The Right Tech for Bloggers to Sell Digital Products 

Are you looking for ways to monetize your blog? If so, then you should definitely consider selling digital products. There are many benefits of doing so:

• You can make money while you sleep
• It’s easy to set up an online shop on any website
• You don’t need to have inventory in stock
• You can sell anything that is digital (ebooks, videos, courses, templates etc.)

And while creating digital products can be quick and easy, where a lot of bloggers get stuck is figuring out the tech to actually sell and automatically deliver the digital product.

If you need some digital products ideas create, check out our post on 102 Digital Product Ideas for Bloggers.

Now figuring out what tech will work best to sell your digital product depends on the type of product you’re selling.

The Easiest Way to Sell and Deliver Digital Downloads is Convertkit

ConvertKit is one of the most popular email marketing tools available today. It allows you to easily convert your blog readers into subscribers by offering them free content in exchange for their email address. Once they subscribe, you can send them valuable content through emails.

With ConvertKit, you can use different types of autoresponders such as welcome series, follow ups, and more. You can also segment your email list based on the actions they took after subscribing.

But Convertkit took things a step further when they added commerce functionality. Making it incredibly easy to sell and deliver:

• eBooks
• Paid Newsletters
• Coaching
• +more

Since most bloggers will be using an email service provider anyway, Convertkit is a great option for both email marketing and selling your digital products.

Plus the commerce functionality is included without you having to pay more. Convertkit charges a 3.5% +$0.30 transaction fee, so you only pay when you make a sale.

Convertkit Commerce allows you to upload and sell a wide variety of digital file types, you can even just set up a tip jar if you want.

If you’re already using Convertkit and haven’t taken advantage of the commerce feature, what are you waiting for? You could be selling digital products by the end of the day!

Convertkit is ideal for selling downloadable products or monetizing your newsletter.

However, if you’re looking to sell online courses or other kinds of digital products, then Convertkit isn’t your best option.

Convertkit Commerce Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions about selling with Convertkit, we’ve answered the most common questions below!

Can you sell physical products on Convertkit?

No, at this time, only digital products are supported.

You’re free to sell anything you want, but currently, ConvertKit Commerce only handles digital products. If you decide to offer something else, you’ll be responsible for that offering.

Can you sell courses on Convertkit?

Yes. You can sell any kind of course on Convertkit. However, there are limitations, because it would need to be something they could download, which wouldn’t work for most digital courses. Using a tool like ThriveCart would be a better fit for selling digital courses.

How much does Convertkit Commerce Cost?

There is the 3.5% + $0.30 transaction fee for each sale made, but otherwise, it is included at no additional cost on all Convertkit plans, including the free plan!

The Best Tech For Selling & Hosting Digital Courses is Thrivecart

Thrivecart is a powerful shopping cart platform that makes it super easy to host and sell digital courses. And since it integrates with all the major payment processors, you can accept payments from anywhere in the world.

With Thrivecart, you can quickly build beautiful sales and check out pages that lead directly to your course inside Thrivecart Learn and integrate with your favorite email marketing service to send emails to your customers.

ThriveCart Features

Thrivecart makes it easy to set up your online shop and start selling. Though there are definitely a few tips I’d wish I’d known when I got started that can help set you up for long-term success. The platform offers a range of features designed to help you grow your business including:

• A built-in shopping cart system
• Payment gateways
• One-click upsells and bumps
• A/B Testing
• Coupons
• Funnels for upsells and downsells
• Analytics tracking (it includes analytics but you can also insert your GoogleAnalytics code)
• And many more…

Integrations

The best part about Thrivecart is its ability to integrate with multiple tools. It also gives you the ability to embed carts, making an integration not always necessary.

This means you can easily add your product listings to WordPress, Squarespace, and any other site where you’re already publishing content.

What is Thrivecart Learn – All About the Learn Platform

In 2021 Thrivecart introduced ThriveCart Learn, a course hosting platform that is included at no extra charge. (Did we mention Thrivecart has lifetime pricing?) Making it super easy to enroll students into the course once they purchase and control access if a payment fails.

Learn allows for unlimited courses, unlimited modules, unlimited lessons, and unlimited students.

You can create your course using the drag-and-drop interface, with lots of formatting options available.

It offers all the basic tools you need to build your online store without any additional costs. If you want to add extra functionality, you can upgrade to Learn+ at a reasonable one-time cost.

You can learn more about setting up your courses in Learn here.

Is Thrivecart worth it?

Yes! ThriveCartart makes it easy to set up and sell your products. It has a one-time fee, saving you tons down the road. Plus, there is an extensive knowledge base with tons of educational content and a helpful Facebook community, to help you get started.

Funnels with ThriveCart

If you’re looking to build a sales funnel, Thrivecart makes it easy to offer several upsells and downsells similar to what you might see with Clickfunnels, at a fraction of the cost. Learn more about setting up Funnels in ThriveCart here.

Detailed Stats Area

In order to see how your business is doing, analytics are essential. ThriveCart provides detailed analytics that can help you see refund rates, churn rate on subscriptions and even how well your affiliate program is doing (note: the affiliate program feature is only available with ThriveCart Pro).

It will estimate your earnings for the month based on your sales so far, helping you to gauge business finances.

Does Thrivecart Learn include video hosting?

No, while you can embed videos in your course, ThriveCart does not include video hosting. You’ll need another program to do that, some options include:

• Vimeo
• Youtube

High Converting Checkout Pages

The checkout page is one of the most important pages on any website. It’s where people will decide whether they want to continue with their purchase. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they may leave without making a purchase.

Thrivecart includes prebuilt checkouts that work perfectly for digital products, there are also several free checkout page templates you can import into your ThriveCart account.

Or you can purchase templates optimized with images and copy.

Embeddable Cart Pages And Popups

If you already have a sales page set up and are just looking to move your tech over, ThriveCart offers embeddable cart pages and pop ups.

This allows customers to shop without leaving your site or requiring you to build new sales pages.

A/B Testing

Thrivecart allows you to test different versions of your product and then compare them side by side. This helps you figure out which version converts best.

For example, let’s say you have two versions of a product. Version A sells 10% better than Version B.

You can use the same testing method when creating multiple variations of your product.

Automation

If you’re looking to automate some of the tasks associated with running a business, then Thrivecart’s automation tools will save you hours every week.

For example, you can have it take action based on certain behaviors like if a purchase was made with a specific coupon code, have them put into a specific email sequence inside your email marketing service.

How ThriveCart Compares to its Competition

The biggest advantage of Thrivecart is that it’s built specifically for online merchants and is available for a one-time cost of just $495. It offers a variety of features that will save you time and money.

And if you need more features like:

• the ability to run an affiliate program,
• calculate sales tax
• predicted revenue
• Dunning/automated retry of failed recurring payments

You can get ThriveCart Pro at a one-time cost as well, ($690 last I checked).

ThriveCart Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions about selling with ThriveCart? We’ve answered the most common questions below!

How do you do a test purchase on ThriveCart?

Test purchases let you try out a product without actually buying it. Allowing you to check that everything is working before you open it up to customers.

Simply select “test mode” when creating your product inside Thrivecart. Then once you’re done testing, select “Live” to open the cart and start collecting payments.

How Much Does ThriveCart Learn Cost

Learn is included in the price of ThriveCart which costs $495 or if you get ThriveCart Pro $690. If you want to upgrade to Learn+ it is an additional one-time cost of $195. Considering a year of Teachable Pro (most similar in functionality) is $1188, the ThriveCart Lifetime deal is a lot of savings!

If Thrivecart seems like too much, then go with Milotree Cart

Milotree Cart’s selling point besides its lifetime pricing is its simplicity, you can go from zero to selling a product and having a sales page in 10 minutes. As I did here:

I had the chance to talk with the founder behind Milotree cart and you can watch our conversation here.

Bottom Line

If you’re serious about growing your business with digital products then Thrivecart and Convertkit are definitely worth checking out. They offer a ton of value and support.

I’m currently using ThriveCart to sell digital products for both BloggerBreakthrough.com and ElizabethStapleton.com, while I test out Convertkit commerce with my personal finance site.

I love Thrivecart because it saves me tons of money, makes me feel less overwhelmed, and lets me focus on what matters – building my brand and growing my business.

I hope this article helped you decide what tech to use in selling digital products. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments!