This article is a modified excerpt from my new e-book Passive income for creatives. This new e-book talks about selling digital products and opening an online store with Shopify, how to build your own website, how to grow your social media channels and many other methods to set up your own passive income system.
If you are interested in building a passive income system then you absolutely must look into setting up an online store.
The benefits of an online store and selling digital products are clear: no packaging issues, no shipping issues, no employee issues in warehouses, instant delivery to the customer etc.
Digital product sales have been responsible for well over 50% of my passive income revenue.
How do you get started? You need two things: a digital product and an online store.
Not sure what you're going to sell? Here are some examples of digital products:
- E-books
- Webinars
- Worksheets
- Original music
- Custom software
- Podcast episodes
- Digital subscriptions
- Special industry software
- Photography editing presets
Pretty much anything that exists in digital form that can provide value to a group of people can be turned into a digital product. Think of the niche you are in, think of what you needed or what you wish you knew when you started and turn whatever that is into a digital product.
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The next thing you need is an online store.
I use Shopify for a number of reasons:
- It's easy to use and simple to set up.
- It's affordable and has different price plans.
- It's used by a lot of my peers and they all recommend it.
- The mobile app is great.
- It has a lot of third party support through the Shopify app store.
Let’s have a look at how to set up a Shopify store.
How to set up a Shopify store
- Register for a Shopify account using this link.
- Choose a design template for your store, tune it later on.
- Install the digital downloads application from the Shopify app store.
- Upload your digital products using the digital downloads plugin.
- Integrate your online store products on your own website by using the Shopify Buy button. The Shopify Buy Button is a simple way of implementing nearly all of Shopify’s features on your own website.
- Start selling your digital products and make money!
You can also use your Shopify store as your main website. Shopify has built in blogging features and allows you to create custom pages etc.
I also highly recommend setting up an affiliate program for your own store. This allows other people to promote and sell your product in exchange for a fee or a percentage of the sale.
I use the free to use app GoAffPro for this. There's a paid version but the free version has most of the options you need. Get GoAffPro here.
Want to learn more about passive income? Check out my new e-book Passive income for creatives:
