How to Create Digital Products That People Actually Want to Buy

Creating and selling digital products in 2026 comes down to one simple rule: pick something people already buy, then make it easier, nicer, or more specific for a clear niche. The digital product space has matured significantly over the past few years, but the fundamentals remain the same. You need a product that solves a real problem for a specific audience, and you need to deliver it in a way that feels polished and professional.

The good news is that creating digital products has never been more accessible. You do not need a development team, a massive budget, or years of experience. What you need is a skill, some knowledge that other people find valuable, and the willingness to package it into something worth paying for. In this guide, we will walk through exactly how to create digital products that people actually want to buy.

Start With a Problem Worth Solving

The most successful digital products start with a clearly defined problem. Before you think about formats, tools, or marketing, ask yourself: what problem am I solving? Who am I solving it for? And why would someone pay for my solution instead of using what is already available for free?

The best product ideas often come from things you have personally wanted or needed yourself. These are problems where at some point you were looking to buy a solution and found that either what was available was not very good, or you had the skills to make something better. Choosing a niche this way is powerful because you are deeply familiar with the problem your product is solving and you genuinely care about the outcome.

If a tool or piece of research told you that digital golf log books were a good niche to get into, you probably could not make it work even if the search volume was high and the competition was low. If you do not know anything about golf and have no real desire to learn, that niche is better left for someone else. One of the biggest appeals of building a digital product business is that you get to choose what you work on.

Identify Your Skills and Find Your Niche

One of the simplest ways to find your niche is to look at the skills you personally have and try to find products that can be improved upon with those skills. Sit down and write a list of things you are good at or skills you currently have. This might include graphic design, photography, math, writing, coding, fitness training, cooking, or music production. But it can also include unconventional things like lawn care, drawing, puzzles, fantasy sports, or gaming.

Skills are the foundation to making money with digital products. Your skills are the reason someone will pay you, because if they could do it themselves, they would. The only reason people pay for something is to have something done that they cannot do themselves or that they do not want to do themselves.

Think of things you were good at when you were a kid, or in school, or things that people are always asking you for help with. If you are good at video games, a digital product idea could be a walkthrough or guide for a game that people find hard. If you are good at cooking, maybe you could make a baking course or a template for organizing recipes.

Research What Is Already Selling

If nothing is coming to mind, go on the hunt for ideas. What helps is actually going shopping on the platform you are planning to sell on. If it is Etsy, take an evening and browse what people are selling. Does anything interest you? Whenever you do this, you will almost always find products that you actually want, and if you have the skills to make that product better, add it to your list of potential ideas.

A useful technique for finding the best selling products on Etsy is to search for your keyword plus the word "download" to filter for digital items, then modify the URL to filter by best seller status instead of star seller. This shows you all the best selling products under that search term, and you can gather your ideas from what is already proven to work.

The mistake a lot of people make at this stage is seeing a successful product and copying it exactly. Instead, try to improve on what is being offered using your skills or interest in some way. If you copy an existing product exactly, there is no reason for a customer to choose yours over what already exists. Established stores have more sales and a better track record, so customers will just buy from them.

Another powerful technique is to mash up ideas. Take a product or service that is working in one niche and apply it to a different one. If personalized ketchup labels are selling well, think about other labels you could personalize. Maybe you are into a specific candy, board games, or notebooks. Mashing things up is an easy way to be creative when you feel stuck coming up with something new.

Two Things to Avoid When Choosing Your Niche

After trying many different business ideas and niches, there are two things worth avoiding. The first is low skill niches. If you have been browsing Etsy, you have probably noticed a huge uptick in AI generated art. All it takes is entering a prompt into a text box, and because it is so easy, everybody is doing it. People are selling this kind of art for $1 to $2 and often even less. Low skill opportunities seem tempting because it is easy to get started, but since anybody can do it, everybody will.

The second thing to avoid is products that sell for less than $10. When you are selling on platforms with fees, you have to account for both transaction fees and payment processing fees. If you price your digital products at 50 cents, you actually make no money after fees. Even at $2, about 32% of the sale goes to fees. The sweet spot tends to be around $10 to $20, which is an amount people are willing to spend and still enough margin to make every sale worth it.

Build Your Product Fast and Ship It

Now that you have your idea, it is time to actually build it. The best thing you can do is try to build it as fast as possible. While there is a time and place to spend months perfecting a product, if you are new to this, focus on progression over perfection. You do not know if your product is going to be successful, so get customer and market feedback as fast as possible.

If you are selling on a marketplace like Etsy, you typically want around 10 products in your store before you launch. When you see a store with zero sales and less than 10 products, most buyers assume the store has not even launched yet. Think in terms of launching an entire store, not just one product.

The 80/20 rule applies heavily here. Spend 80% of your time on the content and quality of your product, and 20% on the polish. You can always update and improve a product after launch based on customer feedback, but you cannot get feedback on a product that is sitting on your hard drive unfinished.

Tools for Creating Different Types of Digital Products

The tools you need depend on what you are creating. For ebooks and guides, use Google Docs, Notion, or Canva to create beautifully formatted PDFs. For online courses, slide decks recorded with screen recording software like Loom or OBS work perfectly. For templates, work directly in the platform the template is for, whether that is Canva, Notion, Figma, Excel, or something else.

For design assets like icons, fonts, and illustrations, tools like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate, and Figma are industry standard. For audio products like music, sound effects, or sample packs, digital audio workstations like Ableton Live, FL Studio, or Logic Pro are what you need. Use tools you are already comfortable with rather than spending weeks learning something new.

For coaching and services, all you really need is a scheduling tool and a video call platform. Products like these have zero upfront creation cost because you are selling your time and expertise directly. This is also a great way to validate a topic area before investing the effort to package your knowledge into a course or ebook.

SEO and Product Listings That Actually Convert

Once your product is built, how you present it matters enormously. For titles, use longtail phrases that people might actually search for. These are three to five word phrases that are less competitive than single word keywords. Instead of just "activity book" as your title, use phrases like "printable activity book for preschool" or "animal activity book for kids."

For product descriptions, tell your potential customers everything they need to know before they buy. This includes specifications, dimensions, how it is made, and how to use it. Put yourself in your customer's shoes and think of any questions they might have. When a customer has a question and does not see it answered, most people just move on to another product.

For product photos, the main photo needs to stand out and be completely different from what other shops in your niche are doing. Search for products in your niche, take note of common themes and colors, and do the exact opposite. The purpose of the main photo is to catch a customer's eye. For remaining photos, use all available slots to show your products being used in different scenarios.

For item tags on platforms like Etsy: copy what is working for other stores. Search for your product, click on the top results, scroll to the bottom, and look at "explore related searches." These are the tags that product is using. Visit multiple top performing listings and note the common tags. Those are the tags getting these products to the front page, and they are the ones you want to use.

Setting Up Your Store on Storelib

Once your digital product is ready, you need a professional home for it. While marketplaces like Etsy offer built in traffic, they take 12 to 15% of every sale and give you limited brand control. A better approach is to set up your own digital storefront where you control the experience and keep more revenue.

Storelib makes this incredibly straightforward. You can have your store set up and products listed in under 5 minutes. Here is what the setup process looks like:

Step 1: Sign up for free at storelib.com. No credit card required. Step 2: Set up your OnePage (your link in bio and storefront combined into one page). Add your branding, bio, and links. Step 3: Upload your digital products. Add titles, descriptions, pricing, and product images. Storelib supports ebooks, templates, courses, music, design assets, memberships, coaching sessions, and virtually any other digital product type. Step 4: Connect Stripe for payments. You get paid directly to your bank account within 2 business days. Step 5: Share your store link and start selling.

What makes Storelib particularly powerful for new creators is the built in marketplace. When you list products on Storelib, they appear in the Storelib marketplace where other buyers can discover them organically. This is free traffic you do not get from standalone store builders. Combined with the OnePage link in bio feature, you essentially get a full ecommerce platform plus a marketing tool plus marketplace exposure, all starting at $0.

For creators who are ready to scale, the Growth plan at $29 per month adds a custom domain (your store lives at yourname.com), a verified badge that builds trust, 2,000 emails per month for building your list, and priority support. Transaction fees drop to 3% plus $0.25. The Professional plan at $99 per month brings fees down to just 1.5% plus $0.25, which is lower than virtually any competing platform.

Marketing Your Digital Products

Focus on free methods first. In the beginning you do not know if your idea is good, so do not waste money on paid ads. The most cost effective way to test is to see if your product can grow organically. Think about where your target audience hangs out online. Find relevant subreddits, Facebook groups, or community forums. Join these communities, be a contributing member, and share your product when someone posts about the problem it solves.

Do not be one of those annoying people that comes into a group and just spams the message board with an ad for your product. That is an easy way to get banned quickly. Instead, be active, create useful posts, and help people with their problems. When someone posts about the exact problem your product solves, that is when you can reply with your solution. If you are a contributing member, the community will want to support you.

Pinterest is also worth exploring. It functions as a visual search engine, and whatever your niche is, you can create images linking to items in your store. It is generally easier to get views on Pinterest pins than on TikTok or Instagram videos, making it a more accessible marketing channel. People go on Pinterest for inspiration, whether it is fashion, business, weddings, kids activities, or anything else. Create content in the form of images and link them directly to your Storelib product pages.

Use Storelib's OnePage as your marketing hub. Instead of sending people to a generic Linktree with a bunch of links, send them to your Storelib OnePage where they can see your products, read about you, and buy all in one place. Put your OnePage link in your Instagram bio, TikTok bio, YouTube description, Twitter profile, and anywhere else you have a presence online. Every click has the potential to turn into a sale.

The Spin the Wheel Mindset

Imagine a game where there is a wheel divided into slices, all starting red. When you spin and land on red, that slice turns green. The goal: land on green as many times as possible. You can spin as many times as you want, and the only way to lose is to stop spinning.

When you build a product and put it out into the world, one of two things happens: you get sales or you do not. If you get sales, double down on what worked. If you are selling wall art and the one with a rocket ship design starts getting sales, that tells you it is time to make more designs with rocket ships or other space related things. If you do not get sales, go back to step one, come up with another idea, and go through the process again.

Some people spin once or twice, hit red both times, and convince themselves that this game is not worth playing. They see other people hit green and think they must have cheated somehow. The reality is that hitting red is not a failure. Every time you build something, even if it does not sell, it increases the chances of success next time. You develop skills, gain experience, and learn from your mistakes.

If an item goes the full 4 months that Etsy gives before it expires and it does not get a single sale, just discontinue it. If it does not sell in the first 4 months, it is unlikely that it ever will, so there is no use in renewing it. The money and energy are better spent on your next product.

The creators who succeed are the ones who keep spinning. They ship consistently, learn from every launch, and treat every product as an experiment. Whether this is your first spin or your twentieth, the only way to lose is to stop. Keep creating, keep shipping, and platforms like Storelib make it easier than ever to get your work in front of the people who need it.

Ready to launch your first digital product? Sign up for Storelib for free and get your store live in minutes. No credit card, no coding, no commitment. Just upload your product, set your price, and start selling to customers in 135+ countries.