Soapbox Engage Blog

By now, you’re likely aware of the vast benefits of e-commerce. E-commerce continues to grow across all industries. In the third quarter of 2023, e-commerce accounted for 15.6% of all total sales! Using e-commerce stores has been a major adaptation of nonprofit organizations over the past few years. Selling items through a shop is a great way for your organization to add another income stream to help you meet your funding goals and support your mission.

But… What should you sell? For some nonprofit organizations, it might be easy to come up with a physical product to sell that is relevant to your mission. But that’s certainly not true for all of them. Not to mention, it takes money to create a product, and it can be hard to know how much demand there will be for something when you haven’t tried it yet.

Luckily, the Soapbox Engage Shop app now supports digital products! Administrators can specify a url for a location of a digital download for each product. Digital products might include:

• Ebooks
• Digital art
• Educational materials
• Virtual services
• Exclusive content relating to your mission
• And more! The possibilities are endless.

Your nonprofit's ability to sell digital products allows you to diversify your revenue streams beyond traditional donations, increase impact and accessibility, and distribute content that can serve as an educational resource while generating revenue. Here are some of the specific benefits to selling digital products:

5 benefits to selling digital products for nonprofits

1. Digital products last forever

Unlike physical products, digital products are not subject to wear and tear. They won’t be thrown out or donated after a few years due to being used too much, or because the customer no longer has space.

Digital products can last forever! If you sell an ebook that is relevant to your mission statement, it will be just as good two years later.

It’s true that your product may become less relevant as time passes, but you can update and improve a digital product at any time.

2. Digital products have lower overhead costs

Selling digital products costs much less than selling physical products. There are so many costs associated with selling something physical that you don’t have to worry about at all: raw materials, manufacturing, storage, packaging and shipping, etc!

E-commerce is just one avenue for your nonprofit organization to get more funding and fulfill your mission. With little overhead costs, you can reap more profit to help you reach your goals!

3. Digital products are always in stock

Hopefully your product is a hit, and many of your community members are interested. With digital products—you never have to worry about selling out! You will always have a digital product in stock for your customers.

4. Digital products allow for wider access

When it comes to shipping materials, there may be limitations on who you can ship to. It might be too expensive to ship internationally, and not worth what you’re making on the sale. But you don’t have to worry about that with digital products! Anyone in the world with internet access can have a chance to buy your product. This also means that you have a wider audience of people who can become invested in helping you fulfill your mission!

5. Digital products offer unlimited product types

When creating physical products, you can’t do too many at once for all the aforementioned reasons (cost, storage, etc.). But with digital products, you can create unlimited product types! Maybe you have content for an ebook and digital art and some sort of virtual service. If you sell digital products through the Soapbox Engage Shop App, you can do them all!

Those are just some benefits to selling digital products in your e-commerce store. Interested in using our Shop app? Fill out this form to set up a demo, and we’ll be in touch with you soon!

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Here are a few more resources to help you on your e-commerce journey:

• 8 Trends for Nonprofit E-Commerce in 2024:Digital products is just one trend to know about when it comes to your e-commerce shop in 2024. Check out this blog post for 8 more e-commerce trends you should know!
• How to Write Product Descriptions for Your E-commerce Store: Your digital products won’t sell at all if you don’t have a great product description. This blog post offers seven tips to help you write the strongest descriptions that are sure to help you meet your goals.
• Top New Features of the Soapbox Engage Shop app: The ability to sell digital products is one of the new features of our Shop App. Check out this blog post to learn more about the other great new features!