While blogging helps us build an audience and increase awareness of our brand, there comes a time when you’re ready to kick things up a notch and start profiting from all of your hard work.

Sure you can keep giving valuable content away for free, but at some point (sooner rather than later) you want to offer your audience something of value they can actually pay for.

If it’s your first time selling “digital products,” selling an ebook is a great place to start. I highly recommend you check out the Fizzle Show podcast episode below to hear Leo Babauta talk about launching his first ebook.

You need one thing

That’s right. Other than the ebook itself, you only need one thing to actually launch it and start making money on your website and that’s Gumroad.

Gumroad is a super simple e-commerce solution that allows you sell products on your website by adding a few lines of code.

You start by creating a product and uploading files (i.e. your ebook).

Click the “product” option and drag and drop your file over the “add file” section. Add your ebook name, set a price, and you’re good to go!

Click the button below to try it out for yourself.  This example is for a free ebook you can download:

Download Now. It’s Free!

It’s that simple

Once Gumroad gives you the code to add the link on your site, you’re done!

Now it’s time to share your product with your audience and let the sales roll in. Gumroad gives you detailed analytics and allows you to send emails to your audience with updates or product news. No membership software needed.

Once you’ve successfully marketed and sold your first ebook with Gumroad, try offering a video course, or even a subscription-based membership.

Gumroad just added support for video streaming and multiple file upload so your customers can access their files from anywhere.

Want to style your button?

[ENTIRELY OPTIONAL] Want to go beyond the basic button style and design something for yourself? Here’s a little code to help…

Gumroad gives you code that looks something like this:

<a href="https://gum.co/demo" class="gumroad-button">BUTTON TEXT HERE</a>

If you want your button to look like the one I’ve created below, change the class to look like this:

<a href="https://gum.co/demo" class="gumbutton">BUTTON TEXT HERE</a> 

Then in the CSS editor for your site add this code:

/* Gumroad Button Style */
.gumbutton, .entry-content .gumbutton {
background-color: #333;
border: none;
color: #fff;
cursor: pointer;
padding: 16px 24px;
padding: 1.6rem 2.4rem;
text-transform: uppercase;
width: auto;}

.gumbutton:hover, .entry-content .gumbutton:hover {
background-color: red;
}

Now your button will look something like this:

Download Now. It’s Free!

Don’t have an ebook yet?

Now that you see how easy it is to start selling digital products online, what’s holding you back?

Comment below and let us know. If you’re already selling digital products online, what tools and platforms are you using?