have low ticket products and a YouTube channel it’s a no-brainder.
→ Gumroad – Yes 10% transaction fee is not ideal but you can have free products as a lead magnet and use Gumroad as a budget email marketing option. You can also build out a store front and sell digital downloads, video courses and leverage upsells and bump order. No custom branding though.
→ Shopify – A great choice if you want to integrate it into a larger website via a subdomain. A bit technical to setup however and not a proper LMS.
→ Stan Store – The mobile, link in bio store choice. Coaching offers, digital courses and products as well as email marketing. A good choice if you’re audience is mobile first and you’re not using a proper email marketing software.
→ WooCommerce – Using WooCommerce alone to power digital downloads and then using an additional plugin like “Learn Dash” for courses. You can sell through your own WordPress website with the right tech know how, no subscription payment needed.
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