How to Create Website for Digital Products

Among all eCommerce business ideas, some come with lesser complexities and a lower barrier to entry than others. When you think of it, a prominent such option is to create website for digital products.

With increasing digitalization of our world, various types of media that can be circulated online continue to grow in popularity, catalyzing the progressive growth of the Digital Products industry at a CAGR of 10.61%

With such growth, starting with a digital products marketplace is an increasingly viable eCommerce business option. If you want to know more about this, read this..

Table Of Contents

What is an eCommerce Website for Digital Products

Think about this – from entertainment to online learning and e-marketing – digital files fundamentally support all.

So, games, e-books, stock photos, and a lot more such media, that are created for the digital realm, hold commercial value as digital products, and these are all around us.

Simply put, they are products that can be delivered electronically to users. They are essentially intangible assets that are owned digitally by the consumers.

These in fact, spread across an ever-increasing array of industries, and cover multiple use cases. The consumption of digital products have transformed various industries and opened up new avenues for artists, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and businesses to generate revenue.

So, if you are not someone who can sell these products by sourcing/creating them yourself, but still wondering – How do I sell digital products online?

The answer is via an eCommerce marketplace for digital products.

A Digital Products Marketplace is an eCommerce platform for all third-party sellers of digital files like ebooks, or artists that can contribute with their creations like music, videos, photos, and/or more. to sell their Digital assets to an unhindered, geographically-unrestricted audience. It typically has a marketplace operator to manage, sellers to offer digital downloads, and buyers of those products.

Why Start with Digital Downloads Marketplace

By starting with a multivendor eCommerce website for digital products, you can enter this industry, even without being a seller yourself

For instance, app stores, online marketplaces, and streaming platforms have been flourishing as central hubs for discovering, purchasing, and accessing a vast array of digital products.

So if you create website for digital products, you have:

• A low-barrier entry into the world of eCommerce.
• A business with no boundaries and limitless potential to scale.
• An increasing pool of talent ready to contribute as sellers.
• Steady requirements as also indicated by strong market growth.

Sounds interesting? Let’s explore further.

Top Digital Products Niche Ideas

Well first – What is a niche marketplace?

A niche marketplace offers a specific category of products, to better define its target audience and ergo, its marketing strategies. This helps in positioning the business distinctly in the market.

This is one of the most effective startup strategy to take a share of traffic from the popular and more established players like Amazon.

There are multiple niches in which a digital marketplace can model itself – to spawn a viable new business opportunity. So if you are considering to create website for digital products niche, you can operate in one of the popular niches shared below.

E-books (Digital Publishing)

As more people switch to digital devices – there is an increased preference for digital books. Naturally, there is an upsurge in their demand. An additional factor triggering their popularity is that ebooks require no paper and hence, are more environment friendly.

Images and Photographs

If you happen to browse the internet across a number of websites. You will come across multiple generic images and photographs. A majority of these are sourced from digital marketplaces for images. Digital photographs, especially stock photos – are needed across digital platforms. Hence a marketplace for stock photos can generate interest among users. Some examples for such marketplaces are Unsplash, Pexels, Shutterstock, and more.

Videos

In the digital-driven world today, videos have significant bearing on users. This holds true for both B2B and B2C domains. Videos for stock use, or online course websites, such as Udemy – present an attractive opportunity for new startup ideas. A digital products marketplace for Videos niche provides a platform for artists/composers to post, gain traction, and monetize their efforts.

Music and Sound Effects

A Music and Sound Effects Marketplace is an online platform where users can buy and sell audio content. It is a platform for musicians, composers, and sound designers to audition and monetize their work. This niche includes music tracks, sound effects, and other audio content. These digital products find use in both – personal and professional use.

Web Design Resources

As the internet witnesses an increasing adoption amongst both businesses and individuals, there is an ever-increasing need for web design resources – web templates, graphic templates, Fonts, logos, CMS themes, and others can be offered. Additionally, stock photos, videos, vector graphics, and other allied media can also be offered on the digital marketplace platform.

Software and Mobile Apps

With the increased use (and dependence) on digital devices in the modern era, there is a high demand for innovative apps and software solutions that solve problems or make life easier.

This includes productivity tools, entertainment apps, and other digital solutions.

Software Review marketplace

The major difference between a marketplace for software downloads and a software review marketplace is that the latter does not offer the software, but offers a platform where credible reviews are posted. Capterra and G2 are examples of a software review marketplace. Such websites offer a credible source for both businesses and consumers to guage a software before purchasing.

Gaming and Entertainment

A niche that has about 3 billion users globally with a revenue of $187 bn in 2023, the gaming products marketplace is an attractive eCommerce business option. This niche includes downloadable video games, virtual reality experiences, steam codes, and other digital entertainment.

Deal Coupons

A marketplace like Groupon, which offers deal coupons, has historically gained traction in various eCommerce markets. Deal coupons benefit all participants i.e. the intermediary or the business owner, the third party sellers and the buyers. The buyers can get offers on products/services of their choice. Businesses that give out the offers have a lucrative marketing platform. The platform itself scales on the traction received from both the users.

Vector Graphics and Digital Art

These elements find application in web design, marketing (both, via offline and online channels), and advertising. This includes logos, banners, illustrations, and infographics.

While these were some of the niches that can be explored in the digital products ecosystem, businesses can also follow a hybrid niche that encapsulates more than one of these products. For instance, it makes good business sense to include stock photos, videos, or audio in a web design resources marketplace.

In fact, popular operative marketplaces generally offer products from more than one niche.

Other Digital Products Ideas

What if – you want to launch a marketplace with even lesser competition?

You can consider these digital product ideas that can help you in positioning your marketplace business even more uniquely.

• Podcasts
• Google Spreadsheets/Microsoft Excel templates
• Fonts
• Printables
• Templates of Legal Documents
• Templates for social media platforms (for instance, Instagram)
• Recipes/Cookbooks

These are some of the many ways you can start your eCommerce website for Digital Products with multiple third party sellers. Let’s have a look at some of the more popular players in this industry, and what they are offering on their platform.

Popular Digital Products Marketplaces

Here are some of the more popular players in the digital products ecosystem.

Envato

Envato is not one but an ecosystem of marketplaces that offer multiple digital products.

• Envato Elements offers subscription-based graphic assets, educational resources, and business management tools.
• Envato Market encapsulates multiple platforms offering a range of categories of creatives including ThemeForest for Web Themes & Templates; AudioJungle for Audio & Music; VideoHive for Video Templates & Stock Video; PhotoDune for Stock Photos; GraphicRiver for Graphic Fonts, Logos, Icons, Templates and more; CodeCanyon for Code Script Items, 3DOcean for 3D Print Models and CG Textures, and more.

Collectively, these creatives find wide-ranging applications for creative professionals, such as graphic designers, web developers, video editors, and other digital content artists.

To add to it, the marketplace also caters to hobbyists, beginners, and anyone else looking to improve their skills or create engaging content. Furthermore, the platform also has products and services for businesses, entrepreneurs, and other organizations that need digital marketing assets, and more.

Amazon

Amazon has successfully ventured into and at times pioneered wide-ranging categories of products and services. This also includes digital products. They offer ebooks on the platform. Additionally, they offer exclusive platforms for video and audio streaming respectively.

Etsy

Etsy has been a name synonymous with handmade and vintage items. Moreover, it also offers a selection of digital products – such as printables, graphics, invitations, cards, templates, and other creatives.

Pexels

Pexels is a marketplace for digital photos that empowers designers, writers, artists, programmers, and other individuals with such needs to source photos uploaded onto the website. The photos are provided by their community of photographers, and licensed under the Pexels License.

Lazada

Also called Amazon of the East, Lazada is an Alibaba-owned popular eCommerce marketplace that primarily operates in 6 South East Asian countries. And similar to Amazon, Lazada has a digital products ecosystem within the marketplace. It offers top-up mobile and gaming credits; downloadable digital products like eBooks. Additionally, it is also a platform for deal vouchers – for deals on restaurants, travel, transport, entertainment, and more.

Dribbble

An online marketplace for designers, Dribbble provides a platform for designers to post their work. The target audience varies – including peers looking for inspiration, design companies’ repositories for their teams, and others. Additionally, it also serves as a portfolio for the creators to display/audition their work.

Gumroad

An online marketplace platform for a wide range of products – books, music, films, photography, gaming, and a lot more that even includes physical products. Typical target users for this platform include artists who have creatives to sell, just starting out with their trade. To assist them in their start the platform offers multiple tools. Furthermore, the platform offers sellers to link their own website to the platform, to turn their own website into a storefront.

These are some of the more popular platforms that sell digital products. For your own eCommerce business, you can conduct extensive market research, to find out the scope for your business idea. And with the idea in place, let’s get to the business end of your endaevor – creating the platform.

Prepare yourself for a Digital Products eCommerce Business

A key ingredient to business success is the preparation that goes into its making. A digital products eCommerce business is no different. You can adopt the following steps in the ideation phase.

Market Research: The first thing to do is understand the current market scenario. What is working and what is not? Listen to your target audience. What is it that they want?

Draft a plan: With an analysis into the needs, you need to curate a plan to solve these needs with your business. At the same time, position your brand to sit in a unique space in the market.

Understand your product:  In a multi-vendor marketplace, there are third-party sellers. Still, the website needs to be a platform that facilitates seamless business interactions for that product. For instance, media files like music will need a digital preview or gaming products will need authentication support.

Legal and Regulatory Considerations: Research for any legal or regulatory considerations to avoid any complication down the road. Go through licenses, copyright laws, and others for the products you wish to offer.

Pricing Strategy: Ideate a flexible yet robust pricing strategy for your eCommerce website. This is usually done by setting maximum and minimum price constraints for the third-party sellers. This will help in positioning your brand as a competitive website over some time.

Monetization plan: An eCommerce multivendor business comes with multiple revenue streams. To give your business a competitive inertia, try balancing these to achieve revenue goals with user traction, while still setting a robust brand image.

With a well thought out business plan in place, start with creating a website for digital products.

Create a Website for Digital Products

Some years back, this used to be a tedious process. Hire a team, or outsource the entire process. Identify the right solution, build code-by-code, and test. For a more robust solution, this is best done iteratively.

As technology evolves, things need to be done better and faster – right?

Expectedly, the technology sector progressed to offer robust solutions that give the benefit of a complete no-code process. While this varies from solution to solution, depending on your needs, you can pick the right one for your needs.

YoKart – NoCode Digital Products Marketplace Builder

Yo!Kart is a no-code solution that offers a variety of eCommerce features for modern digital product marketplaces. In addition, it provides numerous pre-built API and payment gateway integrations, essential modules, and other functionalities. This customizable software is self-hosted and available in one-time payment packages. Yo!Kart has been utilized by customers worldwide to drive digital product marketplace platforms. With Yo!Kart, you can establish your own digital products marketplace in just a few days.

Wrapping Up

As our lives continue to intertwine with an increasingly digital presence, the scope for an eCommerce website for digital products will continue to grow.  Moreover, with the accelerated adoption of eCommerce across industries, regions, or demographics, users are getting increasingly inclined towards eCommerce platforms.

While this is a scenario for the present, as the virtual world continues to advance and coalesce into daily lives, digital products will evolve further – fostering a breeding ground for innovation and creativity while facilitating more immersive experiences – and finding greater applications across multiple use cases and industries.

To get started quickly and with prudent resource allocation, you can create website for digital products using a rich-featured readymade solution like Yo!Kart, and catapult towards a sustainable market impact.

FAQs

Q1: What is a digital products marketplace?
Ans: A digital products marketplace is an eCommerce platform where multiple artists/ sellers register to sell digitally downloadable assets to buyers of the platform.

Q2: What are the reasons to create website for digital products?
Ans: In a competitive world of eCommerce, if you choose to create website for digital products, you can have the following advantages:

• A low-barrier entry into the world of eCommerce.
• A business with no physical inventory constraints.
• Opportunity to scale unhindered.
• An increasing pool of talent considering to monetize their skills.
• Steady requirements as also indicated by strong market growth.
• Growing market and a promise of a bright future ahead.

Q3: What are the top Profitable Digital Products To Sell online?
Ans: You can consider offering multiple categories of products or just a few. These are some of the profitable digital products that sell online:

• Visual content like stock images, photographs, vector images, videos, and more.
• Audio content like music files, beats, background scores, podcasts, or more.
• Creatives and templates for a plethora of uses.
• eBooks, guides, and more.