Selling digital design products like fonts, templates, graphics, illustrations and more can be an excellent stream of passive income. However, when you have an online shop filled with products, an ongoing challenge is driving traffic and getting potential buyers to notice your work.

So how can you stand out and get more eyeballs on your digital goods? Here are 5 practical tips on getting noticed when selling digital design products online.

Understand the Digital Marketplaces You Sell On

Before trying to get sales or drive traffic, first take time to understand the digital marketplaces you plan to sell your products on. Every platform like Creative Market, Etsy, or Envato Elements has a distinct vibe and style of products that tend to sell best.

Spend time browsing trending and best-selling items. Look at what styles, themes and types of goods get featured by the platforms themselves. Start to get a feel for what’s oversaturated versus where there may be opportunities to fill a need.

As examples, on Creative Market graphics, fonts and templates tend to sell very well. You’ll notice lots of bright, playful and vintage aesthetics. On Envato you may see more modern and avant-garde styles.

Understanding the vibes of various marketplaces helps spark ideas for products people want, but with your own creative twist.

Create Compelling Thumbnails

Once you have products available for sale, thumbnails are crucial for catching eyes and conveying what makes your work unique, high-quality and desirable.

Some tips for stellar thumbnails:

• Ensure the first thumbnail clearly conveys what the product is e.g. “this is a font”. No extra info needed.
• Alternate between showing visuals of products in use and calling out practical features/benefits. This balance of inspirational and informational thumbnails works well.
• Be visually consistent across all thumbnails for a product, almost treating each one like its own brand. Consistent colors, styles, etc.
• Consider adding a “You may also like” thumbnail at the end to cross-promote other products. This can lead shoppers to purchase multiple items at once.

Release New Products Consistently

Releasing new digital design products consistently over time increases opportunities to get noticed and featured.

For example, many digital marketplaces have editors that handpick select new items to promote each week via newsletters and homepage features. The more products you publish, the more chances one gets picked to be featured to a large audience.

Additionally, once an editor notices your work and a product does well after being featured, they tend to take note of your shop. Subsequent products are more likely to get featured in the future, accelerating your exposure and sales.

Create a Behance Profile to Expand Reach

In addition to the main digital marketplaces, having a Behance profile with your products displayed provides expanded reach through organic and affiliate traffic.

Behance features select products in categories like fonts, templates and UI kits, often showing them to tens of thousands of viewers. This is yet another avenue to get your products featured and noticed by people outside the core marketplaces.

Behance is also popular among affiliate marketers who earn commission referring sales of products they want to promote. Showcasing items on Behance allows more affiliate promotion which also leads to more sales.

Offer Something For Free

One tactic that can work extremely well when you’re first starting out selling digital design goods is to offer something for free in order to rapidly build an audience.

While counterintuitive to give away quality work for $0, the upside is immense. With a free downloadable product you can collect email signups to start building an audience and subscriber list.

Having thousands of people who have shown initial interest makes launching any future paid products much easier. You have a pre-qualified audience to email and buyers more likely to purchase again after getting value from your free offering.

Just be sure whatever free product you give away is very high quality, as that work will be introducing your skills and talents to potential long-term fans.

In Closing

Getting noticed selling digital design products comes down to consistently publishing unique, high-quality and desirable goods over time. Combine that with leveraging platforms to gain exposure and using smart tactics like free product giveaways.

Implementing even just one or two of these practical marketing tips can significantly boost traffic and sales of your online design shop.