Digital downloads are any kind of content that can be accessed and downloaded by someone online. For a content creator, they’re a fantastic way to monetize your knowledge without a lot of upfront investment or long-term maintenance. This guide will walk through different sales strategies, tactics, and examples to help you get the highest revenue from your digital downloads.
Before you start selling your content, you’ll want to think about building high quality material first. If you don’t have your digital products created yet, check out this guide and then come back here.
If you have your materials ready and you’re eager to start selling, continue reading. Or, jump to the section that you’re most interested to learn about.
Table of contents:
- Different approaches to monetization
- How to create a sales funnel
- Sales tactics to try
- Examples of how to sell digital downloads
- Conclusion
Understanding monetization approaches
Monetization strategies vary a lot depending on the type of content you’re sharing and how you want to be paid for it. Some common examples include:
- Pay per download (or pay per view). Every time that a new customer wants to access a new piece of material from you, they need to pay the set price. You can price each downloadable asset at various price points.
- Bundling. This takes a pay-per-download approach but restricts buyers to purchasing a minimum number of your products at once. For example, they could choose any three downloadable assets, and pay either one bundle price or receive a discount off the total cart value.
- Subscriptions. If you have a library of digital products or online courses, you can offer a subscription plan that grants access to the material for a set amount of time for a set price. One negative here is that customers can easily pay the fees for one month and download all assets and never pay for them again. To avoid this, consider offering pricing plans for temporary access to certain materials or add a maximum number of content downloads per month.
- Free downloads. Generating leads via free downloads. You can offer teaser versions of your downloadable assets for free. This is also sometimes referred to as a “lead magnet” as it gives a potential customer a brief look into what a more comprehensive paid offering from you could look like.
- Trials. Give your customers an option to access your content library for a limited time for free. It’s a good idea to limit how much content they can actually download for offline use as you want to ensure there’s a reason for them to pay the subscription fee later.
Building a sales funnel
A sales funnel guides people from first hearing about your product to eventually becoming a paying customer. Great sales funnels will also encourage happy customers to recommend your content to others to help you continuously earn more new revenue.
Demand generation
Demand generation is needed when your category isn’t well known. This step goes at the very top of your sales funnel because you’ll need to spend time informing potential customers about why your solution category is relevant.
It’s best to focus on promotional areas that reach a high number of traffic such as social media and paid advertising.
Lead generation
Lead generation efforts try to identify which customers from the demand generation level are ready to purchase content like yours. It’s important to always have a call-to-action (CTA) in lead generation activities so that you can convert customers (more on this in the next step).
At this stage, keep selling your digital products on channels that have a high degree of reach, but keep focused on areas where your target audience hangs out the most. For example, social media and paid advertising efforts alone are great or they can be used to point to a webinar on the topic.
Converting leads to customers
An integral part of selling digital downloads is understanding how you will make each sale. Once you have someone interested in paying for your product, how will they be able to find the checkout area or download the piece of content? Your call-to-action needs to clearly guide the customer towards the next step. Try conversion statements like “Download now,” “Access now.” or “Click to purchase.”
Conversion tactics can be placed on any marketing or sales channel. It’s a good idea to have one at all stages of the marketing funnel to help customers that want to jump to convert right away.
Upselling, cross-selling, and building loyalty
The sales funnel doesn’t end after you make your first sale with a new customer. In fact, many people consider it to be just the beginning! Once you have a customer’s information like their email, for example, you can set up more tactics for communication like sending out a newsletter. You can also leverage word of mouth or your content library to generate further sales.
There are two strategic ways to earn more revenue from a current customer. The first is to upsell or cross-sell a current customer to purchase other digital products in your marketplace. The other is to generate referrals to new customers from your current customer’s network. The happier your customer is with your content and service, the more likely they are to be loyal to your products.
Different sales techniques
There isn’t just one method for how to sell digital downloads. Many marketing and sales tactics can be used to earn revenue online. It’s a good practice to experiment & blend multiple tactics together to find what works best for your business.
Organic growth
Organic marketing and sales strategies are free or low-cost solutions but they usually require more manual effort. The most popular organic strategy is content marketing which focuses on informing your target audience. For example, you can educate them on:
- Why your own knowledge is reputable
- How your digital products stand out
- What to expect from your downloadable assets
A key element of this strategy is to have a high-performing website that is optimized for SEO. You can write blog articles and landing pages that pull in new traffic to your site.
Another organic approach to take is encouraging word of mouth referrals from close connections in your target audience or happy customers. While this is technically free to do, it’s always nice to reward your referees with a token of appreciation, such as a discount off their next purchase.
Paid growth
Paid growth strategies allow you to sell quickly, but it requires a larger budget. Several common paid options include:
- Social media advertising which allows you to push display ads or sponsored posts to specific demographics.
- Search engine advertising which bumps your
- Events in your local community or industry.
Social selling
Social selling uses platforms like social media to inform your target audience about your digital products. It’s a great way to build a community talking about topics in your niche. You can post updates to products, thought leadership conversations, and answers to frequently asked questions. Check out this course to learn more about how to use social selling as a content creator.
Webinars
Webinars are a very popular approach when selling your content online as it is accessible by anyone in the world. It’s possible to make webinars low-budget using a tool like Eventbrite to post your event for free, or you can leverage paid advertising efforts to boost reach and attendance. Your webinar can be a demand generation or lead generation strategy to encourage conversions on a separate digital asset. Alternatively, you can record the webinar and sell the video file as the downloadable asset later!
Examples of selling digital downloads successfully
Still needing a bit more confidence before selling your content online? Read through these success stories from Thinkific creators for inspiration!
George Pitts specializes in helping people learn how to sell digital products effectively through his own set of downloadable materials. Since launching his online business in 2018, he has supported 10,000+ students through his online programs and he’s earned a seven-figure annual income. A few strategies that Geoge use are:
- Social selling to build a community online where he frequently responds to feedback and questions
- Generated an email list to nurture potential future customers to inform them over time and eventually encourage them to convert
Another key element of George’s approach is that he did thorough market research to understand who he was reaching out to, which channels they preferred to communicate on, and which types of content they were searching for.
To accommodate a wider audience around the world, Cicely Belle Blain adapted their course delivery to online channels. As a result, they were able to deliver anti-racism courses and materials to more students – while never having to leave their living room. A few tricks that helped Cicely succeed were:
- Offering multiple delivery options that made it more accessible for people to engage with the content
- Collaboration with a team on how to best create, position, and promote the content to new groups of people
- Leveraged email marketing to continue educating their audience outside of what was provided in downloadable materials
After joining a female entrepreneurship group, Diamond Lee quickly learned about the value of monetizing digital products. Her first 20-page ebook about sales funnels sold for $27 and it earned her $19,983 in less than 2 months. Here are a few of the secrets to success for Diamond:
- She did one-on-one consulting with her students to get feedback and insights on how to promote her content
- She leveraged TikTok for organic lead generation
- She built great relationships with her customers that allowed her to grow revenue
Fiona Humberstone helps brands create their own style guide and marketing plans. She offers a combination of workshops, downloadable resources, and online resources that generate revenue and a strong organic audience. These tactics helped her get to where she is today:
- Offered free resources to potential customers to show them the value of her knowledge which helped them convert to paying customers later
- Continuous experimentation to try new channels, content, and tactics to see what her audience responds to best
- Clearly focusing in on what makes her offerings stand out from similar creators, so that potential leads can easily understand the value of her material
Conclusion
Understanding how to sell digital downloads is exciting as it opens up a huge door for revenue growth, higher brand awareness, and greater community involvement. As you step into selling online, it’s important to remember to frequently check in on your target audience to ensure that your sales and marketing strategies align with their needs and interests. Keep experimenting with monetization and sales approaches as much as possible, and don’t be shy about testing out free channels to see where you can scale for a low cost. When in doubt, come back to the success stories about other Thinkific creators that have grown their online business through monetizing digital products to drive new inspiration!
Start selling digital downloads with Thinkific
Thinkific now offers the ability for creators to sell digital downloads directly on the platform! Supported by an AI-powered workflow and paired with Thinkific’s existing website building and marketing support tools, it’s easy to guide customers through the lead generation and check-out process. Try Thinkific for free today to start earning extra revenue off of your knowledge.