With the cost of living crisis rumbling on, more and more people are looking for ways to make money online, whether as a side hustle to bring in a little extra cash, or to replace their current job entirely.
Whichever is the case for you, selling digital products online could be perfect. There’s a wide range of options out there, meaning you’ve got a good chance of finding one that suits your existing skills and experience, and a range of different ways to pull money in too.
In this article, the OddsMonkey team assesses the many types of digital products out there, how best to sell them, the best platforms and marketplaces available, and the overall pros and cons of selling digital products online.
Digital products are, as they sound, non-physical products that can be transmitted digitally.
This is a more wide-ranging category of product than you might at first realise. As well as items like NFTs (non-fungible tokens), virtual goods and software, it includes products like eBooks, music, art, and online courses.
This means that most people can probably find something they’re qualified to create and sell, whether their line of work is in programming or more creative. It’s also possible for influencers to turn their social media following into digital customers, so if you’re growing your audience you might well wish to consider offering digital products to your fans.
We’ll run through some of the most commonly available digital products in the next section.
There are more kinds of digital products out there than you might think! Even if you don’t think there’s anything you know how to create and sell, if you’ve got existing skills of almost any sort, there’s probably a digital product you’d be able to offer to the public.
A few of the most common types of digital product are below:
In 2025, revenue from eBook sales is predicted to be over £550 million. That’s a huge market to tap into!
If you’ve harboured dreams of publishing a novel, or if you’ve got knowledge and experience to share as non-fiction, you might consider self-publishing. It’s a lot of work, but with the right combination of dedication and luck, you can make an impressive income from selling eBooks.
Digital art is another huge market. You will need to be a skilled artist with experience of digital mediums to expect success in selling digital art, but if that’s the case you’re in a great position.
You might offer commissions, create designs that can be turned into physical products themselves, or simply post your work on your social media channels and leverage your audience through influencing, affiliate marketing and/or Patreon.
You might not have thought of online courses as ‘digital products’ – but they definitely are, and they can be surprisingly profitable. People are keen to improve their skills these days, whether for profit or for fun, so if you’ve got experience in a particular area, you could consider putting together an online course on one of a number of learning platforms available online.
You’ll need to be able to demonstrate that you’ve got the expertise and authority to be offering this course, so make sure you know what you’re talking about before you get started!
Music is another kind of digital product that you might not think of right away. Naturally, if you want to sell recorded music you’ll need to have the right equipment to produce it, as well as suitable music to record that isn’t going to infringe on any copyright.
However, if you’re an experienced musician with a talent for composition, you could look at offering digital sheet music. You don’t need nearly as much equipment as for recording – just good composition software, which, if you’re in a position to be composing for profit, you probably already own.
Crafting has really taken off in recent years, and there are huge numbers of people selling their creations on platforms like Etsy or Folksy.
However, people aren’t just keen to buy craft items, they want to make them too. If you know your craft well enough to guide people through the process of making their own items, you could make ongoing profits just by putting together a knitting, sewing or crochet pattern.
A pattern has the huge advantage of taking up no time at all once you’ve created it, unlike physically crafted items. You won’t be able to charge as much for a pattern as you would for the real thing, but there’s no limit to the number of times you can sell it.
For a keen photographer, selling your work online is an obvious way to make money. There are a number of routes you can choose, from stock photography to competitions to selling print on demand products made from your images.
It can be tricky to make much money from your work, but if you’re a hobbyist photographer anyway, you might as well see if you can make some extra cash from it.
For anyone with some skill in graphic design or digital art, printable products can be a fantastic way to make some extra money online.
For example, you might sell designs for greetings cards, posters or wall art, or you might even offer designs for 3D printers so that people can simply print out a physical product.
Depending on your area of expertise, you can consider offering digital services alongside digital products.
For example, as a designer you might consult on a project for an existing client, or a fitness instructor might offer online personal fitness coaching alongside set training plans.
It’s a big category, but software is also a digital product! If you’re an experienced developer with a fantastic software idea, you could create and sell software.
Even something as simple as a basic game for iPhone has the potential to make serious money if it becomes popular, so if you’ve got the skill and tools to create software from scratch, it’s well worth putting the work in and seeing what happens.
If you’ve already got an audience on social media, you could consider selling membership of an exclusive club to your followers.
You might offer them exclusive content or rewards, such as the opportunity to spend time with you in person, in exchange for a monthly fee that gains them access to your inner circle.
That all depends on exactly what you’re selling! There are tons of different platforms and marketplaces out there, each of which is tailored to different types of products.
If you’re selling anything relating to craft, for example, Etsy is a great place to set up, whereas any digital products or memberships tied to a successful social media following might be well suited to a platform like Patreon.
Self-published eBooks tend to do best through Amazon KDP, while stock photography sites such as Shutterstock or Adobe Stock are particularly profitable for anyone selling stock photos.
Once you’ve decided on the kind of product to sell, your best bet is to carry out extensive research to establish what platforms you should sell on.
Again, your potential earnings will vary widely depending on the type of digital product you sell.
But whatever you choose to sell, you certainly shouldn’t expect to make a fortune from the word go. It takes time to build up your fledgling business, a lot of work and, often, a reasonable investment.
That said, once you get going, it’s possible to make very good money from selling digital products.
You should perform as much research as possible into the kind of product you intend to sell, and how well other similar sellers perform. Armed with this information, you should be able to work out a realistic amount you can expect to make from your new side hustle.
| Pros | Cons |
| Can generally be done from home | No guarantee of success |
| Uses your existing skills | May require significant start-up cost |
| Work can be done around your existing schedule | Many kinds of product sales are reliant on having an established social media following |
| Great way to harness an existing social media following | Digital products may be at risk of copyright infringement or outright theft |
| Will require a lot of work |
One crucial downside to selling digital products online is that you need to have either the skill and knowledge to create those products, or a sizeable social media following that you can rely on to buy anything you offer.
If neither of those things applies to you, you might be better off looking at alternative ways to make money online. One of the best out there is Matched Betting, a technique that allows you to take advantage of promotions from bookies to make reliable profits, without needing any existing skills or experience.
To find out more, take a look at the OddsMonkey beginner’s guide to Matched Betting, which takes you through all you need to know to get started with the UK’s best side hustle.
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