how to sell digital products on wordpress

How to Sell Digital Products on WordPress – A 5-Step Guide to Earning Passive Income

One of the best ways for creators to monetize their skills is by selling digital products to their online community. Not only do digital products have a low production cost, but they also have unlimited potential when it comes to sales. And who doesn’t love passive income?

However, as much as we all love WordPress, selling digital products on the platform can be a little bit tricky. With so many plugins, integrations, and themes, it can be tough to find the right tool that fits your needs.

Thankfully, there’s a simple, all-in-one solution – MemberSpace!

In this guide, we will explore the ins and outs of how to sell digital products on WordPress with MemberSpace and start earning revenue right away. 

Table of Contents

Step 1: Decide how you will accept payments

There are a few ways you can go about accepting payments on WordPress.

  • Membership (Recurring Revenue) – This method allows customers to pay you a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for access to your digital products. It’s a great way to earn steady, predictable income off of your products. 
  • One-Time Charge – If you’re selling an affordable individual product like an eBook, a one-time charge is probably your best option.
  • Multiple Payments Items – For higher-priced digital products like online courses, events, or mentorship programs, you might consider allowing your customers to break their payments up. This makes paying for the product a lot more feasible to a lot more customers.

Step 2: Pick a simple plugin like MemberSpace to manage payments

wordpress membership plugin free

Once you’ve decided how you will charge your customers, you’ll need to find a plugin to help you facilitate those payments. While you can go directly through payment gateways like Stripe, it’s a much more efficient and simple process to opt for a plugin like MemberSpace. MemberSpace is a user-friendly free WordPress membership plugin that allows you to sell digital products, accept recurring payments, create members-only content, and so much more.

MemberSpace has a built-in Stripe integration, as well as tons of other features to help you manage and grow your business. You can sell access to any kind of digital product, membership, or online community with MemberSpace, but some of the top-selling products our customers sell include:

  • Memberships
  • Community access
  • Paid podcasts
  • Newsletters
  • Content libary
  • Videos
  • Online courses
  • Digital downloads
  • Paid Zoom calls
  • Digital magazines

Step 3: Create website pages for your digital products

Once you’ve got MemberSpace installed on your WordPress site, the next step will be to create some landing pages for your digital products. This step is two parts. 

Sales Pages

First, you’ll need to create a sales pages for each product. These don’t need to be complicated or fancy, just simple pages that include:

  • An image or video previewing the product
  • A short description of the product
  • A call-to-action button that is linked to the product page
  • Pricing information

Product Pages

Then, create a separate landing page on your website where you will add each digital product. So if you’re selling three different ebooks, you should create three pages and add a downloadable ebook to each page. These pages will be hidden from the public and only accessible to paying customers (more on that in a minute). 

Here are a few examples from MemberSpace customers…

Feel free to click through these sales pages to see how these creators use MemberSpace to sell their digital products.

Membership – Ellen Fisher

Selling memberships on WordPress

Ellen sells multiple digital products on her website, including a membership. On her sales page, you can preview the kind of content you’ll get access to, like videos, recipes, discounts, and a community forum. 

By selecting the monthly or yearly subscription buttons, customers are taken to a MemberSpace pop-up that asks them to create an account, then start paying. 

Video Content Library – Girl and the Word

Selling content libraries on WordPress

This creator is selling a library of videos on meditation for a one-time payment of $90, or six payments of $15. The buttons and video preview link to a MemberSpace pop-up, requiring interested customers to create their account and make their purchase. 

Online Courses – Kolder Creative

Selling online courses on wordpress

On this landing page, Kolder Creative previews an 11-module video series all about Video Transitions and Breakdowns.   By selecting “Start this Module,” a pop up appears requiring you to sign up to access the content.

Step 4: Restrict access to your digital product pages

Once you have created your digital product pages, you need to restrict access to these pages for non-paying customers. MemberSpace makes it easy to restrict access to any page or post on your WordPress site, so only paying customers can access your digital products.

First, select how you are going to charge members. 

Membership payment type

Then, head over to the “Member Pages” section in your MemberSpace account. This is where you will enter the page URLs for your digital product pages. Click, “Add Now” and you’re all set! Your page is now protected and will require a customer to sign up and pay before they are able to access the digital product page.

Protect digital product pages

So, once your pages are protected, what does it look like from a customer’s perspective? 

When someone goes to purchase your digital product, they’ll see a pop up that allows them to create an account and make a payment. You can customize the look and feel of the form to match your branding, but this is a basic example of what they would see:

MemberSpace customer sign up form

Step 5: Start Selling and Promoting your Website

You have poured your heart and soul into creating incredible digital products. But, now comes the next step – promotion. How can you effectively showcase your hard work on your website? 

You know your audience best, but a few of the places that you can start:

  • Send an announcement to your email list with a link to your digital product
  • Promote your product on social media
  • Partner with other creators in the same niche to get in front of their followers
  • Make the product easily accessible on your website’s homepage (in the main menu, footer, etc.)
  • Promote your new product on your existing channels, like your podcast, newsletter, or blog

Final Thoughts

Selling digital products on WordPress with MemberSpace is an awesome way to monetize your online presence. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you can easily set up MemberSpace on your WordPress site, create and price your digital products, restrict access to non-paying customers, and start selling. 

To get started, sign up for a free account!