Thinking about selling Virtual Products?  Sales have been increasing with the onset of Covid 19 as businesses scramble to keep offering their services in safe and socially distanced ways. 

Many have turned to selling digital downloads. Whether it be a lesson/class, informational talks, entertainment show, training course etc. For many of us with WordPress websites, the obvious choice is to add on to the website we have. This is good for SEO and relatively straight forward. WooCommerce is a wonderful platform to offer physical and digital products. 

Things to consider before selling a virtual product;

Who owns the content? This is important, you need to make a statement prior to purchase. Is the customer buying the content outright or the right to view the content. This is an important distinction.

What is the cost of your virtual product? This will be affected by the question above. Pricing is your choice but if they own the content outright it should cost much more.

How long will you grant access to the product and how many downloads can they have? I recently set one up and we gave the purchaser 3 views over 20 days.

What are your terms and conditions? This is where you outline the ownership of the content and what you are allowed to do with it. For example; if you create a course can someone resell it? Can they post to social? Share with their friends? Make sure to include a section on what to do if you dont receive the download link.

It is hard to enforce these things, however you must state whether it is allowed or not. List the allowed and prohibited usages in the terms and conditions and have it so people must acknowledge the Terms when they check out.

Online Payment

In order for digital downloads to work automatically the payment processor (ie. PayPal) must return an Instant Payment Notification (IPN) This triggers the software to send the email with the digital download link to the customer.

How will you market it?

This is huge. Please do not assume people will find it on your website on their own. You need to announce it, introduce the concept, explain the advantages and play the number. If you look at average conversion rates for e-commerce you need 1000 site visitors to get 10 sales. This number will changed if you have a following who is engaged and eager.

 

Tips for selling virtual products:

  • Newsletter to your existing customers (Warm Market)
  • Purchase incentive- Buy my course and get a 1 hour one on one zoom meeting.
  • Post to social
  • Boost a post on social (this will help give you better visibility)
  • Make sure to create benefit focused ads- put yourself in someone elses’ shoes, why do they need what you’re selling?
  • Try A/B testing on posts to determine what graphics and copy work best.

 

Read our Tips for Ecommerce