The WordPress platform now offers your website an Easy Digital Downloads Plugin that’s built-in for simple implementation. Not forgetting, selling digital goods and services is one of the smartest ways to make money online.
Unlike selling physical products, there are no inventory costs or shipping costs involved if, for instance, you use the Easy Digital Downloads Plugin. Plus, the options for digital products are virtually endless.
The plugin allows you to sell an unlimited number of products and services digitally. From videos, eBooks, music, audio files, PDFs, website themes & templates, WordPress plugins, development time, photography, etc.
Learn Also: How to Install and Set Up a WooCommerce Plugin 2021 (Step by Step)
Basically, through the Easy Digital Downloads Plugin, there is more than just one option to Sell Digital Products With WordPress while at ease. Bearing in mind, companies like Selz, Shopify, and Esty allow new businesses to create a virtual online shop in minutes.
The catch is many of these shopping platforms take a percentage of your sales or have monthly fees. Well, that’s alright for someone just starting out.
What Are Easy Digital Downloads?
Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), created by Pippin Williamson, is a free WordPress e-commerce plugin that focuses purely on digital products and downloads. With its primary goal being to make selling digital products simple and complete.
For marketers who are serious about selling online (see some key e-commerce strategies) will want to create their own virtual store and cut out the middleman. One great thing about Easy Digital Downloads is that it is fast right out of the box.
Thankfully, with WordPress, creating an online store is incredibly simple and easy to do (you can learn how to create an online store). That aside, today we are going to dive into Easy Digital Downloads. I’ll show you some advantages of using it and how to install it on your WordPress site.
In general, there’re numerous e-commerce plugins for WordPress. Not forgetting, two of the most popular ones you are probably familiar with are WooCommerce and Shopify. You can now add the Easy Digital Downloads Plugin to your list of the most preferred online tools.
Why Use Easy Digital Downloads?
Just like WooCommerce, EDD has thousands of extensions and integrations. Allowing you to process credit card payments, handle recurring transactions, take advantage of affiliates, etc.
In addition, it’s very versatile and provides you with an easy way to analyze and track your sales. It also has a great team behind it which is committed to WordPress coding standards. While ensuring that making changes to the codebase is simple and easy.
Remarkably, WooCommerce has over 1 million active installs and is used by loyal digital store owners around the globe. In fact, as of January 2018, WooCommerce powers over 35% of all online stores! And even though we love WooCommerce, that doesn’t mean it is always the right choice for your business or product.
Related Topic: Shopify Store | How do you Start a Business Shop Online?
WooCommerce was actually originally created to handle physical products. Although you can now use it for digital products as well.
Another important key is that WooCommerce can be fast, but it takes some tweaking around. And if you are dealing with a lot of traffic you will most likely end up needing a well-optimized WooCommerce hosting.
Another huge benefit of Easy Digital Downloads from a user perspective is that it is very easy to use. You can have it up and running in a matter of minutes. Just add your payment details, create your digital products, and you’re pretty much all set.
Which are the Key Features of EDD?
Whenever it comes to support, EDD has a variety of support resources available. For instance, you can easily ask for help on their WordPress support forums. Pippin himself is actually very active on there. As of writing this, 30 out of 39 tickets had been marked solved over the last 2 months.
It’s important to realize, there’re numerous EDD plugins available to purchase to further extend the platform. Some of them created by the EDD developers, while others are sold by third parties. You can see more about that as soon as you download and install the plugin on your WordPress site.
On the other hand, the EDD has high quality, helpful how-to videos, tutorials, and a very extensive and well-documented knowledgebase.
Yet, unlike other plugins, their basic support is free. But, you can also opt for priority support, which is either $39 per month, or $129 per year. Below are more features that you should know;
1. Back-end User
In the first place, EDD’s main selling point is the ease of selling digital downloads. The platform allows customers to purchase multiple products and at the same time have multiple files attached to them.
Back-end users can easily bundle products together, and the plugin uses AJAX for a smooth shopping cart experience in the front end.
Another outstanding feature is the ability to create discounts and promotional codes. Discounts can be offered as a percentage of the base price and can have an auto-expiration date and a maximum use limit set.
2. Payment Gateways
Secondly, EDD offers three payment gateways by default (Paypal, Amazon, and manual) but many others are available as extensions. One of the best features EDD has to offer is its commitment to helping you deliver an outstanding customer experience.
It has a built-in customer access area so customers can easily access the files they paid for and keep track of their purchases. If they ever accidentally lose/delete a file they downloaded, customers can log in to their account and re-download it.
3. Sales History
Additionally, EDD offers a complete history of all sales, and detailed sales and earnings graphs. One particularly cool metric is the projected sales report which gives you an idea of the sales you can expect in the future based on your past performance.
The ability to track best selling products and also find out what products are not selling helps business owners to find and exploit the products that are the most profitable. It allows you to focus on the areas of your business that have potential and revamp the rest.
4. Theme Responsive
It will also work on any almost any WordPress theme. From our experience, this just isn’t the case with WooCommerce.
Typically with WooCommerce theme developers need to do extra work to build in support. EDD is built a little differently and this makes it a perfect addition to whatever theme you already have installed. For more details about its free and paid versions, please view more on their pricing page.
5. Support Tutorials Index
The Easy Digital Downloads application platform is designed to meet all your online business needs.
It comes with powerful functionality right out of the box to help you start using it seamlessly. Its powerful kit provides the following addon tools:
- Download
- Installation
- Demo Shop
- Configuring EDD
- Extensions Catalogue
- Add Digital Downloadable Files
- Further Extending EDD With AffiliateWP
There are numerous EDD plugins available to purchase to further extend the platform. Some of them are created by the EDD developers, while others are sold by third parties. You can read and learn more about that from their official website.
From eBooks to WordPress plugins, to PDF files and more, EDD makes selling digital products a breeze. Furthermore, it’s simple to use and free to download too.
Related Topic: Selling Products Online | Everything Marketers Should Know
So, you can go ahead and Get Started straight away today! You can also interact and learn more about it from its official website. But, if you’ll need more guidance and help while implementing, you can Contact Us or even share your questions in the comments section.
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