How To Sell Digital Products On Shopify: Your 2023 Guide

Shopify recently reduced its free trial period from a generous 14 days to just three days. Because your trial period starts when you sign up, and not when you start building your store, be sure you’re ready before you activate your Shopify trial. You will have a lot to do during the trial period, so make sure you don’t waste any of the time you have available.

Notice that when you sign up for your trial (see image below), Shopify gives you lots of choices for how to sell: through an online store, on an existing site, on social media, via marketplaces, or in person. Be sure to select as many as you’re interested in.

Screenshot of Shopify webpage, captured 3/21/2023

One of the first things you’ll do during your free trial is to choose a theme or template for your store. This is the framework you’ll use to create your online shop. Shopify’s themes are modern and stylish, and some of them are free. Others cost between $140-$180.

Remember that you won’t need any coding or programming knowledge, though you will have options if you’re comfortable dipping into HTML, CSS, or Shopify’s proprietary language called Liquid. You should find it easy to customize the theme you choose, including color scheme, branding elements, product pages, and more.

Screenshot of Shopify webpage

Once you have a rough version of your store set up — and don’t worry, it’s easy to come back to refine it — you’ll be ready to add products.

To enable digital downloads, enter each product as a separate item and create a product page for it. To indicate that it’s a digital product and not a tangible item, simply uncheck the shipping checkbox on each product page.

From your Shopify admin page, go to Products, then select or create a product. In the Shipping section of the product’s page, look for the box that says This is a physical product and uncheck that box. Click Save, and you’re done!

Before you can start to sell digital products on Shopify, you’ll need to add a free app to help you manage downloads. Shopify offers a free app, appropriately called Digital Downloads, that integrates seamlessly with Shopify stores and allows you to add PDFs, JPEGs, ZIP files, and more.

You’ll also find a total of 299 apps in Shopify’s app store related to digital products and downloads. Some of these are specific, such as one focused on recurring memberships, while others are more general. Apps are rated by users in the app marketplace, and you can sort the options to show you the newest apps or the most popular ones first.

Screenshot of Shopify webpage, captured 3/21/2023

You’ve got your download app, so now what? You’re ready to upload your products!

The exact process for uploading digital products will vary depending on which app you choose to use. For demonstration purposes, we’ll focus on Shopify’s free Digital Downloads app.

From your Shopify admin, click Products, then Add product. If your product is digital only, go under Shipping and unclick the box that says This is a physical product, and then click Save.

Under the product title, click More actions, then click Add digital file, and you will be taken to the Digital Downloads app page. Click Add files to upload files, then select the file you wish to add to this product. Click Publish, and you’re ready to sell.

Shopify also allows users to add digital files to existing products. For example, if you are selling a book, you could sell an audio version of a chapter or even provide an audio sample for free.

Shopify suggests that you place a test order before you fully roll out digital sales on the platform.

The easiest way to do this is to create a private coupon for a 100% discount. You will be the only one who can access the coupon, and you won’t record a dollar-value sale in Shopify that way.

You can use Shopify’s email templates to deliver digital downloads to your customers. Customize an automatic email with a download link for customers. Test the email, test the link, and test the download process so you can work out any kinks before your customers have to deal with them.

By this point, if you’ve made your way through Steps 1-6, you should have a good feel for Shopify, and you may be ready to decide if it’s the right platform for you. If you’d like to check out some alternatives, you can skip a little further down in this post to check out our suggestions.

If you’re ready to commit to Shopify, it’s time to choose a plan and set up a subscription before your free trial runs out. You cannot take your site live without choosing and paying for a plan.

Remember that all Shopify plans include unlimited products and bandwidth. All plans except for Shopify Starter include Shopify’s POS system. That will come in handy if you plan to sell in-person sometimes in addition to online.

Don’t be afraid to sign up for one of the lower-level plans. The Basic Shopify plan, for example, costs $39/month or $29/month if you pay for a year in advance. Even the basic plan includes all the tools you’ll need to sell online successfully, including an online store, secure checkout, multichannel selling, basic reports and marketing automations, Shopify POS Lite, and 24/7 support. You can always upgrade your Shopify plan if you find you need access to more advanced tools.

Every Shopify plan allows you to embed “buy now” buttons to sell products, including digital downloads. These buttons let you market your products on social media sites, in your blog, in emails, and anywhere else your customers are.

And again, you won’t need any coding know-how to use Shopify’s buy buttons. You will be able to copy a few lines of automatically generated code and plug it into the webpage or post where you want the buy button to appear. Customers who click the button will be directed to your checkout page to complete their purchase.

And, if you download an app such as Shopify’s Shopcode, you can even generate a QR code that acts like a buy button. That allows you to sell printed materials, like an event program, or in person at a festival or other event.

Shopify supports the sale of digital products. You will find some built-in support for digital sales on Shopify stores, and you can also download free Shopify apps to enable and support your plans for selling digital products on Shopify.

Shopify is a great choice for selling digital products online. We also like BigCommerce, Etsy, Squarespace, and Shift4Shop for digital products.

You can use Shopify to sell digital files like videos, songs, graphic art, NFTs, and more. Shopify says that its most profitable digital products include educational products, licenses for digital assets, membership sites, digital templates and tools, music or art, and services.

Shift4Shop offers a fully loaded free plan called End to End eCommerce that supports digital product sales. This free plan includes unlimited storage and advanced marketing and eCommerce tools.

You’ll need to download a free Shopify app, called Digital Downloads, if you want to sell virtual products on Shopify. You can also choose from hundreds of free and paid third-party apps. To enable digital product sales, you will need to add your products and then disable shipping on each listing.