Guides 7 min read
How to figure out what digital product to sell
A method for choosing a first digital product, whatever you sell it on: where good product ideas come from, how to test demand in an hour instead of a month, what makes a digital product easy to find and buy, and how to check you are allowed to sell it.
- The best first product is something you already make and that people have asked you for. Demand you have seen beats demand you imagine.
- Test before you build: describe the product in one sentence to five people who fit the buyer and ask what they would pay. Compliments are not orders.
- Narrow beats broad. One problem, one kind of person, named in the title, so the right buyer recognises it at once.
- A digital product gets found through an audience or through search. Decide which you have before you decide what to make.
- Then share it everywhere you can be found: every profile, every bio, every group, every person who asked, more than once. A product shared once is a product nobody saw.
What a digital product really is
A digital product is a file that does a job for someone. The job, not the file type, is what sells. Nearly every one does one of four jobs:
A template, a spreadsheet, a checklist, a preset. The buyer could make it, but would rather not spend the afternoon.
A guide, a workbook, a course in PDF form. The buyer wants the shortcut through your years of mistakes.
Art, fonts, music, a 3D model, a photo pack. The buyer has no way to produce it and wants the result.
A meal plan, a training program, a schedule. The buyer wants the decisions made for them.
Knowing which job your product does tells you who buys it and what they will pay for. Time-savers sell to people whose hours are worth money. Teaching sells on trust and proof. Things people cannot make sell on taste and a portfolio. Plans sell on the credibility of the person who made them.
Where good ideas come from, in order of evidence
If three people have asked how you do something, or asked for a file you made, you have seen demand with your own eyes. Start here.
The template you set up for each client, the checklist you run before each project, the part you print again and again. It is already a product; it has not been packaged.
In comments, in messages, in a forum you take part in. A question that keeps coming back is a guide waiting to be written.
A tracker, a planner, a replacement piece, a prompt that finally worked. Other people hit the same gap.
What you bought instead of making shows you what people pay for.
Brainstorming comes last, if at all. A new idea with no evidence behind it means a week of building before you learn whether anyone wanted it.
How products get found: audience or search
There are two ways a stranger ends up on your product, and they want different products.
An audience is people who already follow your work. They buy the thing they would expect from you. If you have followers, make what they have been watching you do, and name it the way they would.
Search is people typing a need into a marketplace or a search engine. They buy the thing that matches their words. If you do not have followers, make something people search for by name, with the name in the title: "A5 dotted grid printable", "22 mm hex socket organiser STL", "cover letter prompts for career changers". Generic products do not get found by search, because the words are too common and the free versions come first.
If you have neither followers nor a searchable product, the honest answer is that nothing will sell yet, and the first job is to pick one of the two and build it. A product helps with that, because it gives you something concrete to show.
Test demand in an hour
An hour of checking saves a week of building. Four tests, cheapest first:
Describe the product in one sentence to five people who fit the buyer: "a spreadsheet that tracks freelance invoices and flags what is overdue, $9". Ask whether they would buy it and what would stop them. "That sounds nice" is a no. "When can I have it?" is a yes.
Search for it where buyers would. If hundreds of free versions exist, yours needs a reason to exist: more complete, better made, for a narrower person, or from someone they trust. If nothing exists, ask why; sometimes nobody wants it.
Post the cover or a screenshot and the price, and say it is coming. Count the people who ask when, not the people who say "nice".
Give an unfinished version to three people and see whether they use it. Use is evidence. Compliments are not.
If none of the five would pay, change the product or the buyer and ask again. That is cheap. Building first is not.
Narrow it until it has a name
Broad products are hard to find, hard to describe and hard to price. Narrow ones are easy on all three. Some before-and-afters:
The rule: the title names the buyer, the job or the format, and ideally two of the three. You can widen later. You cannot sell a vague thing to anyone.
Small and finished first, bigger later
Make the first product something you can finish this week: one thing that does one job, tested, nothing marked "coming soon". Publishing it on a site like troimarket takes minutes; finishing the file is the work. Small gets published, because it gets finished. Small is easy to describe, so the title can do the selling. Small is easy to buy.
There is a real trade-off. Small products at small prices need many sales to add up. That is fine for a first product, whose main job is to teach you who buys and how they found you. Once you know that, a bigger product for that narrower buyer earns more from fewer sales. Small to learn; bigger when you know.
"Finished" is a checklist, not a feeling: it opens on a device that is not yours; fonts, links and images survived the export; it includes the instructions a stranger needs; the description says exactly what is inside; nothing says "coming soon".
Check you are allowed to sell it
Every part of a product has to be yours or licensed for resale; sites like troimarket ask you to confirm that when you publish. The usual traps:
Often come with licences that allow personal or design use but not redistribution inside a product you sell. Read the licence; many have a cheap commercial tier.
Fan art and branded templates belong to someone else, however much work went into them.
It may belong to them. Check the contract before you sell the template you built on the job.
A meal plan or a training program describes what is in it. It does not promise weight loss, a cure or an income, on any platform, and claims like that are where sellers get into trouble.
Ideas by what you do
Starting points, not recommendations. Each still needs the tests above.
After the first one: share it everywhere
Upload it to a site like troimarket, and then share it, in more places than feels comfortable. Post it on every profile you have, pin it, put the link in every bio, send it to every person who asked, show it in every group where the topic comes up, and say it again a week later. Nobody sees everything you post; repeating yourself is how most people hear you once. The first-sale guide has the full list of places and a schedule.
Then read what happens instead of guessing. People open it but do not buy: the listing or the price. Nobody opens it: it was not shared enough, or the sentence did not say what it was. It sells: make the sequel for the same people, because a sequel to something that sold is a far safer bet than a new idea, and share that one everywhere too. Over time the products form a ladder: a free sample, a small paid thing, a main product, a bundle of the set. Nobody starts with the ladder. Everybody starts with one rung, shared widely.
On troimarket
troimarket was built by creators, for creators. The parts that matter when you are choosing what to sell:
No monthly plan, no listing fee. A small first product is worth publishing just to find out.
Digital products, ebooks, 3D print files, AI prompts, recipes, fitness programs, and bundles of up to 10.
Several files per product.
Everything except the file itself.
You confirm it is yours to sell when you publish; the Terms of Service list what is not allowed.
Next guide
How to make your first digital saleMore guides
If you are not on troimarket yet, What is troimarket? explains how it works and what it costs, and Sell on troimarket is where a store starts.