Last Updated on February 24, 2024
Selling digital products is one of the best way to make money online. Not worrying about inventory, shipping, or damaged goods is definitely a huge perk. As long as they have an internet connection, your customers can be anywhere in the world to purchase your product. This eCommerce dream is now reality and today we will list high profiled marketplaces to get you going.
Apple Stores
You can sell content on iTunes, the App Store, the iBookstore and the Mac App Store. To sell on iTunes you have to have a registered Apple ID, with a credit card for verification purposes.
Magazines
Magazines are uploaded with APPS, and customers can subscribe to the magazine (as people can pre-pay for their subscription or it can be free (with ads inside for APP creator to profit). Magazines are sold by Apple from their “Newstand”.
Books
You can sell your eBooks on the iBookstore via “iTunes Connect”. There is a “paid” book account, and a “free” book account, and the free one is quick and easy to join, whereas the “paid” one is more complicated requiring tax and bank details.
Free books do not require “ISBN”s, and ISBN’s are optional with the paid books.
The iBookstore only accepts “ePub” files and “multi-touch” books. “ePub” files are easily created with the free online program Callibre, whereby you can upload any format book and it will convert it to ePub for free. To create a multi-touch book you will need to create your book with the Apple iBooks Author Program.
Podcasts
You cannot sell a podcast on iTunes, however, it is free to upload your podcast to the iTunes directory.
Apps
To sell APPS on Apple you have to first apply to join the iOS Developer Program or Mac Developer Program. All APPS must be accepted by Apple, whereas APPS are all welcome on the Android database.
Udemy
Udemy is a growing marketplace for online video course creators. Most courses consist of many small videos put together as one big course. Udemy is well known for its ease of creating and uploading video course content.
You can upload video, documents and graphics as required in order to teach your course and they are all hosted by Udemy.
Customers come into Udemy and search keywords of a course they want to learn. They then select a course from the course options, they pay the course fee, and then they can stream the course (or download the videos) any time from then on from their Udemy account. Their settings are saved in their Udemy profile account so they can come and go as much as they please. There is also a space for “chatting” to the teacher who can answer questions posted by students, which all other students can read too.
The benefit of Udemy over other video marketplaces like Mindbites is that it doesn’t cost anything to list your online video course, it is free to upload and host one of your video courses. However, if someone buys your course, then Udemy will keep 20-30% of the sale price. If you drive that traffic to your course, you earn more money. Affiliates can also sell Udemy courses for a commission.
Udemy do require that your course be at least 60% video content and at least an hour of video.
MindBites
Mindbites is a marketplace where you can upload your video online courses and people can buy and watch on the Mindbites website (where your digital course is hosted), and you can even embed the video players right into your own website or blog.
The main difference with Mindbites from Udemy is that you have to pay to have your course online for people to buy and view (whereas Udemy is free to upload and host your courses). Mindbites has different size accounts depending on the size of your videos, the smaller your online course data, the cheaper it is to host them on Mindbites.
The “free” account with Mindbites will hold up to 250MB of data and any sales made on your account pays Mindbites 35% in commission when a sale is made. But there are larger accounts with more features, and less commission is payable to Mindbites for a higher paid plan.
The video player has a “promo” video size that people can watch which is intended to make the viewer want to purchase the full video at your pre-determined price.
Like Udemy Mindbites has an affiliate program to encourage other people to sell your video course for you.
You can also upload other documents with your video course for the buyer to receive when they buy your video. You can also put your collection of videos into a “series” to sell as a set. So a customer could just buy one video to do one task, or a collection of videos to learn a whole new skillset.
Warrior Forum
The Warrior Forum is a large forum with over 600,000 registered users, which appears to have at any one time between 5,000 and 10,000 people inside the forum browsing live. It is free to join the forum, and you can post questions and answers to question any time.
For online product creators the Warrior Forum is a Hub of activity of newbie internet marketers looking for training, tools and advice on how to move forward in their online careers.
The Warrior Forum has a special area named the “Warrior Special Offers” and inside this area is an ongoing stream of online product creators and internet marketers listing their products for purchase (although some now give things away free in order to receive your email address – this is called “list building”).
To purchase a WSO “thread” will set you back $40, a one-time fee, and once your thread is “live” anyone who visits the WSO area will see your thread in the directory and they can buy your product there and then.
The down side to WSO’s is that it doesn’t stay on the top page one of the WSO forum for long, usually less than a day. However, after your “thread” goes beyond page three you are allowed to “bump” the thread for another $40.
You need to source affiliates to sell your products on the WSO, or traffic alone will not bring much sales. The Warrior Plus affiliate program (for a small fee) works alongside WSO’s to manage your affiliates, which are sourced from Warrior Forum profiles, this way you can avoid any suspicious affiliates out.
You can also sell your JV Zoo product, or Clickbank product from within the WSO forum.
JV Zoo
JV Zoo is a real contender for Clickbank as it has grown in popularity since its inception only a few years ago.
The main success of JV Zoo lies in it’s ability to seamlessly integrate with the Warrior Forum. Unlike Clickbank, the seller and the affiliate are immediately paid into their Paypal accounts. Product creators also have the benefit of perusing the affiliate applications to promote their products before they approve them. This way you avoid accepting a fraudulent affiliates, which can happen.
JV Zoo also has many built in benefits, which all compete with Clickbank, including:
- Creating dime sales (increasing the price with each sale)
- Lifetime commissions for affiliates for future sales on your site
You need to know that JV Zoo only works with Paypal, if you can’t use Paypal you won’t be able to use JV Zoo. Sometimes certain countries can’t use Paypal.
JV Zoo listing and sales fees are also relatively low compared to Clickbank, but like eJunkie, you may find the affiliate force at JV Zoo not as strong as Clickbank and you may have to recruit your affiliates (or Joint Venture partners) yourself in order to sell your digital product.
Most product creators list on marketplaces like JV Zoo because they intend to market their product to their own email list. Therefore the demand on affiliates are not as large to turn a good profit.