Digital products skip the shipping, delays and support work that follow every physical order, keeping more profit.

A customer buys a planner from your store. If it’s paper, the order starts a chain: a supplier packs it, a carrier picks it up and for the next week or two you hope nothing goes wrong.

If it’s a digital planner, the customer pays, gets a download link and starts using it that same evening. Your work on that order is already done.

In my experience with online store owners, I’ve noticed that the part of the business that drains them most is rarely the selling. It’s everything that happens after checkout. Digital products cut most of that out.

Every physical sale comes with a to-do list, even when a supplier handles fulfillment.

You pay for the trip. The supplier charges for shipping on every order, and that fee comes straight out of your margin. Offer free shipping and you either raise the price or absorb the cost yourself.

Your customer waits. Even fast delivery takes days. If there’s a delay, the buyer checks tracking, gets impatient and contacts you. In its 2024 Voice of Customers report, MakesYouLocal analyzed 787,052 support conversations across more than 300 online stores and found that 12% of orders led to a customer service request. The most common question was “Where is my order?”

Things may go wrong. Parcels can get lost, arrive damaged or get stuck in customs. Each case means a refund or reshipment.

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