Amazon’s dominance as the largest online marketplace has continued to provide a fertile environment for sellers to create thriving businesses. While many sellers choose to use the platform to sell physical inventory, some people are building stores that receive revenue entirely from digital products.
Selling digital products presents a number of advantages, including low to no cost of production, which translates to high-profit margins and easy scalability.
Let’s dive in to find out how you can use Amazon to sell digital products - and if it’s a good place to do so.
Why Sell Digital Instead of Physical Goods?
Digital products are becoming increasingly popular - but why? Before we dive into the list of best sellers on Amazon, let's consider the reasons that there is a growing group of savvy entrepreneurs who are reaping the inherent benefits of selling a digital product:
Diversity
Digital products can take on many forms, with an abundance of opportunities for people of any skill level. On the less technical end of the spectrum, someone can create a course, ebook, or digital art. Those who are tech-savvy can create and launch software, including SaaS which has the potential to be both highly profitable and generate one of the most coveted business models–recurring revenue.
Low to no cost to produce
Most product creation includes inherent development costs, and even if you’re reselling, you have to invest upfront in inventory to flip while risking the potential of having to sell it for a loss. However, with digital products, the only real investment you’ll need to make into crafting a winner is putting in time to finish it. If you have a good product-market fit and a solid product, you’ll benefit from incredible profit margins that can be well over 90%, a figure that is absolutely unbeatable in other ecommerce niches.
Highly scalable
Since all of your fulfillment is virtual and instantaneous, there is basically no difference in cost to deliver one order or 100 orders in a single day, meaning that if you reach a large enough market in a short enough time, you can scale quickly and easily without needing to change anything about your current fulfillment methods. This is in stark contrast to physical products which take on huge logistical burdens should revenue increase significantly in a short amount of time. One of the most effective methods of reaching scale with digital products can be achieved by free or paid marketing through social media.
Abundance of tools and resources to help you
Not too long ago, selling digital products used to require technical know-how to create in addition to intricate and expensive marketing efforts to get exposure. However, today, advancements in technology and resources have made it incredibly easy to create and successfully launch a digital products business. Many of these resources are free, including Whop, one of the most cutting-edge leaders in creating an abundant future for the new internet economy.
These are just some of the many benefits of being a digital products business owner. Let’s look into how you can use the large reach of Amazon as the first place to launch this type of online business.
Selling Digital Products on Amazon’s Marketplace
Amazon makes it easy for anyone to sign up for a seller account for free. From there, you’ll have the option to sell any type of product, from physical to digital.
In order to determine whether or not selling digital products on Amazon is a good choice for you, let’s start by taking a look at the type of digital products that you can sell on the platform.
If you want to learn more about selling anything on Amazon, check out our guide: How to Sell on Amazon for Beginners.
What Type of Digital Products Can You Sell on Amazon?
While selling digital products can offer an incredibly wide range of options, if you want to sell digital products on Amazon, you will be limited to these main options:
EBooks
Amazon was first started as the internet’s largest place to buy and sell books, so it’s no surprise that they’ve made the digital transition to being the largest marketplace for ebooks with its Kindle store.
Independent authors are able to list their works on this platform for free simply by creating an Amazon seller account and uploading a book file along with its price and description. The list of popular niches in Amazon’s Kindle Ebooks is vast and spans every corner of non-fiction to fiction.
The perks of using this program as an author on Amazon include the ability to reach Amazon’s massive marketplace in addition to the ability to offer physical copies printed on demand with the Kindle Direct Publishing program. You’ll also be able to accurately gauge demand and competition with Amazon’s Best Sellers Ranking (BSR) in different niches. You can also create audiobook versions of your textbooks to broaden your reach.
Here's a complete guide to making money selling eBooks
Apps
Apps are a digital product that has made a large group of people significant income. Amazon has a rich app store where creators can debut their custom applications with relative ease and speed compared to somewhere like Apple’s app store which is known to have a time-consuming and difficult approval process.
In order to list an app for sale on Amazon, you’ll first need to sign up for an account with Amazon Developer Console. Once your app is created, uploading it is fairly straightforward–you just need to upload your app’s APK or App Bundle File and then select your app’s pricing and distribution channels.
You’ll then need to submit your app for approval, which should be fairly easy as long as your app is family-friendly and not illegal. Upon approval, your Amazon app will be available to download in the platform’s app store via your chosen distribution channels. It has millions of users and downloads and is generally less competitive than other app marketplaces.
Digital Art
Digital artists often use Etsy as their preferred platform to open up an online store to showcase their goods, but it’s also possible to use Amazon to do this very same thing with Amazon’s print on demand program, Merch on Demand.
With this program, graphic artists and photographers can give fans the ability to buy their art on a variety of physical products including wearable merchandise, coffee mugs, pillows and tote bags, all while not needing to host or store physical inventory.
If you want to learn more ways to make money as a digital artist, check out our comprehensive guide on the topic right here.
The Best-selling Digital Products on Amazon This Year
Ready to give digital products on Amazon a try? Here are the best categories and niches to start with.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Books
Top selling KDP Niches:
Education
Upon browsing the best sellers section of Kindle books, one category that rises to the top is that of education, specifically in the realms of business and entrepreneurship. Current top sellers include books on how to make videos for marketing and to make a living as a creator, how to leverage and profit from AI, and detailed guides on technical topics like coding and photography.
Fiction
A perennial top seller in Kindle Direct Publishing is fiction, and it’s making many first-time authors that are able to bring the reader into a whole new world and narrative can earn a healthy income selling these type of books on Amazon. On KDP, Romance novels are at the top–there’s a strong demand for easy-to-read, captivating plots that engage the reader with fantasies and relatable characters. A close second to romance is thriller and mystery, which keep readers turning pages for surprising plot twists, sometimes through vivid and mythical realms.
Apps
Top Amazon apps:
Games
In all app stores, including Amazon, games take the top throne to fight off boredom and to keep the brain engaged while enduring something mundane like spending time in a waiting room or on a flight. While some games involve intricate plots and a thoroughly designed world, some games, like word games, puzzles, or simple RPGs, can be quite simple to make and launch. While you’ll be dealing with a lot of competition here, if your game picks up in popularity on Amazon’s app store, it can yield significant income.
Education
Amazon app store users also greatly value education and self-development, so it’s not a surprise that apps that teach things like language learning or other skill development rank among best sellers in Amazon’s apps. One niche that is particularly high-ranking and fairly easy to enter without any previous clout is childhood education. Numerous apps have been freshly launched and are raking in tons of revenue from the many parents and caretakers who turn to Amazon for assistance in this realm.
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Merch on Demand
Top Merch by Amazon designs:
Trending
While trends always change, if you’re on the pulse of things and act quickly, you’ll be able to cash in big by capturing trends into a design or quote that defines the current meta. Recognizable, viral quotes from or renditions of individuals who are the latest to have gone viral on social media always end up at the top of Merch by Amazon charts.
Inspirational Quotes
One of the lowest effort digital products to launch on Amazon with the potential for high demand is the realm of inspirational quotes. From motivational quotes to uplifting and religious text, there’s a thriving market for those who want to display their belief in the form of quotes printed on demand to wearables and household items like coffee mugs, posters, and pillows. The key to rising to the top charts in this area is to resonate with a specific audience and to leverage brand marketing to stand out from inevitable copycats or similar sellers.
Niche art
Artists who want to broaden the reach of their unique art can benefit greatly by using Amazon’s merch on demand to give their work various mediums to live on. A large number of buyers are looking beyond common pop culture to support original artists, so using the large reach of Amazon to gain exposure for original artwork can pay off big. Be sure to focus on keywords and potentially utilize Amazon ads in addition to social media marketing so that your work will be discovered more easily.
Is It Worth Selling Digital Products on Amazon?
Although there’s potential to create a good source of income selling digital products on Amazon, the biggest downside is the inherent restrictions on the types of digital products you’re allowed to sell on the platform.
Not only are there few options for which types of products you can sell, but you’ll also need approval if you want to join the Merch by Amazon program or list an app on its app store.
The only thing you can sell as a beginner is an eBook using KDP, but very few people can put the long amount of time in and follow through to start and finish a book that will stand out on the Kindle marketplace. Additionally, writing a good book could take a minimum of several weeks, a few months, or longer.
So, while Amazon dominates physical ecommerce and is perhaps best known for its game-changing opportunity of hands-off selling with FBA, it’s not a good place for beginners to sell digital products as its environment caters more towards experienced authors, merchandise branders and app developers.
Can you sell digital products on Amazon? Amazon's Digital Services Hub explained
Where Else Can You Sell Digital Products?
Thankfully, if your skills and needs aren’t a match for using Amazon to sell digital products, you still have many other great choices, including those that offer a much higher degree of flexibility in product choice.
Here are some other marketplaces for selling digital products:
🏆Whop
If anything is to come close to having the diversity and activity in the digital product realm as Amazon does for physical products, it would have to be Whop. The platform is home to many sellers who have built seven-figure businesses completely from scratch, all within the past few years. As a seller on Whop, you can take advantage of the ability to sell almost anything digital to a relevant audience, from eBooks and courses to private communities, SaaS and even podcasts.
EBay
EBay is the most beginner-friendly marketplace for selling anything online as it has a simple sign-up process that immediately gives you access to sell an incredible variety of products in basically any condition. Although it’s best for reselling physical products, it’s possible to use eBay to sell digital products. You can sell more of these on eBay than on Amazon – examples include info products, tickets, websites, domains and more.
Etsy
Etsy was launched as the top marketplace for independent artists to sell their handmade goods, and while it maintains that reputation, it’s now becoming well known as home to a variety of digital products that are making its creators a good stream of passive income. Digital products that perform well on Etsy include planners and organizers, Canva templates and eBooks.
Sell With Whop: The Best Marketplace for Digital Products
The best part about selling on Whop is that signing up takes only a few minutes to get started.
Not only can you create any type of product to launch on Whop’s marketplace, you can create your own whop. Think of this as a highly customizable online space that you can host for free and equip with powerful, easy-to-install apps, including forums, Telegram integrations, online courses, and more.
So, if you’ve been on the fence about creating and launching a digital product, now is the time to get started so you can be one of the early creators who are cashing in on Whop's innovative marketplace that is trailblazing the future of ecommerce.
