Let’s start making profits with digital dropshipping products! Dropshipping has revolutionized the way businesses operate in recent years. It has made it easier than ever to start an online store with no inventory and minimal upfront costs. While most people associate dropshipping with physical products, the model can also be applied to digital products.
Without a doubt, dropshipping digital products has its own set of advantages and challenges. So, in this article, we will explore the ins and outs of this business model, including the benefits, potential pitfalls, and digital best-sellers. This article will provide valuable insights into dropshipping digital products to help dropshippers break into the digital marketplace.
What Are Digital Dropshipping Products?
Unlike physical products, digital products are intangible and do not require shipping. This allows us to mark up our profit margin as there are no shipping costs added to the price. In a digital dropshipping model, the seller partners with a third-party supplier who creates or licenses the digital product. For example, we can dropship e-books, software, courses, graphics, and more.
Interestingly, the fulfillment process will be unique to the product itself. The supplier may just provide access to the product in some cases; in others, they may even do onboarding. To clarify, to conduct the onboarding process, the supplier will help our customers with setup and a platform walkthrough of the digital product.
Nevertheless, digital dropshipping products have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their low overhead costs and ease of scaling.
Digital Vs. Physical Product Dropshipping: Advantages & Disadvantages
When it comes to building our product catalog, we should consider both digital and physical products. With dropshipping, there are advantages and disadvantages to both. So, let’s take a look at the benefits and downfalls of physical and digital dropshipping products.
Dropshipping Digital Products: Advantages
Dropshipping digital products can be a lucrative business. In fact, there are numerous advantages to dropshipping digital products.
Let’s take a look at the advantages of dropshipping digital products:
- Low overhead costs
- High-profit margins
- Easier to create and distribute
- Never out of stock
- Easy scalability
Digital products are cheap to create, meaning that the cost of starting a dropshipping business is low. Plus, they often have a higher profit margin. This is because there are no costs associated with manufacturing and shipping.
Additionally, delivery is easy and affordable because they do not require shipping or handling. Digital products can also be purchased an unlimited number of times without running out of stock. Because of this, it’s easy to scale and reach a larger customer base.
Dropshipping Digital Products: Disadvantages
On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages to dropshipping digital products. We should consider the following:
- Free content
- Product restrictions
A lot of digital products can be found for free, making it harder to compete in the market. That’s why we need to do our research and choose the perfect target market where we can make solid profits.
Moreover, selling digital products often comes with product restrictions. Some product restrictions include age restrictions, licensing restrictions, geography restrictions, and more.
Overall, it’s important to do research and ensure that we are complying with all laws and regulations when dropshipping digital products.
Dropshipping Physical Products: Advantages
Now, when it comes to dropshipping physical products, we can target larger audiences. Plus, we can enjoy advantages like:
- Dropshipping automation
- Minimal starting costs
- Reduced risk
- Multi-channel selling
- Scalability
- Wide variety of products
- Flexibility
Automating our entire dropshipping process will optimize our business, reduce errors and help us scale faster. Plus, with minimal starting costs, we can start making profits without investing a bunch of money upfront. We can also reduce risks since, with dropshipping, we don’t hold our inventory.
Furthermore, to maximize sales, we can adopt a multi-channel selling approach. This means we can reach larger audiences by utilizing different selling channels. As a result, we can scale faster. We can also scale by offering a large variety of products and easily testing their profitability. Lastly, dropshipping allows us to have the flexibility to work anytime and from anywhere.
Dropshipping Physical Products: Disadvantages
However, there are a couple of disadvantages we need to keep in mind. Let’s take a look at the disadvantages of dropshipping physical products:
- Competition
- Product quality
- Fulfillment timeline
Dropshipping has become a popular eCommerce business model that offers dropshippers solid profit potential. Because of this, the dropshipping market has become quite competitive. But, we can offer excellent customer service and market our store to differentiate ourselves from the competition.
Another concern with dropshipping physical products is product quality. Since third-party suppliers fulfill our orders, we can’t be sure about the quality. But, we can always test the products ourselves or use suppliers like CJDropshipping that offer quality checks.
And finally, keeping up with our fulfillment timeline can be a struggle since our suppliers ship our orders. However, we can automate our dropshipping fulfillment process with tools like AutoDS’ automatic order fulfillment solution. This way, we ensure our customers receive their orders without delay.
Ultimately, it comes down to our own dropshipping preferences. Whether we dropship physical or digital products, we’ll surely make solid profits.
7 Best Digital Dropshipping Products To Sell
To ensure we make a good number of sales, we need to find profitable digital products. However, we have to be careful when selling these products. It’s important that we abide by copyright and patent laws.
Now, let’s take a look at the 7 best digital dropshipping products to sell:
eBooks
E-books are highly sought-after digital products by creators and consumers alike. Their production requires only written text and a few relevant images, making them relatively easy to create. Plus, they’re easily distributed on major marketplaces or self-made online stores. To buy the rights to exciting eBooks at a low price, we can utilize a resource like PLR.me.
Notably, the worldwide revenue of the eBook market increased significantly in 2021 by around $1.3 billion to over $16.1 billion. The Statista Digital Market Outlook estimates that the revenue will continue to grow and, in 2026, reach around $18.7 billion. Undoubtedly, making it a profitable digital dropshipping product.
Audiobooks
As dropshippers, we can sell a wide variety of audiobooks. Additionally, if we offer various translations, we can reach a wider global audience. To explain, audiobooks are voice recordings of book readings that we can listen to instead of reading the book.
With the increasing popularity of audiobooks, there is a large market for dropshippers to tap into. In fact, revenue from audiobooks is expected to grow 26.4% every year from 2022 to 2030 and reach $35.05 billion in 2030. This makes audiobooks the fastest-growing book format in the world.
Digital Templates & Tools
Intangible tools that help professionals to overcome challenges are a good example of digital tools. These digital solutions cater to the common needs and pain points of specific audiences and are sold online.
We can follow interest trends to find the best time to dropship digital templates and tools. Following interest trends help us understand when our customer base has peak interest. Plus, we can deduce the profitability of the product based on the demand and interest it generates. That way, we can find high-demand products and maximize our profits.
For instance, these digital products include:
- Digital marketing strategy templates for entrepreneurs
- Resume templates for job-seekers
- Mobile apps for businesses
- Graphic design templates for brochures, flyers, posters, etc.
- Adobe Photoshop filters and plugins for media editors
- Icons, fonts, or UX Kits for web designers
Beginner’s Tip: Target freelancers with digital products like templates and tools to appeal to their need for productivity and workflow efficiency.
Artwork
Custom prints or print-on-demand t-shirts and digital artwork are feasible options to tap into the digital products market. Designers and artists can produce a vast range of distinctive and valuable products. So, selling digital art files provides access to a vast customer base.
The interest in digital artwork is dynamic but is mostly above the 50% interest mark. With that said, dropshipping digital products proves to have solid profit potential.
To elaborate, digital artwork examples include:
- Logos
- Brand kits
- Designs & Photos
- PowerPoint themes
- Original artwork
- Clip art
- Stock icons
- Card designs
- Animations
… and much more!
Photography
Premium and high-quality photos are among the most coveted digital products today. Notably, bloggers and website owners are the primary consumers. Dropshippers can sell stock photos, backgrounds, website images, etc.
To ensure success in this competitive market, we need a well-designed website. This is crucial for us to showcase the photography. Competitive pricing and exceptional images can help digital dropshippers do well selling their photographs on their website.
Plus, the total revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 6.99%. As a result, this projects a market volume of $26.11 billion by 2027. With a revenue prediction like this, it means we can join in and take part in earning some of that money.
Software Programs
We can turn code into cash. The software industry is a vast and ever-expanding market with numerous opportunities. The revenue in the global software market is projected to reach $650.70 billion in 2023.
People use computers and mobile devices daily. So, dropshippers have the potential to sell apps that streamline business and everyday tasks. For example, we can sell Shopify themes, and WordPress plugins, we can even sell project management and scheduling tools.
As a matter of fact, software programs are highly desired and necessary, making them great for digital dropshipping. Software programs can result in a highly lucrative digital dropshipping business.
Guides
Like all the other digital dropshipping products, guides don’t require shipping or handling. To explain, a digital guide can provide step-by-step instructions for pretty much anything. We can sell a plant-based diet guide, keto guide, cooking guide, etc.
Additionally, dropshipping guides can include tips and strategies for optimizing a certain aspect of a business. For example, marketing and sales guides, software guides, and more.
Without a doubt, there is always a demand for quality guides. Therefore, digital guides can be a profitable digital product to dropship.
All in all, dropshipping digital products is a great way to eliminate a few steps in the dropshipping process. On top of that, digital dropshipping products can bring us significant profits.
Boost Your Digital Dropshipping Profits With Affiliate Marketing & Automation
Finally! It’s time to boost our sales and increase our digital dropshipping profits. With that said, we’ll look into affiliate marketing and dropshipping automation.
Affiliate Marketing
To run a successful digital dropshipping business, we need to generate interest so we can encourage sales. Getting the right message in front of our target audience at the perfect time is key. Plus, we need to navigate through the intense competition and do our best to stand out.
So, we need to utilize affiliate marketing to ensure our digital dropshipping products are selling. Affiliate marketing involves referring a product or service by sharing it on a blog, social media platform, podcast, or website. The affiliate earns a commission each time someone makes a purchase through the unique affiliate link associated with their recommendation.
Affiliate marketing is an effective way to increase sales and drive traffic to our dropshipping business. This is especially true for businesses that sell digital products, such as ebooks, software, and online courses.
By partnering with affiliates, we can tap into their existing audience and leverage their influence to promote our products. This can be a win-win situation, as the affiliate earns money for promoting our product while we gain exposure and sales.
Dropshipping Automation
A surefire way to boost our dropshipping profits is by automating our business. However, we can only automate our dropshipping business if we are selling physical products. In fact, dropshipping automation is the biggest advantage physical products have over digital dropshipping. So, even though there are a lot of benefits to digital dropshipping, dropshipping physical products may help us scale faster.
Generally speaking, manual dropshipping can get complicated, laborious, and time-consuming. In contrast, using an automation tool like AutoDS will streamline our dropshipping business.
AutoDS automates the entire dropshipping process from start to finish, increasing overall efficiency. We can automate our fulfillment process, automatically track the price and stock changes, and even optimize our product research.
Moreover, AutoDS has a ton of tools and features that make dropshipping efficient and scalable:
- Product Imports
- Order Fulfillment
- Automatic Price Optimization
- Inventory Management
- Price/Stock Monitoring
…and more!
After getting the hang of physical dropshipping, we can combine and create new product categories to include digital goods. So, while we focus on dropshipping our digital products, AutoDS can automate the physical product dropshipping tasks.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Digital Dropshipping?
Digital dropshipping refers to a business model where an entrepreneur sets up an online store to sell digital products. In digital dropshipping, you can sell eBooks, software, digital artwork, or other non-physical items.
What Are The Best Digital Products To Dropship?
The best digital products to dropship are eBooks, Audio Books, and Software Programs. These digital products have shown great profit potential and are sure to help us scale our dropshipping business.
Is It Legal To Dropship Digital Products?
Yes, it is legal to dropship digital products, as long as you have the right to sell them and don’t infringe any copyright laws. It’s important to ensure we abide by laws, regulations, and guidelines when selling digital products.
How Do I Start A Digital Dropshipping Business?
After opening your dropshipping store, you need to find which digital products are most profitable to dropship. Then, you need to market your products, make sales and fulfill customer orders.
Conclusion
And there we have it – a deep dive into the world of digital dropshipping! We are now equipped with the information we need to start dropshipping digital products. Notably, we’ve seen that digital products have good profit potential and don’t require any shipping or handling.
However, to better prepare us for the world of dropshipping, we should take a look at the following articles:
