GSD 208: Where To Sell Digital Products Online

Welcome to today’s GSD daily, and we’re going to talk about where to sell digital products. If you have an e-book, a video course, or an audio course maybe to a lesser degree, there are lots of ways you can sell it, right? There are lots of places that you can put it. But what we want to talk about today is, we want to talk through where to sell it. Where’s going to be the best way for you? Because all of them have their kind of features and drawbacks, features and benefits, and it just depends on how you want to run your digital business moving forward. So way back in the day, there were fewer options. Many, many fewer options for this. There were a couple of categories. One category was a digital download service. So basically it was a piece of software that let you process a payment, and then a download link would appear.

So it was kind of like on the confirmation page. So you sold the thing for $37, and then on the next screen, you were able to download the video files or audio files. And that was okay, it was okay. The next evolution of that was where you got to consume the content right in the platform now too. So that was more like you go through, you put your credit card in, and then you’re able to get a membership login. And the membership login is where you watch your videos and download your stuff. So that was kind of the next piece. And those are much more standard now. So those are the ones that we’re going to be sticking to within this particular little tutorial. The ones that have that baked-in kind of membership functionality, because I think that’s where we’re going to be going over the next… Well, it’s where we’ve been, but it’s very much where we’re going.

Right now, we’re in an economy where attention is everything. We’re seeing that with the YouTubers and we’re seeing that with creators and influencers. When you have eyeballs, you can monetize your audience. Maybe not directly, but indirectly too. And even some of the big influencers are getting huge sponsorship deals because they have an audience, they have distribution. Not necessarily because they have something to sell other than themselves. I mean, they’re the product, right? An influencer, they’re the product.

But what we’re going to talk about is digital platforms that allow you to sell your digital products and they make it easy. So the first one I want to talk about is one of my favorites Kajabi. They’ve been around forever. We’ve built many, many, many, many programs and sales funnels, and websites inside Kajabi. What they’re good at doing is helping you monetize your knowledge. So you can upload digital courses, you can post podcasts, can do coaching programs. There are all kinds of different things that you can sell, and it’s a pretty intuitive platform as well.

So it has some EMO marketing capabilities, and it has some affiliate capabilities. So there are a lot of things that Kajabi does. And the nice thing is when you build your stuff in Kajabi, you own your stuff. Not saying you don’t own it on different platforms, but for some of the other ones like Udemy, you’re kind of put into a mishmash of other content and creators. When you create your stuff in Kajabi, it’s your ecosystem. So it’s your courses, your cross-selling your courses with each other. So it’s your world once they’re in there. I like that they have some excellent payment integrations. It’s a solid platform, they’ve been around for a long time and they’ve made a lot of people a lot of money.

The next up is Udemy. So Udemy is slightly different. So basically you can put your digital courses and stuff in here, but it has a marketplace functionality too. So unlike Kajabi, Kajabi doesn’t have a marketplace even on the homepage, like the look, we’re looking at other creators’ courses here, and you can already see the difference. With Udemy the courses are cross-sold together, so it’s more of a collaborative learning environment where you have your creators and your creators make money creating courses. But the people who come to Udemy can cross-sell other people’s stuff. So Udemy is a platform that provides some of the buyers too. And another similarity is Skillshare.

So Skillshare, you’re able to put your course in, but the people who buy the courses, they’re not just buying your course, they’re buying lots of other courses too. It’s a slightly different model than Kajabi. With Kajabi, you’re uploading your course, you’re charging for your course, and you’re finding your clients. With Udemy and Skillshare, they are helping you find your clients as well. Kind of like Amazon. With Amazon, you send your physical product to Amazon, and Amazon has an ecosystem of buyers who buy your stuff. So as long as your stuff is better than other stuff on Amazon, then you’re going to get sales.

Another one is Thinkific. Thinkific is software and functionality that help you build and sell your courses. And it’s again, a trusted platform for many, many people. Here’s one that’s a bit different breed, and I’m including it because many people use it to sell their digital courses, and technically it is free. But basically what happens is you build… It doesn’t have the functionality to build a course, but what ClickBank does is it is largely built for creators, for people who have digital products and e-books and stuff. And with ClickBank, you list your product inside the ClickBank marketplace, and ClickBank helps affiliates find and promote your course for you.

So while it’s not a place for you to upload and sell your digital product, it is a place to get sales for your digital product. And even so much as it can be the place somebody sends a sale, they download the PDF or the video course or whatever. There are lots of different ways to use it. But Clickbank facilitates some of those transactions. It does the affiliate tracking and all that stuff for you. And when an affiliate sends a sale, it pays the affiliate and it pays you, and then that person, the buyer, gets to download or gets access to whatever it is that they’ve just purchased. So it’s a way to sell digital products. It is technically free, it’s just not… It’s kind of like a side door if you will.

And another one is Shopify. Shopify, you can sell digital products, you can sell physical products. You can sell whatever you like on Shopify. Shopify is an e-com store creator. So it does have long-form sales pages and stuff that is more common in the digital selling space. You can sell digital products on Shopify. Some of the other platforms allow you to host and stream video and all that other stuff too. For most of our clients, I tell them to go over to Kajabi. I’d say 80%, 85% of our clients end up picking Kajabi because it’s the superior option for email and content and websites and all of that stuff. It does a lot of stuff just natively in the platform, and it does it all reasonably well. So it’s just what most folks choose.

If you want to learn more about selling digital products, marketing digital products, and all that stuff, go to GSDdaily.io, fill in the little form, and sign up. Get the freebies and sign up for our newsletter. We send this kind of material out all the time. If you would like to chat about selling more of your digital products, your coaching services, your consulting, or whatever you’re selling, go to doneforyou.com/start. Book a call and we’ll talk to you soon, all right. And if you like this video, like and share, and if you have any questions, comment below and I’m happy to… We’ll answer them there and I’ll talk to you soon all right, thanks, bye.