How To Sell Digital Products On Social Media

how to sell digital products directly on social media

Do you promote your digital products on social media only to wind up losing a few leads somewhere in the sales funnel?

What if you could convert a few of those leads into customers by eliminating a few steps in the funnel?

In this post, we cover social selling, a new form of marketing in which you use your social media channels to promote your products, in this case, digital products.

How do you sell digital products on social media?

Social commerce is a form of ecommerce in which you sell your products directly on social media instead of an online store.

Transactions happen entirely on social media, so there’s no need for a dedicated online store.

Unfortunately, digital products require digital delivery, and as of right now, no social media platform allows you to sell digital products and offer digital delivery directly.

So, you might be wondering, how do you sell products on social media?

There are a few different routes you can take:

  • Use a link-in-bio tool that allows you to sell digital products directly on your link-in-bio page.
  • Use a dedicated ecommerce store, then link to it in your bio link or your link-in-bio page.
  • For online courses, create and host it on a course platform, then link to it in your bio link or link-in-bio page.

This is the gist of selling digital products on social media.

You use your social media content to promote your products, then direct your followers to your bio link when you promote your content on Instagram and TikTok.

YouTube allows you to add links to video descriptions while Facebook and Twitter (X) allow you to add links directly to your posts.

How to sell digital products with link-in-bio tools

There are two types of link-in-bio tools you can use to sell digital products:

  • Link-in-bio tools that allow you to sell products directly on your link-in-bio page.
  • Link-in-bio tools that allow you to add shop links and products to your page but direct visitors to your store.

Each type has its advantages and disadvantages.

While selling digital products directly on your link-in-bio page is convenient for you and your customer, it does cut you off from using additional ecommerce features.

This includes the ability to choose your own payment gateways, the ability to design a beautiful online storefront, being able to categorize your products and showcase those categories beautifully in your store, and being able to host your products and a blog on the same website.

The obvious disadvantage to using the other type of link-in-bio tool is that it doesn’t allow you to sell products directly on your link-in-bio page.

This adds more steps to the sale process when you promote your products on social media.

Instead of a sales process that looks like this…

Social media post that promotes your product → bio link → find product on link-in-bio page → purchase without leaving the social media app

…your sales process will look like this:

Social media post that promotes your product → bio link → find product on link-in-bio page → redirected to your online store → add to cart → complete checkout process

Still, it might be worth it if selling products directly on your link-in-bio page is too restrictive for you.

Note: It’s important to note that tools that allow you to sell products directly from your link-in-bio pages will usually take a cut from your sales or require you to sign up for a subscription with another tool. For large volumes of sales this can amount to a serious amount of revenue being lost. However, building a store with Sellfy and linking to products from your bio-link page will mean you won’t get charged any additional transaction fees.

Link-in-bio tools with built-in ecommerce features

We’re going to cover several link-in-bio tools in this section:

  • Beacons.ai – Best for creators who can’t decide between a dedicated online store and a link-in-bio tool. Also includes tools for brand deals. Steep monthly price but offers a 0% selling fee in return.
  • Lnk.Bio – Best for simplicity, but locks you into a 5% selling fee forever.

Let’s discuss each one.

Beacons.ai

Beacons.ai is a super-powered link-in-bio tool that comes with a lot of useful features for creators.

These include the typical features you expect from a link-in-bio tool, such as the ability to add links and images to your link-in-bio page, but it also includes features like a media kit that updates automatically, email marketing, invoicing features, the ability to use AI and automation for brand outreach, and more.

For your store, you can add product pages that are optimized for desktop and mobile devices.

For each individual product, you can add a price, product title and a product description.

beacons.ai sell digital products

You can even accept reviews and showcase each product’s overall rating as well as customize your layout, colors, checkout fields and thank you message.

Payments are made via PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Here are other features this tool offers:

  • Buy now, pay later (BNPL) through Klarna and Affirm
  • Memberships
  • Online course hosting
  • Calendar integration from Google Calendar
  • Product upselling
  • Unlimited products
  • Discount codes
  • Shopify integration
  • Sales analytics

This tool takes a 9% cut from each sale unless you upgrade to Shop Pro, which starts at $30/month or $25/month if you pay annually.

Lnk.Bio

The rest of the tools on this list are a lot simpler than Beacons.ai, and that includes Lnk.Bio.

Lnk.Bio is your average link-in-bio tool. It lets you set up a page filled with links you promote to your audience. This includes button links and image-based links.

You can even showcase content, insert buttons for every social media platform you publish to and customize styles.

For products, Lnk.Bio allows you to sell digital products and collect payments via PayPal or Stripe.

lnk.bio sell products

They charge a fixed rate 5% on every sale you make.

The tool also allows you to keep track of your failures and success with sales analytics.

Lnk.Bio has a one-time fee of $24.99. You can include a booking add-on for $4/month.

While this one-time fee seems affordable, it locks you into a 5% selling fee forever.

So, while Beacons.ai charges you $300/year for your store if you pay annually or $360/year if you on a month-to-month basis, their 0% selling fee becomes more affordable than Lnk.Bio’s one-time fee.

Let’s say your store sells $50,000 in one year. With Beacons.ai, you’d pay $300 with an annual plan plus processing fees charged by PayPal and Stripe.

With Lnk.Bio, you’d $24.99 once but will have also given the company $2,500 in selling fees. This is on top of the processing fees PayPal and Stripe charge.

Take that into consideration when choosing a tool.

Our favorite link-in-bio tools

These are our favorite link-in-bio tools:

While these tools don’t allow you to sell products directly, they are great link-in-bio tools.

They’re easy to use, and they have enough features to allow you to create image-based links for your products that link to product pages on your website.

Pallyy’s link-in-bio tool is a bonus feature of Pallyy’s social media management tool.

How to sell digital products from your own online store

We recommend Sellfy for creators who want to sell digital products from their own stores.

It’s affordable, easy to use and offers a 0% transaction fee on all plans.

Click here to sign up for a 14 day free trial.

sellfy sell products

You can even use it to sell subscriptions.

The maximum file size per product is 20GB on the most expensive plan.

Payments are made via PayPal and Stripe.

For product pages, you can add a product title, product description and assign your product to a category.

Because Sellfy is a full-fledged ecommerce platform, you can also add multiple product images and product variants.

Email marketing, product upselling, discount codes and affiliate marketing are also available. Sales and traffic analytics are also available.

To get people to your website, you’ll need to promote your products on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, create a link-in-bio page with Shorby or Pallyy.

Then, add your products to your page, and your link-in-bio URL to your TikTok and Instagram bios.

When you promote a product on social media, just say “link in bio.”

Note: Want to learn more? Check out our Sellfy review.

How to sell online courses on social media

We recommend Thinkific for online courses. It’s easy to use, easy to customize, offers additional features like memberships and digital downloads, and is pretty affordable considering it’s technically a video hosting platform.

Try Thinkific for free.

Your students can consume courses through multiple lessons, chat with fellow students through your own personal forum, take quizzes and more.

Like your own online store, you’ll need to add your courses to your link-in-bio page to promote it on social media.

Note: Learn more in our Thinkific review.

Final thoughts

For social networks that allow links, you’ll always be able to promote your products directly. 

Including links to your products on the networks that do allow links can be problematic as well. Text link posts tend not to perform well so on those occasions, dropping your link in the comments is the way to go.

But for other social networks, bio-link tools provide a decent way to monetize your social media presence and direct traffic to your own platforms or landing pages.

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