GSD 207: What’s Easier To Sell – Digital Products vs. Physical Products

Welcome to today’s GSD Daily. What we’re going to talk about is digital products versus physical products and what you should focus on. So it’s the age-old question. Do you want to sell something tangible, or physical, or do you want to sell something digital? There are benefits and drawbacks to both.

So after being in the industry and being in the game for as long as I have, I will tell you that nothing sells faster than physical products. Most people buy physical things. That’s all there is to it. Physical things are on Amazon. Physical things are bought in E-com and Shopify stores all around the world. And physical products tend to move fastest. You’re able to split-test things more quickly. You’re able to achieve revenue more quickly with physical products, and there is a lot less give and take because there is something tangible that is going to be shipped to somebody in the mail.

On the other side, physical products cost money. So you need to prototype it, create it, mold it, manufacture it, whatever if you’re going to manufacture it. Or you need to source it, import it, figure out shipping, all of those things. If you’re going to import it from China and Alibaba to this country, then you need to warehouse, package it, sell it, and all of that. So there are a lot of physical constraints and money constraints when it comes to physical products. That’s all there is to it. You have the cost of goods sold to produce the thing that you are selling. So physical products, while they sell fast and they command a premium, usually, and they’re marginal, they’re easier to sell as the business owner, they also have a higher upfront cost and commitment to them. And the same with food and beverage and all those other things. It just takes more money to build and scale a physical product brand.

Now, let’s go to digital products. Digital products, on the other hand, there isn’t a whole lot of cost of goods sold usually. So usually, to create a digital product that’s mostly video, maybe studio time, it is all bits and bytes. So you’re paying for time, you’re paying for labor and editing, you’re paying for a website that it can be housed in, a membership site that it can be set up in, the hosting and the bandwidth and all that stuff. So the cost is typically smaller for digital products when you’re able to do it more on your own. The labor and know-how of setting it all up tend to make it more expensive. But the labor and know-how for physical products tend to make them more expensive too. So at the end of the day, digital products have a very low upfront cost in terms of building and fulfilling them.

When somebody buys that product, then again, it’s in bits and bytes. So they get an email, they get granted into a membership site, they get the videos and stuff online, usually, cost of shipping and production and all that stuff you anymore. It used to be that when somebody bought a big coaching package, a box of stuff, they called it the thud factor. When the box of stuff hit the sidewalk, it would thud. So now, it’s not that way anymore because almost everything is digitally delivered. So the membership log-in with all the videos and the PDFs and downloads and worksheets and all that stuff. You need time to create those assets, load those assets into a membership site, and then for the most part, your fulfillment is done. They’re buying the course, basically the access to that membership site. So digital content is easier to create and easier to fulfill.

The drawback of digital is that it’s not quite so easy to sell. You’re selling, oftentimes, the features and benefits. You’re selling an outcome. You’re selling where your buyer, your customer, and your client are going, not where they are, and you’re not selling something tangible that they’re going to be receiving in the mail. So your refund rates are typically higher. Your chargeback rates are typically higher because it’s information, most of the time, that is going to be consumed and you can’t unlearn knowledge. You’re able to create it easily. You’re able to sell it pretty quickly, but it takes more to get somebody to buy it.

With physical products, physical products are more difficult to source, more difficult to scale, set up, and start selling, but they sell easier once you’re in the market selling them.

So those are some of the positives and negatives of digital versus physical products. If you have any questions at all, we do a lot of both for our clients. We do a lot of digital products, we do a lot of coaching and consulting. We also sell a lot of physical products. So Shopify stores and drop shipping and all that stuff. So if you have questions about either typing digital or physical products or selling them, click the button below this video. Book an action plan call with me. We will get you all fixed up, whether it’s traffic, sales funnel, inbound marketing strategy, or any of that stuff. If you have questions that you would like some more immediate answers to, answer them in the comments below.

And if you like this kind of stuff, tips, tools, tactics for digital marketing, revenue generations, scaling businesses, that kind of thing, go to gsddaily.io, fill in the little form for the freebies, and then we’ll make sure to get you all the cutting-edge stuff that we send out through email. And finally, if you like this video, like it, share it, and subscribe. It helps us out, and I will talk to you soon, all right? Thanks. Bye.