How to sell digital products online as a creator (2026)
A digital product is any file or access a customer buys and receives online: a preset pack, a template, a guide, a printable or a subscription. Creators sell them through their own site, a marketplace such as Etsy, a creator store such as Gumroad, or a membership platform such as Patreon. From a £10 sale, you keep between £7 and £9.65.
- A digital product is a file or access sold online: no stock, no posting
- Courses and ebooks are the most common products creators sell
- Your own site keeps the most: £9.65 of a £10 sale through Stripe
- Instagram's Shop won't list digital files, so your bio link is the shop
This guide sits in CreatorSync’s Earn section for content creators. Digital products are one of the few income streams in today’s creator economy where you set the price and keep most of it. Every fee below was checked against the platform’s own page in October 2026.
What is a digital product?
A digital product is anything a customer buys and receives online, with no stock to hold and nothing to post. The customer pays once for a file, or pays repeatedly for access to something that keeps arriving.
Files are the familiar half: ebooks, presets, templates, printables, guides. Access is the other half: a course, a membership, a monthly subscription. Both sell from the same link.
Courses are the most common digital product creators sell: 35.7% of the 96,837 creators in Influencers Club’s digital products report, published in November 2024, offer one. Ebooks come second at 7.3%.
Where can creators sell digital products?
Creators sell digital products through five main routes, and each one takes a different cut. The table shows what reaches you from the same £10 sale.
| Route | Example | Cut | You keep from £10 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your own site | Stripe checkout | 1.5% + 20p on standard UK cards | £9.65, before hosting costs | Stripe’s UK pricing page |
| Creator store | Gumroad | 10% + $0.50 per direct sale; 30% if the buyer found you through Gumroad Discover | £9 less 50 US cents; £7 via Discover | Gumroad’s pricing page |
| Fan membership | Patreon | 10%, plus payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees | £9, before processing | Patreon’s pricing page |
| Marketplace | Etsy | 6.5% transaction fee, plus 4% + 20p processing for UK sellers, plus a $0.20 listing fee | About £8.75, before the listing and regulatory fees | Etsy’s fees page; Etsy Payments policy |
| In-app subscription | Instagram Subscriptions | Instagram 0%; Apple or Google 30% of in-app purchases | £7 | About Instagram Subscriptions |
Your own site keeps the most and does the least for you. Nobody sends you buyers; every sale starts with your audience.
A marketplace does the opposite. Etsy brings shoppers who were never going to find your Instagram, and charges for the introduction.
What sells best?
Courses sell most often, then ebooks, cookbooks, printables and templates. That is the count in Influencers Club’s report, the largest open count of what creators actually list that this guide found.
| Product type | Share of creators selling it |
|---|---|
| Courses | 35.7% |
| Ebooks | 7.3% |
| Cookbooks | 3.8% |
| Printables | 3.6% |
| Templates | 1.3% |
Influencers Club built the list by scanning creators’ bios and link-in-bio pages for product keywords and store links. So it counts how many creators offer each product, not how much each one earns. None of the guides ranking for this question publishes revenue by product type either, so treat any “best-selling” list that quotes earnings without a source as a guess.
What actually sells best is the thing your followers already ask you for. The preset you use in every post. The plan you keep explaining in the comments.
You make it once and sell it again and again, so after the first sale almost every pound is margin, minus the platform’s cut. For context on what that adds up to, see our guide to how much content creators make.
What fees apply?
Every route charges a percentage, and most add a fixed fee per sale on top. Stripe adds 20p, Etsy adds 20p of processing plus a 20-cent listing fee, and Gumroad adds 50 cents.
Etsy’s fees page confirms its 6.5% transaction fee applies to digital items, and it charges UK sellers a regulatory operating fee as well. Gumroad’s pricing page charges no monthly fee; Patreon’s adds payout and currency fees to its 10%.
Fixed fees bite hardest on cheap products. On a £3 printable, Stripe takes about 8% and Etsy about 17%, before the listing fee. Bundle small files into one bigger product.
The biggest single cut is the app store. A subscription bought inside the Instagram app loses 30% to Apple or Google. A subscription a fan buys on the web is not an in-app purchase, so that 30% never applies.
Do you need a website?
No. A marketplace or a creator store hosts the product page and the checkout, so a link to it is all you need. Gumroad, Patreon and Etsy all work this way.
On Instagram, that link goes in your bio. Instagram lets you add up to five links there, a change Search Engine Land reported in April 2023. The bio link matters more than it looks, because Instagram’s Shop is no help: Shopify’s guide to publishing products on Facebook and Instagram says a product must require shipping, so it can’t be digital.
Your own site starts to pay once you have steady sales: it keeps the most per sale and owns the customer list. For the platform payouts that run alongside your own products, see how Instagram creators make money and how TikTok creators make money.
Frequently asked questions
Can I sell digital products on Instagram?
Yes, through a link in your bio rather than through Instagram’s Shop. Meta’s Shops only list products that ship, as Shopify’s guide above sets out. Put your own storefront or a creator store behind one of your five bio links and point your posts at it.
Are subscriptions digital products?
Yes. A subscription sells ongoing access instead of a one-off file, and it is the only digital product that pays you again next month without a new sale. Where the fan pays decides the cut: inside the Instagram app, Apple or Google take 30%; on the web, they take nothing.
Can you sell the same digital product in more than one place?
Yes. A file never runs out of stock, so it can sit in your own store and on a marketplace at the same time. Check each platform’s seller terms before you list, and keep the price the same everywhere so fans who buy direct never feel they overpaid.
Do you need a big following to sell digital products?
No. None of the routes in the fee table lists a follower minimum on its pricing page. Followers decide how many people see your link, not whether you are allowed to post it.