I remember when I had only three products in my shop.

All of them were Pin graphic templates made with Canva. The first sale I made came out of nowhere. She wasn’t even a subscriber! (I checked!) But she found me none the less and I made 20-something bucks in my sleep.

I was literally asleep when I sold it!

And the rest is history.

These days, I make anywhere from $800 to over a thousand bucks selling my Canva templates, on my blog and various other marketplaces (Creative Market, Etsy, etc.) Almost half of that revenue comes from selling the templates right here, on the blog shop. Pretty neat, right?

So, I want to help you do the same!

If you like creating digital products, you should be able to sell them on your blog and make some extra pocket money (if not much more than just that) on the regular. So, today I’ll show you the technical side of things, namely, setting up WooCommerce (an eCommerce platform built specifically for WordPress users) to sell your products!

Let’s get started.

What You’ll Learn In This Post

All about using WooCommerce to start selling your digital, downloadable products today!

What is WooCommerce and How to Use it?

WooCommerce is a plugin. It is free, and it works seamlessly with WordPress. It ONLY works with WordPress.

WooCommerce is a full-fledged e-commerce solution for WordPress users. You can use it to sell anything you want! Whether it’s physical goods you’re selling, or digital goods, and even wholesale goods. It works like any other e-commerce platform, but only as long as it is used with WordPress.

So, in the rest of this post, I’ll show you how to set up WoCommerce, how to add and sell your digital products, as well as some nifty little tools and tricks to further enhance the looks and functionalities of your digital product shop.

Why Can’t You Just Install the Plugin And Start Selling?

You can.

But don’t we all want things to be just a bit better? A bit more buyer-friendly? A bit more seller-friendly?

That’s what this post is about.

The little things that are so easy to miss, but if you do them, they enhance the user experience just that much, for yourself as the seller, as well as the ones who’re buying from you!

And that little something can often make a huge difference!

So, without further ado, let’s see how we can make the WooCommerce experience a little more refined, a little more user-friendly, and combined, a whole lot better!

Prep Your Website/Blog

As I mentioned already, WooCommerce is made for working with self-hosted WordPress. So the first thing you need to do is set up your website properly, and after that, install the WooCommerce plugin.

Set Up WordPress

You must have your website on the self-hosted WordPress platform. Also, make sure that you have SSL (Security Socket Layer responsible for a secure, encrypted connection between a web server and browser). Some payment gateways won’t even work if you do not have SSL.

I suggest signing up with SiteGround hosting as they have the best bang for the buck. With their GrowBig or higher plans, they offer free wildcard SSL (for your main URL as well as subdomains if you have any–a feature most other hosting companies will make you pay for), and a bunch of other features built into their system that make your site faster and more secure. They also offer free daily backups, and on-demand backups as well as full site restoration from backups, totally FREE, if you sign up for the GrowBig or higher plans.

After you’ve purchased your domain and hosting, set up your website. I have a tutorial where I’ve laid out the setup process. Follow the steps in this blog post if you need help: How to Set Up a WordPress Blog with SiteGround.

After you’ve set up WordPress, install a theme of your choice. Make sure whichever theme you choose is WooCommerce compatible.

Technically, you can pick any theme you want, but if it isn’t Woo compatible, then the store will not have the same style as your theme, and that’ll just make your site/store look and feel unprofessional.

I often get asked which theme I’m using. Well, my blog is custom designed by yours truly, with the Astra theme and Elementor Pro theme-builder plugin.

I love the combo and recommend it, but do keep in mind that if you’re brand new with little to no prior experience with WordPress, then you’ll likely have to go through a learning curve.

If you prefer something pre-made but high-quality, try the StudioPress themes. Most of them are WooCommerce friendly and are professionally designed. Envato also has some great WooCommerce friendly themes. Do a bit of research and see what fits your needs and aesthetics better.

Install WooCommerce

After you have your WordPress site set up and running, install the WooCommerce plugin. Go to WordPress dashboard, then click on “Plugins” on the left menu. Next, click on “Add new”, and then type “WooCommerce” in the search bar. Click “install now” on the correct plugin, and then “Activate” it. If you need further assistance, please refer to the post: How to Install Plugins to Self-Hosted WordPress Sites

Installing and activating WooCommerce will automatically create these pages for you: Shop, Cart, Checkout, My Account. For now, we’ll leave them be and go through the setup process first.

Set Up WooCommerce So You Can Start Selling

Once you’ve installed and activated WooCommerce, go through the setup process.

Set up WooCommerce

1. After you hit “Activate”, you’ll be redirected to a page that looks like the one below. Fill out this form with the correct information, paying special attention to the country and currency. Choose whether you want to sell both physical and digital products, only physical products, or only digital products.

Since we’re tackling selling digital products only, for the sake of this tutorial, we’ll choose only digital products. Once done, hit “Let’s go!”

2. In the next window, you’ll be asked to set up payment gateways. For me, I have both PayPal and Stripe activated. I use Stripe for credit card payment processing. PayPal is nice to have because some people prefer that over having to give out credit card information.

The PayPal gateway requires that you have a PayPal account, and once you’re logged in to your PayPal, you can choose whether you want to pay with a credit card, transfer directly from your bank or just pay with your PayPal balance.

The reason I also have Stripe is that it allows me to process credit card payments directly from the website, without having the buyer to log into PayPal in case they do not have a PayPal account.

Now, PayPal does offer a credit card solution that does not require buyers to log into a PayPal account, but the setup process for that is much more complicated. Whereas setting Stripe is a breeze!

We’ll go through connecting these payment gateways shortly to the respective platforms, but for now, during the WooCommerce setup process, make sure you have these two options turned on.

You can use the email address associated with your Stripe and PayPal accounts respectively, or leave it blank for now and connect later when we’ll go through the process of connecting the shop to the payment gateways.

3. When you click “Continue”, you’ll see automated tax calculation on the next screen. We do not need that for digital/downloadable products, so leave it unchecked. You can also connect MailChimp and Facebook here, but I use none of those, so I’ll leave those unchecked too, and hit “Continue”.

In the next window, DO NOT bother activating Jetpack. Skip the whole thing. No other plugin is as much a waste of cyber-space as Jetpack.

And this is it! WooCommerce is now all set to go. But before you connect payment gateways to your shop and do some other tweaks to make it more digital product friendly, we need a bit of house-cleaning.

When you installed WooCmmerce, it likely added a few additional and unnecessary things. Two plugins in specific. WooCoomerce keeps switching things around, so depending on when you’re reading this post, and how much things have changed, and when this post was last updated, you may or may not see these two additional plugins: Jetpack, and WooCommerce Services. You do not need them.

The first, as I mentioned, is a waste of space, so simply deactivate, then delete the plugin. WooCommerce services can come in handy if you’re selling physical products. For digital products, we do not need it, so go ahead and deactivate then delete that plugin too.

And now, you’re ready to connect your payment gateways.

Make Sure You Can Accept Payments

If you were selling physical products, you’d have to deal with shipping rates, taxes, the refund policy and what not. But because digital, downloadable products are so simple, all we really need to do is be able to accept payment.

Set up Stripe

Go to WordPress dashboard, and then from the left settings, go to WooCommerce > Settings.

On the Settings page, click on the Payments tab. You’ll see a bunch of options here. We’ll leave most of them as is (turned off), except the PayPal and Stripe – Credit card. 

We’ll start with Stripe. Click the Manage button (as shown) to finish the setup.

Here’s the setup:

1. Make sure that the Enable Stripe checkbox is checked.
2. Uncheck the Enable Test Mode checkbox. When that box is checked, the system will capture a sale. Use it to test if things are working, but when you’re ready to accept payment, make sure to uncheck it.
3. To accept payment, you’ll need to add a webhook endpoint. It is shown on your setup page (refer to the image above). Copy this webhook and then click the link next to it. It will take you to your Stripe dashboard where you can add the webhook. (You must already have a Stripe account; if not, make sure to create that first. Creating a Stripe account is straight forward and outside of the scope of this post, so I’ll leave it to you to take care of that part.) Once you’re in the Stripe dashboard, you should already be in the webhooks page. Click on the button that says “Add Endpoint”; a popup will open. Paste the URL you copied from your WordPress Stripe setup page on the designated field. Click on “Add Endpoint” on the popup to add it.
4. After you’ve added the webhook, you’ll need API keys. In the Stripe Dashboard, on the left menu, find and click on API Keys. This will show you the two keys. Copy them and paste them on WordPress Stripe setup page in their designated fields.
5. Make sure to check “Capture charge immediately”.
6. Leave the rest of the setup as is.
7. And done!

Set up PayPal

Go back to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.

This time, we’ll set up PayPal. Now, you’ll see two options for PayPal here. One says PayPal, and the other says PayPal Checkout. We’ll choose the former. The latter has a few more options that we do not need as digital, downloadable product sellers.

So, enable the PayPal option and click on Set up next to it (and DISABLE the PayPal Checkout option!)

Now, go through the setup:

1. Make sure to check Enable PayPal Standard.
2. Enter the email address that is associated with your PayPal account. This is important; that’s how PayPal knows where to send payments.
3. IPN email notification is used for refunds and such. You can uncheck it or leave it as is. Digital, downloadable products are typically instantaneous, so refunds are not issued on these types of items. We don’t need to worry about that.
4. Make sure Payment Action is set to Capture.
5. Since we do not need to issue refunds, there’s no need to set up API credentials (for PayPal only, Stripe will require you to add the API keys regardless). Leave those blank or at their default state.
6. Save changes and you’re done!

Make Sure Your Shop Related Pages are Working

When you installed and activated WooCommerce, it would have automatically created four (4) pages for you: Shop, Cart, Checkout, and My Account.

The Shop Page is where your products are shown.

The Cart Page is where the items one intends to buy are stored (after someone has clicked on “Add to Cart”).

The Checkout Page is where the payment is processed.

The My Account Page is where people can access their purchase history. If you’re selling downloadable products, your buyers will be able to log in to their account (provided they created an account when purchasing an item) and download a product they had previously purchased.

After you’re done setting up payment gateways, go to Dashboard > Pages and then make sure these pages have indeed been created. Check out the live pages as well, just to make sure they’re working as intended. Feel free to create a dummy product by going to Dashboard > Products > Add New, and make sure it works.

You can rename the pages if you want. Just edit the name and slug (URL) as you would for any page or post.

If you have a theme that is customized for WooCommerce, the shop styles will reflect the overall site styles. If not, then your theme is not WooCommerce compatible. The shop and all other related features and functionalities will continue to work, just that they won’t look very pretty.

Make Sure You Get Notifications in the Right Email

By default, WooCommerce sends all sales and related notifications to the site administrator’s email address. You can change it by going to Dashboard > WooCommerce > Settings and then clicking on the Emails tab.

Guest Checkouts and Customer Accounts

You can set it up so that people can check out as guests or create an account. Which option you choose depends on you. I’d suggest you allow people to check out as a guest (their information will not be stored). If you want to give them the option to create an account, you can do that also.

To make sure all of these settings are properly set up, go to Dashboard > WooCommerce > Settings and then click on the Accounts & Privacy tab.

Below are the settings that I’m using:

Check the option to allow customers to place orders without an account.

Check the box that says “Allow customers to log into an existing account during checkout.” (If you allow people to create an account.)

Also, check “Allow customers to create an account during checkout.” (If you allow people to create an account.)

Personally, I suggest allowing customers to create an account only during the checkout process, and not on the My Accounts page. So I leave that option unchecked.

Make sure to always save your changes!

Privacy Policy and Customer Information Retention

In the same Accounts and Privacy page, you can also set which page to use as your Privacy Policy. You can also set how long you want the system to retain your customer’s information.

How to Add Digital, Downloadable Products

Adding products is similar to adding a page or post on WordPress, with a few additional sections so that you can add product-specific things such as price, quantity, additional gallery images, downloadable files, etc.

Based on your product specifications, some of these will change, but here’s an example of how a typical digital, downloadable product is added:

1. Go to WordPress Dashboard > Products > Add New.
2. Add your titles and descriptions. WooCommerce has two separate description boxes. Remember that the top description box in the WordPress product editor is the one that shows up underneath the product images on the actual product page on the site. And the description box that is at the bottom of the product editor page is the one that shows up at the top, next to the product image, on the actual product page.
3. You also have two different places, within the WordPress product editor page, where you can add images. One of them is the “product image”, which is the main product image that shows up in the Shop page, as well as the first (larger) image that people see in the single product page. The other section is the “product gallery”, which is where you can add more photos. In the single product page, these are shown right below the main image. But if you click on any of these, the top-main image is replaced by the one you click.
4. Towards the middle of the product editor, you’ll see the section where you can do all the fun stuff, like, setting the price, adding the actual downloadable product, etc. Let’s take a closer look!
   (Follow the images!)

Make sure to choose “Simple Product”, and then check both “Virtual” and “Downloadable”. It is imperative that you check BOTH “Virtual” and “Downloadable”. Some of the features you want are dependent on checking both of these options (such as auto order-completion, something you want for your digital, downloadable products).

Under the “General” tab, set your price, and add the files your buyers will be able to download upon purchase.

You can also set a download limit and expiry if you want to. If you do not want to set any limits, just leave those blank.

Under the “Inventory” tab, you can set up how many products you’re selling. These are digital products, so, technically, you do not need to set a limit or have inventory. It is totally up to you whether or not you want to set a limit to how many of these products you’ll sell.

Also, since they’re all digital, downloadable products, there is no reason to allow backorders.

I also make sure to check “Sold individually”. Nobody needs multiple copies of the same digital product. If anything, it may cause confusion if someone accidentally chose more than one; then you’ll need to deal with refunds and you don’t want to waste time with that.

Under “Linked Products”, you can choose if you want to upsell or cross-sell products. My favorite is the cross-sells which are products that are shown in the Cart. These should be products that compliment the one your buyer is about to purchase.

You can also just leave them blank if you want a cleaner cart page.

To add a product, simply start typing the name of the product, and it will automatically pull the product for you.

The Attribute tab is used if you have a variation of the same product within one product. For example, if you have a product with two size variations. You can use this section to add your variants based on their attributes. For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip this part as it is not a common setting for digital/downloadable products.

(Note: This option may come in handy if you offer different licenses for your digital products.)

Under the “Advanced” tab, you can add a purchase note, enable or disable reviews, and also, use the “Menu order” field to set in which order the product is shown. If not sure, leave them blank (personally, I’ve never used them).

Review everything, and then hit “publish”!

Tweaks to Further Enhance User Experience

At this point, you are ready to sell products.

But why stop here when we can make things better?

Let’s see how we can tweak things further to make the products look better.

Change Product Image Dimension

After adding more products, your “Shop” page may look something like this:

As you see, the main photo appears square right out of the box. Maybe you want that, but maybe you don’t. You can change that in the WordPress customizer. Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Customize. Then, click on “WooCommerce” from the left menu, and then click on “Product Images”. You can choose custom size or check “uncropped” if you want to retain the original ratio.

Enable or Disable Product Reviews

Some people give honest reviews, but the internet is full of trolls and some people just want to mess with you. I prefer to turn off all reviews because what’s the point? If a customer is not happy, trust me, they’ll let you know! You do not need reviews for that.

Unless you have an assistant who can help you with vetting reviews from spam, I suggest you turn off this feature.

To do this, go to Dashboard > WooCommerce > Settings and then, under the Products tab, scroll down until you see the option “Enable Reviews” Make sure the box is unchecked. Then save your changes.

Change the Add to Cart Button on the Main Shop Page

Do you see how the buttons on the main shop page, under the products, say “Add to cart”? This is annoying. Clicking that button automatically adds a product to the cart. If you want to view details of the product itself, you will need to click on the image itself.

Now, unless you know how WooCommerce works, you’ll click the button and instead of going to product details, you’ll just end up adding the product to your cart.

This is hella confusing!

Let’s change that, shall we?

We’ll need to add a custom function for this. You can do it by editing your functions.php page (Dashboard > Appearance > Theme Editor). However, I don’t advise messing with this page unless you’re a coder yourself and know exactly what you’re doing.

So, we’ll do this with the help of a plugin called “My Custom Functions” by Space X-Chimp. Find and then activate this plugin like you would any other plugin.

After you’ve installed and activated the plugin, go to Dashboard > Settings > PHP Inserter.

You’ll see a box where you can insert your code. Add the code below in this box, and then save your changes.

//Change Add to Cart Button Text
add_filter( 'woocommerce_loop_add_to_cart_link', 'add_product_link' );
function add_product_link( $link ) {
     global $product;
     echo '<form action="' . esc_url( $product->get_permalink( $product->id ) ) . '" method="get">
     <button type="submit" class="button add_to_cart_button product_type_simple">' . __('View Details', 'woocommerce') . '</button>
     </form>';
}

You can choose for the button to say anything; in the code above, I have set it to say “View Details”. You can change that to whatever you want. After adding that code, clicking the button will take the user to the product page instead of automatically adding the product to the cart.

The product page now looks like this:

Get Rid of Unnecessary Info on the Checkout Page

The checkout page has way too much information for the client to fill out. These may be necessary for physical products, such as shipping and billing addresses, but not for digital, downloadable products. You can make the checkout process for such digital items much smoother if you get rid of this unnecessary information.

You can do so easily with a simple plugin called “Woo Checkout for Digital Goods” by Thedotstore.

Just install and activate the plugin, which will create a new dashboard menu item called “Woo Checkout Fields”.

Go to Dashboard > Woo Checkout Fields, then select all the options. Save settings to apply them.

This will take away all the unnecessary billing and shipping information and will create a clean checkout page where your customers will only have to add their email address and payment information to make a purchase.

Optimize Your Shop for Pinterest

We all know by now how important it is to drive traffic to your blog via Pinterest. The same is true for your digital products. Here are some interesting stats:

• 59% of millennials discover products on Pinterest.
• 90% of weekly Pinterest users use the platform to make purchase decisions.
• 55% Pinners look for product ideas.

So, yes, you and your products need to be on Pinterest!

Pinterest has a nifty feature called “Rich Pins”. When activated through the Rich Pin Validator, Pinterest shows useful information such as product price, title, description, etc. Here’s what a product pin looks like from my blog shop.

Now, the thing is, WooCommerce doesn’t come equipped with all the necessary markups for Pinterest to show this information. So, you’ll need to add some custom codes. Simply go to the custom functions plugin (Dashboard > Settings > PHP Inserter), add the following code right below all the other codes you have added so far, and then save.

//WooCommerce Metadata
function add_open_graph_meta(){
	if( is_product() ){
		$product = new WC_Product( get_the_ID() );
		echo '<meta property="og:price:amount" content="'.$product->price.'" />';
		echo '<meta property="og:price:currency" content="'.get_woocommerce_currency().'" /> ';
		/* Hardcode a product brand here or get the term from a plugin*/
		echo '<meta property="og:brand" content="Your brand" />';
		// Get the product rating if it has been rated
		if ($product->get_rating_count() > 0){
			echo '<meta property="og:rating" content="'. $product->get_average_rating().'" />';
			echo '<meta property="og:rating_count" content="'. $product->get_rating_count().'" />';
			echo '<meta property="og:rating_scale" content="5" />';	
		}
		// Get in stock & out of stock
		if ( $product->is_in_stock() ) {
        	echo '<meta property="og:availability" content="in stock" />';
    	}else{
			echo '<meta property="og:availability" content="out of stock" />';	
		}
	}
}
/*Add da hook */
add_action( 'wp_head', 'add_open_graph_meta' );

Bonus: Direct Checkout

Some of you have wanted to know how to add a direct checkout for your WooCommerce products. Turns out, it’s super freakin’ easy!

So, often you may have an exclusive product that you’re trying to sell. One way of doing to, especially for digital products, is to sign up for a third-party service like SendOwl, for example. These third-party solutions tend to cost extra, likely a monthly subscription.

Why bother when you can do that for free?

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you want to sell an eBook or a seasonal product. Let’s assume you also want to do so without having people to go to your shop page. You want to get rid of the distractions and the multiple steps of having to choose a product, add it to the cart, and then click another button to go to checkout. And as marketers know, the more steps you add, the higher the chances of people abandoning the cart.

For your one-off items like eBooks and such, you want to increase your conversion rate. And you can do that by minimizing the number of steps between a visitor seeing a product and then buying the product.

One way to do that is by having a landing page, and then adding a “Buy Now” button. When people click the button, instead of going to the product page, they will be taken directly to the checkout page — the product already added in the cart and ready to be paid for.

And all you have to do is link this button (or a text link) to this specific URL:

https:// mywebsiteurl.com /checkout/?= 12345 

The highlighted parts will change. For the URL, obviously, you’ll insert your own URL instead of “mywebsiteurl”.

For the numbers, it’s a unique number that is referred to as a product ID. This number is different for each product you have added to your WooCommerce. Finding this number is simple. Go to Dashboard > Products, and then hover over the product of interest. Right underneath the product name, you should see the product ID.

You can use this link in a landing page or send it through an email, you name it. It bypasses all the other annoying bits like having to send a potential buyer to a product page or having them click a button to add it to cart and what not. The more steps you add, the more chances that people would change their minds about the purchase and abandon the cart.

---

There are plenty of other tricks and tweaks to make things better, but well, this post is already turning into a mid-length novella of a sort, so I’ll stop here. At this point, your store is perfectly functional, and you have all the necessary tools in place to make it as smooth sailing as possible for yourself as well as for your customers.

You can further refine how the shop looks and works with the settings you have available, or with custom plugins and CSS. Play with it and refine things further as you go. However, for starter, this tutorial will get you out the door.

All you need to do now is actually create some digital, downloadable products. Trust me, it’s a pretty nifty way to make some passive income on the side. Like I said, these days I make anywhere from a few hundred to over a thousand bucks from selling digital, downloadable products. Make these products once and then continue to sell and add to your revenue!

As always, let me know if you have any questions for me, or leave a comment below.