9 Profitable Digital Product Ideas You Can Start Selling Online To Earn Extra Income

If you are interested in starting an online business with leveraged income, you might want to look into selling digital products.

Digital products are assets that exist in a digital form, not necessarily with a physical component. The internet makes it extremely easy to access and trade digital products of all sorts.

There are many benefits to selling digital products online. In today's article, we will share examples of the most popular digital products you can start creating and selling today!

eBooks

When most of us think of a digital product, an eBook comes to mind. As you probably know, an eBook is the electronic version of a printed book that can be accessed and read on the internet.

Compared to printed books, eBooks are cheaper to produce, more profitable to sell, and much easier to distribute. As an author, you don't have to depend on a publishing house, share royalties and invest in significant printing and advertising costs.

All of these benefits contributed to creating a huge online market of eBooks, where everyone - not only published writers - can now write a book and sell it!

eBooks have their pros and cons, however, it is definitely a great way to monetize your knowledge online, especially if you are just starting out.

The picture below shows the eBooks offered by Rustico Cooking, a membership site about Italian cooking created with Heights Platform:

Pros of Selling eBooks

• Easy to get started
• You have full control of how your eBook is marketed and distributed
• High-income potential, no royalty fees to pay
• You can set the price you want
• Readers can buy and access your eBook immediately
• You can track where your customers and coming from, get their email addresses and create an online community
• Potential to create a leveraged income stream

Cons of Selling eBooks

• It might take you a lot of time and effort to write a book
• Harder to enforce copyright laws with eBooks
• You need to build an online audience and promote your eBook

Online Courses and Membership Sites

Online courses are our favorite way of monetizing your knowledge and creating a profitable online business.

An online course is a collection of lessons and tutorials that helps people reach a certain goal.

Similar to online courses, membership sites are gated sites that include members-only content: students would pay a fee in order to access content for a longer period of time compared to an online course.

Online courses are by far the most engaging digital product and they offer countless benefits to the creator.

If you are passionate about something and you think you could help other people achieve their goals, why not create an online course?

All you need to get started is online course software. With Heights Platform you can create beautiful and engaging online courses by uploading multimedia content in your lessons, adding gamification tools, interacting with your students through online communities and much more.

Pros of Selling Online Courses and Membership Sites

We wrote a whole article about the benefits of selling online courses, however here are the main ones:

• Low initial investment
• Extremely engaging and interactive for students
• High-income potential, you can set the price you want
• You can create something truly unique that comes from your passion
• High value to students
• Easy to build and distribute

Cons of Selling Online Courses and Membership Sites

• You need to invest a lot of time into building your online course
• You need to spend time to grow your audience

Downloadable Templates and Worksheets

Another idea for a digital product is to create downloadable interactive files for your audience. Depending on your niche and area of interest, these can have many shapes and forms. The most popular ones are templates or worksheets.

Generally, these types of digital products are sold as an extra add-on, for instance, if you are an online course creator, you could add a template to your product offerings to offer even more resources to your students.

Here is an example from one of our Heights Platform creators. Michelle Reeves teaches online courses about podcasting. Together with her online courses, she offers templates for podcast artwork to her students as an add-on:

Pros of Selling Templates or Worksheets

• Easy to create and distribute
• Potential to create a leveraged income stream
• Adds value to your business
• No upfront costs

Cons of Selling Templates or Worksheets

• Harder to scale and limited income opportunities
• Generally not ideal as your unique value proposition

Coaching Sessions

Another type of digital product you could sell is your expertise in the form of coaching sessions.

If you are knowledgeable about a topic and enjoy helping others, coaching can be the right choice for you. You can sell one-on-one or group coaching sessions on the internet with very little initial investment or cost.

As an online coach, your job is to help clients reach their desired goals by providing your expertise and consultation. Different from an online course, with coaching you address each client's need and offer highly personalized service.

You can choose to focus solely on coaching or offer coaching sessions as an extra add-on to your main business.

Pros of Selling Coaching Sessions

• No initial investment - you just need your knowledge
• You are offering high personalized value
• Easy to set up your business and get started
• You can set the price you want - generally high-ticket pricing

Cons of Selling Coaching Sessions

• Harder to scale and generate leverage
• You need an active audience in order to be successful
• It might take time to gain the trust of your audience

Live Streams, Webinar and Videos

If you are running a live stream or webinar, why not resell it as a digital product to increase your earnings on the side?

This type of content is great as it can be extremely engaging for your audience and easily digestible. Many creators use video content as a free or paid lead magnet, to attract new clients as an introductory offer in their value ladder.

Barb McGrath, a creator using Heights Platform to sell her digital marketing courses, offers webinars and videos to her audience, as shown in the picture above.

Pros of Selling Live Streams, Webinars or Videos

• It is a great way to repurpose your content and increase your income
• Easy to transform into a leveraged income stream
• No initial investment required
• You are offering engaging, digestible content to your audience

Cons of Selling Live Streams, Webinars or Videos

• Requires you to commit to a specific schedule and directly commit your time to deliver the content

Podcasts

Generally, we think of podcasts as free available content to listen to. But who says that you cannot make money with podcasts?

One of the latest trends in podcasting is offering membership tiers, where listeners pay a fee to access exclusive content, a private community and so on.

You could also offer podcast episodes as an extra digital product to your main business.

Pros of Podcasts

• You only need your knowledge to get started
• No initial investment
• Multiple ways of monetization
• Engaging, valuable content for your audience
• Easily accessible for everyone
• Great to create a loyal audience and online community

Cons of Podcasts

• It takes time to build an audience around it
• More commonly supported by advertisers in order to generate revenue than sold on their own

Online Communities

Another way to further monetize an online business is by creating a private community. Whatever your business focuses on, if you have a large and loyal audience, you have the opportunity to build an online community around it.

It doesn't take much to create an online community: many creators use Facebook groups to interact with their audience or other specialized platforms to build private communities where members have to pay a fee in order to access.

Heights Platform lets you create discussion boards to add to your online courses or membership sites, as a way to engage with your students and offer a safe place for them to offer feedback, ask questions and share their achievements.

Pros of Online Communities

• Great engagement level and audience trust
• Easy to build and set up
• Recurring revenue opportunities
• High value for your members

Cons of Online Communities

• It takes time to build an active audience for your community
• Limited revenue stream

Digital Art

If you are creative and have an artistic side, you can easily monetize your creations online!

Illustrations, photographs, animations, templates, designs and so on are all great ideas for digital products that can be sold online.

From selling your art on Etsy to creating a print-on-demand business, there are countless ways and websites to monetize your creativity.

Pros of Selling Digital Art

• No costs involved
• You are creating and selling something unique
• Possibilities to leverage your income
• You get to work doing something you are passionate about

Cons of Selling Digital Art

• If you are a beginner, it takes time to learn the skills
• Limited income opportunities

Online Tool and Software

Another example of a digital product you could sell online is any type of online tool or software.

If you have an idea for software that could make people's life easier, you could either build it yourself or hire a developer to help you.

Building and selling software can open up huge revenue opportunities. However, it is an extremely complicated task that takes time, effort, and technical knowledge.

Building software is not a walk in the park if you don't have development experience so you may want to hire someone to do the job for you.

Pros of Selling Software

• Large income opportunities
• Possibility to create a leveraged income stream
• You are offering high value to your customers

Cons of Selling Software

• You need to be an experienced developer or hire one (expensive)
• It takes time to build it and get it running
• Significant initial investment

Conclusion

Digital products are a fantastic way to monetize your knowledge, create a business from your passion and build an additional income stream.

There are countless examples of digital products you could sell across all the different niches. In this article, we shared what we think are the most popular digital products you could start selling right now.

In most cases, the main benefit of digital products is the ease of creation and the low initial investment.

If you need a platform to help you sell your digital products and get your online business up and running, Heights Platform is the right choice for you!