7 Reasons I Bet on Digital Products (And Why I Still Do)

If you’ve ever hit a wall in your service business — where your time is maxed out and your energy’s wearing thin — you’ve probably asked yourself some version of this:

“Is there a better way to make money than trading hours?”

I hit that point years ago. I was doing custom Squarespace work, client after client, invoice after invoice. It paid the bills. But it didn’t scale. It didn’t breathe.

That’s when I started selling digital products. Not because I read a blog post saying I should — but because I had to find something more sustainable.

Here’s what I’ve learned since.

1. You can start small

The first digital product I ever sold wasn’t fancy. It was a pack of Squarespace tweaks — just bite-sized pieces of code and layout hacks I’d written for past clients. I packaged them up, put a Stripe button on a Notion site, and made sales.

No warehouse. No fulfillment process. No 12-week launch plan. Just a product and a page.

Digital products don’t need investors. They need clarity. Clarity on what solves a real problem — and a way to deliver it.

2. The margins are beautiful

Once it’s made, it costs you nothing to deliver. Every sale is mostly profit.

Yes, there are tools. Hosting. Maybe you pay for email, or a platform, or a bit of automation. But your cost of goods is near zero. Your time becomes the raw material — not your inventory.

And if you’re already doing the work for clients? You’re sitting on gold. Turn your most-requested service into a downloadable. Turn your process into a guide. Turn your system into a kit.

You’ve already earned it. Now you just need to scale it.

3. You don’t run out of stock

There’s no “Sold Out” on a PDF. No panic when orders spike. No need to order 2,000 units from overseas hoping they’ll move.

If 1 person buys or 1,000 people buy, the system stays the same. And that’s the magic. Because most of us aren’t trying to build empires — we’re trying to build lives with more freedom.

Digital gives you that leverage.

4. You can pivot without killing your cashflow

If a product flops, it’s a lesson — not a loss. No leftover inventory. No sunk shipping cost. Just a page to take down and an idea to learn from.

That flexibility is underrated. It lets you test ideas fast. You can move on without the emotional and financial weight that usually comes with a business “mistake.”

Digital lets you fail lightly. And that’s why you eventually win.

5. It’s easy to maintain (once it’s live)

Most digital products require heavy lifting up front. You write the thing. Design the thing. Record the thing.

But once it’s up and running? The updates are lightweight. Version 2.0. A new bonus. A quick polish to keep it fresh. You can batch it. Schedule it. Hand it off.

And if you do it right, your old work keeps working for you — long after you’ve moved on to the next thing.

6. You already have everything you need to sell them

If you’ve got a Squarespace site, a Stripe account, and a product worth paying for — you’re 90% there.

You don’t need a massive audience. You don’t need to run paid ads. You don’t need a course platform with a custom LMS and a gamified dashboard.

You need a simple, clear path to the solution your product provides — and a reason for someone to believe it will work for them.

Most freelancers already have the expertise. They just haven’t packaged it yet.

7. You’re no longer limited by geography, time, or capacity

The moment I realized someone bought my plugin while I was eating lunch?

That changed everything.

Not because it was “passive income” (it’s not). But because I’d created something once… and it kept delivering value without me needing to be present every time.

Your digital product can be bought at 2AM by someone in Australia you’ll never meet. It can be shared, gifted, linked, embedded, bundled.

There’s no cap to how many people can benefit from what you’ve built.

And to me, that’s freedom.

Final Thought

Digital products are not a magic pill. But they’re a smart bet.

They allow you to scale without hiring. Build without burning out. Test ideas without risking everything.

And they let you turn the work you’ve already done — the stuff sitting in client folders, in email threads, in your notes app — into something that pays you long after the project is over.

If you’re sitting on something valuable… share it. Sell it. Ship it.

You don’t need permission. You need a product and a place to start.

Want help figuring out what to sell? I’ve helped dozens of freelancers make their first digital product — and I’ve made more than a million dollars selling mine.

Let’s build yours.