Do you want to start making money online? If you're thinking of running a business via the web, you're going to need some good tools to help you put your ideas together and start selling them to your audience.
In this post, I'll share some of the best tools I've found to help you sell digital products online.
How can you make money with digital products?
Using your established, valuable knowledge and experience, there are numerous ways you can use what you know create digital products and sell them online
Some options include:
- Create an online course
- Training and coaching online (individually or in groups)
- Sell digital products
- Create a membership-style website
Here's a list og some of the best tools that can help you achieve your goals of making money online from your knowledge:
1. Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one solution for those looking to monetize their knowledge by selling digital products.
What makes Kajabi great is that it provides all the tools you need to build your online products and sell and market them, as well as deliver them to your audience.
First, start by building the digital products you want (it can be anything from an online course, a training portal, a membership site or a simple file download) by using one of their product themes. Although their themes look great, if you want to make it look more your own, there is also an option to customize the look and feel as you wish.
As I mentioned earlier, Kajabi has a lot of different features under one roof. For example, you can also use their themes to create a beautiful website, as well as to create landing pages to start capturing leads. You can also set up payment options, create exclusive offers and send them to your email list.
Basically, Kajabi provides all the tools you need to create your website and digital products, capture leads and market your offerings.
2. Thinkific
Thinkific is a tool for entrepreneurs who want to create, market and sell their own online courses.
You can use Thinkific to upload your existing courses, as well as to create your own rich multimedia courses using any type of content you could think of (video, audio, text, slides, quizzes and more). They also have an easy to use voice-over slide tool for your presentations.
In terms of setting up payment, you can use your Stripe account or, alternatively, PayPal and get paid directly for each of your courses or on a subscription basis.
As you start selling your online courses, you can set up a drip release so that your content is released over time based on each individual's sign up date.
Just like with Kajabi, you can also create landing pages and you can take more control of your design with advanced customizations. That said, it lacks some of the other marketing tools you would need to grow your online business, such as lead capture and nurture features or opt-in forms, so you might have to get other tools as well to get the results you need.
3. Teachable
With Teachable, you can build your own course website and start selling your knowledge.
Once you start using it, you can use your own website or create new pages with Teachable. Their course page editor is easy to use, but it's not as easily customizable, particularly if you're not great with coding and advanced editing. You can also use it to create engaging multimedia lectures using video, image, audio, text and PDF files:
Payment can be set up using PayPal or Stripe and you can create coupons and promotions to attract more customers to your courses.
In terms of marketing, Teachable enables you to create landing pages and allows for segmenting your list, so that you can send more targeted emails to your audience. Alternatively, you can integrate your Teachable account with other marketing tools, such as MailChimp, InfusionSoft, Mixpanel, Ontraport and many others through Zapier.
Overall, it's a very strong tool, the only downside being that it lacks some of the marketing tools that would help you generate new leads and grow your business and their courses are not as easily customizable as some of the other tools.
4. Simplero
Simplero is an all-in-one tool for those who want to sell their knowledge online.
Firstly, it has pretty strong email marketing tools: create landing pages and pop-ups and opt-in forms, segment your contacts for better targeting and automate your email marketing. Alternatively, if you have a MailChimp account, you can integrate it and use it instead.
To start selling your products, you can upload your files (such as an e-book, or audio and video files) and Simplero will encode them in order to optimize for consumers.
If you want to establish your own membership site, Simplero enables you to easily build one and to create and customize any content structure you want.
Overall, Simplero is a very good tool with a comprehensive list of marketing tools for those who want to sell their knowledge online, but it is, however, a bit pricier than the other tools and it doesn't offer any course design tools.
5. Ruzuku
Ruzuku is the cheapest tool in the list, but it's still a very good option for creating and managing your online courses.
Creating your own online course is easy and fast to do, but it also doesn't offer the same design customization as some of the other tools in the list.
You can create your own course using text files, videos and PDFs in be done in just minutes - once it's finished, your students can pay for it directly in your Stripe or PayPal account.
Ruzuku integrates with MailChimp for email marketing and with InfusionSoft and Shopping Cart for external shopping cart options.
Overall, it's a good tool for course creators; but, it doesn't have nearly as many features as other options, and when it comes to design, it's not as easily customizable or flexible. You would need to use other tools to be able to get the best possible results, such as an email marketing tool, tools for capturing leads and other marketing tools.
Conclusion
There are a lot of tools and software out there to help you build and sell your own digital products online, but I hope I've managed to bring you a good list of options. Personally, I would lean more towards a tool that does it all (or as much as possible), like Kajabi, because it can make your life much easier in the long run, not to mention it'll help you save time if you don't have to switch between tools all the time and assist you into getting the best possible results for your business.
Are you selling any digital products online? If so, what tools are you using and why? Let me know in your comments and please share.
Main image via Pexels