Beginner-Friendly Tips for Selling Digital Products Using SendOwl Downloads with WordPress

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Why I Started Selling with SendOwl

If your experience has been anything like mine, you might be in the middle of a months-long process of trying to figure out the “best” way to get started selling digital products. While some of the most popular solutions on the market are likely worth the investment long-term, I didn’t want to shell out ~$500 upfront before I knew if any of my digital products would sell.

As soon as one of my favorite business mentors—more on that later—pushed me to just take action without overthinking it any longer, I decided to take her advice and start selling digital downloads with SendOwl, and I’m so happy that I did.

What is SendOwl?

SendOwl is a powerful ecommerce platform that simplifies selling digital products, subscriptions, and other services online. It’s designed to integrate effortlessly with your WordPress site, allowing you to manage everything from a single dashboard.

Whether you’re selling ebooks, courses, or memberships, SendOwl handles the heavy lifting, from secure payment processing to automated delivery of your digital goods.

Getting Started with SendOwl

Features of SendOwl

• Customizable Checkout Pages: You can tailor your checkout pages to match the look and feel of your brand, creating a seamless shopping experience for your customers. You can add custom fields, provide multiple payment options, and even handle taxes and discounts all within the checkout process.
• Secure Payment Gateways: SendOwl supports integration with major payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal. These options not only provide versatility in how you receive payments but also ensure that all transactions are encrypted and secure, safeguarding both your business and customer data.
• Automated Digital Delivery: With SendOwl, once a customer makes a purchase, the delivery of digital products is completely automated. SendOwl facilitates instant, secure delivery of your products via email, reducing your workload and enhancing customer satisfaction.

Benefits of SendOwl Over the Competition

• Cost-Effectiveness: SendOwl provides a more affordable entry point compared to other ecommerce solutions like Shopify, which has higher monthly fees, or Thrivecart, which has a much higher upfront cost. This makes SendOwl an ideal choice for startups and small businesses looking to minimize expenses while scaling up their online sales.
• No Extra Plugins Needed: With SendOwl, you don’t need to rely on additional plugins for basic ecommerce functionalities, which can keep your site faster and more secure. This is a notable advantage over solutions like Woocommerce that require multiple plugins, which might slow down your site or introduce security vulnerabilities.
• Affiliate Management: While some ecommerce platforms require third-party apps or charge extra for affiliate management, the affiliate tracking and management tools are baked into your SendOwl plan. Affiliate programs are a great way to expand your sales reach and take advantage of influencer marketing.

Adding Digital Products to SendOwl

Once you create an account on SendOwl, you’ll want to set up your profile, connect your payment gateways, and fill out other company and brand details. SendOwl’s Help Center can guide you through account setup so you’re all ready to collect payments and deliver products to your customers.

Since we are connecting SendOwl to WordPress buttons for each product, you’ll want to add a product on SendOwl before you can integrate the two platforms.

Step 1: Access Your SendOwl Product Dashboard

Start by logging into your SendOwl account and navigating to the “Products” section.

Step 2: Add a New Product

Click on “Add New”. You’ll be directed to a page where you can select the type of product you want to add—digital, physical, or service. For digital products, you might choose options like books, music files, videos, or software.

Step 3: Enter Product Details

After selecting the product type, enter details about your product. This includes the product name, description, pricing, and the files to be uploaded. It’s important to provide clear, concise descriptions and set an appropriate price.

Step 4: Upload Your Product File

Upload the digital file that you are selling. This could be a PDF, MP3, video file, or any other format that SendOwl supports.

Step 5: Set Delivery Options

Configure how the product will be delivered to customers. SendOwl offers options like immediate download after purchase, which is a great option for digital products.

Step 6: Finalize Your Product

Review all the information, make any necessary adjustments, and then save your product.

Now that your first digital product is set up in SendOwl, let’s connect it to your WordPress website!

Easy Integration with WordPress

Integrating SendOwl with WordPress allows you to embed buttons that lead to either checkout pages or product detail pages directly on your site. And, of course, you’re able to style these buttons to match your branding.

By connecting SendOwl products to your WordPress site, you’re not just setting up a store—you’re creating an optimized digital sales funnel that operates efficiently within your existing website structure. It comes with the extra features that online entrepreneurs are looking for within their ecommerce solution, including one-click upsells, customizable checkout flows & cart templates, product update emails, abandoned cart analytics & emails, and more!

Setting Up SendOwl Buttons on Your WordPress Site

Option 1: Sell from your website or blog

Go to the “Products” area of your Dashboard and click “Sell” next to the digital product you just created.

Select “Sell from your website or blog” on the left. Here you’ll see 4 button options, and this flexibility is one of the reasons I chose SendOwl over other options I’d been considering:

• Buy now
• Add to cart
• View cart
• Product sales page

Once you’ve decided on the best action for your customer to take from your website to purchase your digital product, click “Copy code”.

When you edit a page on your WordPress site, you want to add a “Custom HTML” block.

Paste the button code from SendOwl into this new block.

You can click on Preview mode to see what the button will look like on your page. When I preview or publish the page, I am taken directly to the checkout window since I selected a “Buy Now” button, but you may prefer to have your customers add a product to their cart or read more about the product on the product sales page first.

Option 2: Sell from your website or blog

This is the option I used on my site so I have full control over the buttons with my WordPress theme. Just like in Option 1, you’ll go to the “Products” area and then click “Sell” next to the product you wish to send people to from your site.

From there, you can choose to connect the button to either the payment page or the product sales page. Copy your preferred link.

Over on your WordPress page, add a button. On my site, I used the “Advanced Buttons” block from Kadence Blocks to my page.

Click on your new button, and then click on the link option above it. Here, you will paste the URL from SendOwl.

When you click the button on a published or preview page, you’ll be taken directly to your SendOwl product sales page!

My SendOwl Experience

My first digital product for E. Houston Studio was a keyword planner and guide designed to help you get started with SEO. I actually created this digital planner during a planner challenge, and when other challenge participants expressed interest in my planner, I knew I needed to start a shop on my website ASAP. The positive feedback I received gave me the confidence to take the leap and create more resources tailored to small business owners and creatives.

Technically, SendOwl provides you with a digital storefront where you can share up to 10 of your products even if you don’t have a website of your own!

I already had a website when I opened up my shop, so I didn’t need this option, but one reason I recommend SendOwl to beginners is you can truly start selling online in your own shop (not on a platform like Etsy) before you even build a website.

I mentioned a mentor who recommended SendOwl earlier, and that would be Faith Lee from Faith’s Biz Academy. She’s actually the one who ran the planner challenge and encouraged me to list something in my shop right away, so after going through her $9 Sell With SendOwl in 30 Minutes training, I opened up my shop!

If you’re looking to learn more about selling products on SendOwl, and you’d also benefit from Canva templates to help you kickstart your digital product creation journey, I highly recommend Faith’s short course.