Is it profitable to sell digital products?
Updated
The short answer
Per sale, very. A digital product costs you almost nothing to copy, so after the platform cut and card processing you keep most of the price. As a business, it is profitable only when enough of the right people see the page — and most sellers never solve that part.
The margin was never the hard problem. Attention is.
What eats the margin
The platform cut and card processing on every sale. Refunds, where the processing cost often is not returned. Currency conversion if your buyers are abroad.
Then support. A cheap product sold widely can generate more email than it earns, and that time is a real cost even when no money moves.
What makes it profitable
A higher price to a narrower buyer. Business buyers refund less, complain less and pay more, because the file saves them expensive time.
Repeat buyers help more than new traffic. A second product sold to people who already bought costs you nothing in marketing.
The honest test
Work out what you earned last month, then divide it by the hours you spent making, marketing and supporting it. Compare that with what your time is otherwise worth.
Early on the answer is usually poor. It improves fast if the audience grows, and not at all if it does not.