Deciding to sell your own digital product is an excellent idea for writers, artists, or even NFT creators. However, there are numerous platforms to choose from when it comes to actually putting your work out there. And the truth is that the platform you choose can determine the success or failure(if you choose wrongly) of all your hard work. This is why I’ve made an exclusive list of the top platforms you should consider before deciding where to put your digital product.
Best Platform For Authors To Sell Their Ebooks
Amazon Kindle: Kindle Direct Publishing is a free platform created by Amazon for authors looking to get their works out to their audience easily. With KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), you have to create a free account with your email address and a secure password, navigate to the publish section of the platform and fill in the required details yourself. However, KDP is highly competitive, and putting your work out there might not be enough to get you sales. You need a strong marketing strategy in place. Good thing people like Dave Chesson created a whole website for authors to teach the secrets of publishing on kindle.
Best Platforms For Tutors To Sell Online Courses
Udemy: On Udemy, anyone can create a free course. You need to become a premium instructor to charge students for their courses. Becoming a premium instructor is free, as well as creating a free course. However, Udemy would ask you to submit more details about yourself, including your preferred payment method.
Udemy doesn’t charge a fee for becoming premium instructors. However, they take a percentage of your sales on their platform. This is a great marketplace for tutors to publish their digital products. Statistics show that as of May 2021, over 40 million learners were using Udemy. Fortune 100 companies also acknowledged Udemy in 2020. Your courses on Udemy would give you the authority you need to make yourself known in your space.
Best Platform For Artists To Sell Their Podcast
Patreon: One of the most well-liked options for podcast monetization is Patreon, which enables you to build a steady income. Patreon is a platform that allows creators to earn money from their works. Depending on how you choose to set it, your fans can pay monthly or whenever you release new content. So, even if you already have a lot of content, you can get paid by setting your payment option to monthly, and if you choose to be paid per content, you can also choose that option. Joining Patreon is entirely free. However, you are expected to pay a percentage of your monthly income once you start earning.
Best Platform For Artists To Sell Digital Art
Envato: Envato is like a mother platform with plenty of platforms. It’s a community that houses platforms suitable for almost all digital products you might be interested in publishing, from web themes and templates to code scripts and videos. You can sell on Envato. They also accept music, but at the time of writing this (November 2022), they currently do not accept submissions.
Envato uses specific terms that might be new to you as a digital product creator, so it’s advisable to look at their authors’ glossary and familiarize yourself with specific terms should you work with them and sell your product there.
Best Platform For Selling All Digital Products
If you noticed, our list contains platforms where your hand is restricted about what you can and cannot do. However, some want to keep the profit, grow their fans, and have more control of their products and store. The earlier suggestions feel more like renting a space for your digital products; at any point, your landlord can kick you out, even when you’ve made a lot of progress. But for platforms like Shopify, you have complete autonomous control of how your store runs and can build a closer and more permanent relationship with your customers than you will in the other platforms. Which is the best? For example, acquiring a customer’s email address is more permanent than having them follow you on Patreon.
With Shopify, you can sell all kinds of digital products easily too. Shopify is a reliable marketplace for all types of merchants, from your competitors who sell digital products like you to other merchants who sell physical products. It’s one of the top 10 marketplaces with about 2.1 million daily users.
Shopify is also a great option if you’re looking to add digital products to your inventory of physical products. Considering you have a dropshipping business or a physical art store and would like to add digital arts or even sell NFTs, Shopify would be your best bet on the list.
Another reason why I say Shopify is because Shopify becomes your professional page, unlike the others where what you control is only your dashboard. Your name is always a directory to a broader website. With Shopify, you can own your domain name and change your store to mystorename.com rather than having to include a parent website.
You can learn every step to selling digital products on Shopify with our guide.
Conclusion
Choosing the right marketplace as a digital product creator is essential to your success and authority in your niche. People would most likely buy from a more reliable source than that they do not trust. Our list, however, doesn’t constrict you or limit you to use only the platforms mentioned, but only to offer selected guidance of trusted environments your target audience frequents.