How to Sell PDFs on the Internet (+ Design, Sales, and Marketing Strategies)

Apr 6, 2024

This article will explain exactly how you can prepare a PDF document, charge it and then publish it for sale. In addition, we'll provide a few tips on how you can improve your sales and marketing processes for the best revenue possible.

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How much can you make through selling PDFs on the internet?

Selling PDFs can bring in a few positives. The three benefits that creators love most:

Revenue

Lead generation

Industry reputation

Where can you buy a PDF online?

Choosing where you sell your PDFs on the internet is a crucial decision that can affect how much the amount of time, money and the content you need. On the top level you can choose between two approaches to approach PDF sales, and it's acceptable to combine two approaches in tandem.

on your website

One benefit of selling through your own marketplace is that you can customize your branding, get greater depth of data on user behaviors, and frequently make more money.

On a marketplace

If you'd like to benefit from a third party marketplace tool, there are plenty of great options out there! It's easier to get started by using marketplaces online rather than developing your own site and, often you'll be able to run pay-per-click advertising on their platforms. In addition, you'll be able to get views from the customers that could have initially landed on the site for another vendor's page. Below are some options to consider if you would like to offer PDFs for sale on an online marketplace:

Marketplace Ideal for
Gumroad Support for the new seller
Etsy Locally made or hand-crafted things
Facebook Marketplace Participation in buying and selling organizations
Amazon World-wide reach and ad solutions

How do you make a saleable PDF

Be sure to go through these steps carefully as they'll ensure that you create an engaging piece of content that is sure to be appealing to the people you want to reach (and thus, more likely to earn sales).

Design content that is relevant to your intended audience

Content types that can be created within a PDF document can be pretty endless, but there are some common ones:

  • E-books or whitepapers
  • Infographics
  • Worksheets, templates or templates
  • Checklists
  • Published research papers
  • Cookbooks
  • Stories
  • Journaling guides
  • Which problems do they wish to solve or topics that they would like to know more about
  • Their preferred method of taking the any new data (eg. graphs, images or texts)
  • The tone of writing that can be compared to the best (eg. funny, professional, academic)

Don't forget to add your personal information as well as an action call to action in order for readers to reach you later if they need to. It is best to place this either in the beginning or the conclusion of the text.

Feedback and editing

It's a great idea to seek feedback from a variety of people within your target audience while you're creating material. Facebook groups, Reddit threads, LinkedIn and your existing customers can all be useful locations to meet people from your targeted audience.

You should also ask someone to check the document for spelling, grammar and punctuation. Often once your PDF goes online, you will not have much time for reviewing it, so review review, review in the beginning!

Add design details

Depending on the type of content you're creating It is possible to add specific design details. As an example, is it making a white document with a cover? Do you have your own branding such as logos, colours, and fonts to the page? Are some examples of the PDF copyrighted (and in need of an overlaying text that reads "Sample" or "Copyrighted")?

Choose the right format to export

Adobe offers a comprehensive description of the various factors you are able to alter when preparing a PDF file to be exported. One of the most significant factors is whether your PDF is intended to be printed or if it is intended for use solely in digital format. Printers utilize CMYK which is a different color system to the RGB used by computers, so the appearance of the colours may change. PDFs also come in various file formats, which can alter how they look and the type of device they are able to be opened on. Certain file formats might require an application specifically designed for access (or you can even password protect them).

These are just a few examples so do thorough research on the format you need to use the file for its intended purpose.

What is the best way to price digital products

  • Do you price based on a one-time fee, subscription fee, or the bundle price?
  • What is the price that competitors are charging for similar material?
  • How long and original is your website's content?
  • What is the method of collecting payment?
  • Will you offer the possibility of a return policy?
  • Are you offering some kind of promotion, like discounts or free trials?

Keep in mind that the prices you established at the beginning of your sales process for PDF doesn't have to stay in place for a long time. If you begin to launch new digital items and make more sales, your perception of the people you want to reach could change significantly. It's important to stay attuned to how your customers respond differently to various pricing strategies or promotions. Try a variety of options before settling on a high performing approach.

Tips for managing online PDF sales

The basics for creating and launching a PDF for online sales are above. If you followed the steps above, you'll have no problem. However, if you're wanting to elevate your digital selling strategy to the next level Check out these strategies!

Make an online sales funnel

Automate whenever possible

  • Notifying you when your content requires being updated. Create an AI bot that scans the headlines for news about developments within your area and pings your website to take action to this change with new information.
  • Create outlines, ideas, or even sketches. ChatGPT is an excellent tool for helping you overcome the creative block, or to write documents for content with record speed. It's not recommended to use AI for writing your PDF documents for you if you're going to be selling this material as your own.
  • Posting content and marketing. A variety of tools for marketing have been made possible by AI and are able to help you plan content, reply to feedback on posts, or optimize paid advertising campaigns for instance. This will help you spread the news about your digital product to more customers at a faster pace.

Monitor sales and analyzes

Never lose sight of the facts. The e-commerce platform you use, your online marketplace, or any other instrument for monetization will provide you with comprehensive insights about your business's sales, marketing activities and your target market. Things you could monitor include:

  • Cost per Attribution. How much are you paying (often in marketing spend) to gain a brand new client?
  • The amount of transactions (and the mean cart purchase) daily. This information can aid in estimation of revenues.
  • The conversion rate. Of the people that came to your website or watched your marketing efforts what percentage actually bought? It is important to optimize your sales funnel to ensure that your sales conversion rate is as high as possible.
  • The abandonment rate of the cart. The number of customers who were almost buying the item but did not? Then discover the reason they left the cart and introduce a new advertising or sales technique to get more sales, and to keep this rate low.

Continuously optimize your marketing tactics

A/B testing is an extremely popular technique for ensuring that your marketing and sales strategies will be the most effective. It runs multiple variations of the same content using a single variable which is modified (like the title, CTA the length or title of content for example). After a few weeks it is possible to review the results, direct your traffic to the best performance version, then reduce efforts on one of the underperformer(s). Explore the following list of methods you can A/B test the sales funnels you use for PDF.

Update your content regularly

One of the biggest benefits to selling digital products is that they're minimally maintained. The one part that is important to keep an eye for consistency is the importance of the information. Depending on your niche, topics may develop quickly or slowly. For example, the field of math doesn't change that fast so if you're designing templates to assist elementary school children in understanding multiplication tables, you don't have to update regularly your material unless local curriculum has changed. However, if you're a baker creating PDF formatted cookbooks You may want to refresh your PDFs when you modify a recipe, launch a new recipe or create recipes that are based on the season's ingredients.

There are different tools out on the market that help you edit a live PDF document easier. The main issue in selling PDFs was the fact that they couldn't be modified once it was out in the wild. The best way to go about it is to sell your PDF as an active link to the file, not the actual PDF file. It's simpler to redirect a link which affects many channels at once rather than needing to update every channel with the new document.

A step next to selling PDFs online

If you're aware of what to do to create and sell PDF content online, it's time to get the best tools for you to start working. For creators, this is an all-in-one solution that provides instruments to help you create educational content, marketing tools that help you increase demand for your items, and monetization solutions to allow you to start making money. Plus, it also has an extensive dashboard with sales and engagement metrics that allow users to continually optimize their activities to increase the returns on investment. Get started for free right here!