Many creators can get stuck on where to sell digital products. They create their content, publish and try to find an audience, but struggle to find the best platform to sell digital products. The frustrating part is that most answers online are either a random list of tools or a generic guide that skips the real tradeoffs. The “best” platform really depends on what you’re looking for, your requirements, your monetization plan and supported formats.
This post breaks down the main places to sell digital downloads and products, how to choose a platform based on your business model, and the most common mistakes that silently kill conversion.
To build a long-term creator business, the safest bet is simple: sell on an owned website first, then add marketplaces only when there is a clear reason.
Where to sell digital products (4 options)
There is no single place that works for everyone. Most creators end up using one of these five paths:
1) Sell from an owned website (your store on your domain)
This means the online store lives on a custom domain with the creator’s branding. The product pages, checkout, and customer experience all happen in the same “home base” where content is published.
This option is usually best when:
- Profit margins matter (assuming your site doesn’t come with platform fees)
- The brand needs to look premium (not like a marketplace listing)
- SEO is part of the growth plan (product pages can rank on the creator’s domain)
- Products connect to your content (blog posts, podcasts, videos, and landing pages drive discovery)
Selling digital products from your own website can unlock a lot of opportunities. For example, if you want to bundle multiple products together, sell partial access to a series of posts/videos/podcasts and so on.
The only downside is that there’s no built-in marketplace discovery. Traffic has to come from your own content, email, social, partners, or paid campaigns.
2) Sell on creator storefront platforms
Creator storefront platforms like Gumroad or Easytools can be faster to get started with. They usually offer simple product pages and a checkout without requiring a full website or other content.
This option is usually best when:
- You’re only selling one or a handful or simple products
- You’re OK with paying fees
- You sell via social and don’t care about SEO
- Setup time is the priority and the brand can be “good enough”
Tradeoff: Storefront platforms often feel limiting once the catalog grows and the business needs stronger content, navigation, and internal linking. Fees can range from 5% to 15% or even more, so your margins can also bleed quite a bit of cash once you scale.
3) Sell on marketplaces
Marketplaces are optimized for browsing and discovery. They can be useful for creators who want demand validation and early sales without building a full marketing engine.
This option is usually best when:
- A niche already sells well in marketplaces (design assets, templates, printables)
- You need discovery more than brand control
- A new product needs validation before investing in a full store and content strategy
Tradeoff: marketplaces often reduce control over customer relationships. Policies can change, listings are competitive, fees are high and it can be harder to upsell or bundle content the way an owned website can. Marketplace can get rough but they usually provide a good amount of buyers so you can make a quick buck.
4) Sell via memberships (subscriptions plus content access)
Memberships are the recurring version of digital products: premium/protected content, private podcast feeds, exclusive posts, or ongoing resources that deliver value monthly. Subscriptions can provide stable, predictable and sustainable revenue for creators, and that’s a huge upside.
This option is usually best when:
- The business model relies more on recurring revenue rather than one-time purchases
- New content is published consistently
- The offer is a “library plus access” experience
Tradeoff: memberships require consistent delivery. You need to publish content consistently, navigate subscription churn and so on.
How to choose the best platform to sell digital products
The platform choice is about what the business needs to optimize for: branding, margins, control, delivery, or discovery.
Here is a practical checklist that can help reaching the right decision for your business:
Fees and margin predictability
Some platforms charge a monthly subscription. Others take a percentage of every sale. The difference seems small until revenue grows.
Questions to answer:
- Does the platform take a cut of every sale?
- Are there additional fees for subscriptions, billing, or payouts?
- Does the pricing model feel predictable at higher volume?
Platforms that take a growing cut can be fine for early experiments. But for “real business” revenue, predictable costs often win.
Ownership: branding, domain, customer relationship, and portability
Digital products are not only files. They are customers, trust, and repeat purchases.
Questions to answer:
- Is the store on a custom domain?
- Does the buyer experience feel like the creator’s brand or the platform’s brand?
- How easy is it to export customer data and migrate later?
Ownership matters most when the long-term plan is a content-led business. SEO compounding only works when the website stays the center of gravity.
Delivery, security, and customer experience
Selling digital products is easy. Delivering them smoothly and reducing support is the hard part.
Questions to answer:
- Are downloads delivered instantly after purchase?
- Is access secure (not a public link that gets passed around)?
- Can customers log in and re-download later?
SEO and long-term discoverability
Creators often underestimate how important organic search is for product sales. An SEO-friendly setup can help bring more organic traffic over time. If your offering is part of a content-led website, SEO is extremely important as your content can become an evergreen SEO lever.
Questions to answer:
- Will product pages live on the creator’s domain with indexable content?
- Can the website publish blog posts and landing pages that link to products?
- Is it easy to build a content hub instead of a pile of isolated pages?
Bundles, memberships, and upsells
Most creators do not win by selling one product forever. Their business becomes stable when offers stack, or recur on a monthly/yearly basis. Predictable revenue streams have a very strong appeal for creators. Bundles can become higher priced products that you can upsell to existing customers.
Best platform to sell digital products for creators who want an owned website: Beamly
For creators who want to sell on a branded website, publish content that compounds in SEO, and keep margins predictable, Beamly is a strong fit.
Beamly is a website-first platform built for creators who publish across formats – you can publish podcasts, videos, blog posts, online courses and digital products on Beamly. This makes it quite versatile to create product offering, sell one-off products or recurring subscriptions, and bundle content together.
Sell digital downloads with 0% platform fees
Beamly supports selling digital products and downloads directly on a creator’s website with 0% platform fees (Stripe processing fees still apply).
- Product pages live on the creator’s site and domain
- Checkout runs through Stripe
- Delivery is designed to be instant and secure
Learn more: Digital downloads and Online store.
Build a content hub that actually drives product discovery
Product discovery is rarely a straight line. A buyer might arrive from Google looking for a tutorial, read a related post, listen to an episode on the same problem, and only then feel ready to click into a product page. The platforms that win here are the ones that make those “next steps” easy to find on an owned website.
Beamly is built for creators who want their content and products to reinforce each other. Instead of treating a digital download like a standalone checkout link, Beamly supports a full library: blog posts and landing pages that can rank in search, podcast episode pages generated from RSS imports, and an owned video archive synced from YouTube channels or playlists. That gives each piece of content a permanent home that can be updated, internally linked, and reused in multiple funnels.
Over time, this setup compounds. More pages get discovered, more internal paths lead to your offers, and the products start selling because they are consistently positioned in the places your audience is already reading, watching, and listening.
Sell more than downloads: memberships, paywalls, and bundles
Digital products sell better when the offer can evolve:
- Sell a download as a one-time purchase
- Bundle files together into a higher-priced package
- Include downloads inside memberships
- Gate specific pages, posts, episodes, videos, or course lessons
Beamly supports memberships and paywalls as part of the same website, so the product catalog can expand without rebuilding the stack.
Learn more: Membership website platform.
Best free platform to sell digital products (and what “free” really means)
We’ve seen many people asking where to sell digital products for free. The attempts to find free platforms to sell digital products are common for a reason: creators want to start without committing to monthly costs.
But “free” almost always comes with a tradeoff. It usually means:
- Higher transaction fees or revenue share on each sale
- Limited customization and weaker branding
- Restrictions on email capture, marketing, or storefront layout
- Platform dependency risk (policy or payout changes)
A practical way to decide is to compare “free” vs predictable costs:
- If sales are occasional or the product is experimental, a free plan can be a reasonable starting point.
- Predictable costs and ownership often win quickly once you start scaling.
For creators who want to keep costs predictable as sales grow, selling from an owned website with 0% platform fees (Stripe processing fees still apply) is usually a better long-term foundation. Even when your platform is free, if you have a 10% platform fee you’d be paying a lot as you scale.
FAQ
Where to sell digital products for free?
“Free” platforms can be useful for testing an idea, but they usually earn money through higher per-transaction fees, limited features, or tradeoffs in customer ownership.
If you just want to validate demand, a free option can work. To build a long-term brand with repeat customers, selling from an owned website is usually the better path.
Where to sell digital products other than Etsy?
Etsy works well for certain categories, but it is not the only option. Alternatives typically fall into three buckets:
- Owned website store: best for branding, margins, and customer relationship
- Creator storefront platforms: best for fast setup and simple product catalogs
- Course and membership platforms: best when the product is content access, not only a file
The best choice depends on whether discovery or control is the main priority.
Is it better to sell on a marketplace or your own site?
Marketplaces can help with discovery, but they usually limit branding, pricing flexibility, and the ability to build a long-term customer relationship. Selling on a website is harder at first because traffic has to be driven, but it often pays off because the business becomes more durable over time.
A practical setup for many creators is:
- Use a marketplace to validate and learn what sells
- Use an owned website as the main home base for brand, content, SEO, and repeat purchases
What is the best platform to sell digital products?
The best platform is the one that matches the business model.
- If the plan is to build a brand and a content library, prioritize an owned website, SEO, and predictable margins.
- If the plan is to prioritize marketplace discovery, accept the tradeoffs in control and customer ownership.
- If the plan is to sell structured learning, prioritize course delivery.
- If the plan is to build recurring revenue, prioritize memberships and access controls.
For creators who want one hub that combines a website, publishing, and monetization with 0% platform fees (Stripe processing fees still apply), Beamly is designed for that model.
Conclusion: pick the platform that matches how the business grows
Choosing where to sell is really choosing a growth loop.
If the business grows through content, SEO, and long-term brand, selling from an owned website is usually the cleanest choice. If the business needs marketplace discovery, marketplaces can help, but they should be treated as a channel, not the entire business.
Beamly is built for creators who want the website to be the home for publishing and monetization in one place: digital downloads, one-time products, memberships, paywalls, and bundles – all on a custom domain with 0% platform fees (Stripe processing fees still apply).
