How to start digital dropshipping: Must-know tips and tricks for building your online empire

The idea of running your own business is an exciting one to many, as they strive to live life on their own terms and earn money in their own way. However, the effort and cost to start your own business can be off putting and overwhelming.

Want a way to run your own business without the upfront investment? Digital dropshipping may be the right business for you.

Digital dropshipping is one of the most attractive work-at-home business ideas. This is especially true given the global dropshipping industry’s rapid growth as of late. The industry’s value stood at $287 billion in 2023 but is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030.

What is digital dropshipping?

First, what is dropshipping? Dropshipping is an approach to ecommerce where you run an online store but don’t physically handle any of the items you sell from it. You don’t even need to personally store them while you wait for them to be sold.

Here’s how it actually works. You team up with a supplier that lets you list their products in your online store.

Then, when someone uses your store to buy one of those products, you order it from the supplier. This third party is responsible for shipping the product to the customer.

Now, what is digital dropshipping? It works on a similar principle to traditional dropshipping, in that you profit from products you don’t own and haven’t personally created.

However, with digital dropshipping, you only sell digital products — like ebooks, online courses, software, videos, artwork, and templates. Indeed, you might have seen digital dropshipping alternatively referred to as digital product dropshipping.

Advantages of digital dropshipping

Digital dropshipping works in quite a different way to traditional dropshipping. Here’s how advantages of digital vs physical products trickle through to digital dropshipping:

📦 No costly overheads: As digital products aren’t tangible, they don’t have to take up space in a warehouse. This rids you of any need to spend money on renting storage space for these products.

⚡ Faster delivery: After a physical product is bought online, it must be retrieved from storage and then packaged before being transported to the customer’s home. In sharp contrast, once a customer has bought a digital product, they can access it more or less straight away.

🌍 Eco-friendliness: Obviously, many vehicles delivering physical products can give off harmful carbon emissions along the way. Also, when a physical product is casually discarded, it can potentially contribute to a landfill. This isn’t the case with digital products.

😊 Higher customer satisfaction: Money you free up can be redirected to other aspects of your business, making it easier for you to improve them.

Common challenges of digital dropshipping (and how to tackle them)

If you want to capitalize on the merits of digital dropshipping, you should first educate yourself on how to work with its drawbacks. The good news is that, in many respects, it can be a case of “easy (enough) when you know how”.

Here are several of the main challenges that can face digital dropshippers…

Making deals with creators

When running a traditional dropshipping business, you don’t have to approach suppliers directly. Instead, you can sign up with a dropshipping platform ready to liaise with merchants on your behalf.

However, as a digital dropshipper, you might have to reach out to one creator after another, all just to get permission to sell their products. If this sounds like a time-consuming, arduous process, that’s because it can be.

On the flip side, you can ease the process if you do your research beforehand to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing.

One thing you could do is look for suppliers offering done-for-you digital products. Some of these products could come with Master Resell Rights (MRR) permitting you to resell them and keep all the resulting profits.

One platform where you can find digital products with MRR attached is Digital Wealth Flippers. However, if you want to know how to start digital dropshipping in the simplest, most streamlined way, the MRR method isn’t it.

A better idea is to look for creators taking part in affiliate marketing. These brands can be much quicker and easier to find than those offering resell rights.

If a particular digital product catches your eye, ask the creator whether they can give you an affiliate link to it. If so, you can insert this link into promotional content you create about the product. When someone uses this link to buy the product, you will be paid a commission.

Whop is home to thousands of digital products, and almost all of them have affiliate programs.

All you have to do to find a digital dropshipping product is head to the 'hottest affiliate offers' tab on the Whop Discover page and find the products you want to promote and sell.

Deciding what kind of content to create

What kind of content do you want to create? That’s a good starting point when trying to figure out how to keep your audience engaged.

After all, they need to be engaged long enough to be receptive to clicking affiliate links in your content. However, you can’t realistically expect them to enjoy consuming your content if you don’t genuinely enjoy making it.

You might have already created a formidable library of digital content that has helped you to garner a large, committed following. So, you can continue doing what you are already doing, but slip in the occasional affiliate link here and there.

Still, even if you are a long-established creator, you can spread your wings by extending your presence to new platforms.

Is video content your thing? Then play the long-form game with YouTube or keep your footage short and snappy with TikTok. Love writing? Think about starting your own blog or launching a newsletter. Alternatively, you could just become more active on a social media site like X or Instagram.

To put a long story short, if you can add affiliate links to your content, you can use it to dropship digital products and services.

Assessing the reliability of different suppliers

When you run a dropshipping business, a third party takes care of both the quality and delivery of the products you offer. It’s potentially problematic, then, that customers could hold you responsible for both.

Of course, this situation is a double-edged sword. When you meticulously research many different suppliers before choosing between them, it’s easier to ensure that both the quality and delivery are on point.

That way, when people do buy from your brand, they can come to associate it with warm, fuzzy feelings. Now, this all raises one interesting question. How are you supposed to tell which suppliers have the best track records for reliability? Here’s a quick tip — read individual suppliers’ customer reviews!

Let’s assume you run a website regularly updated with news and advice about digital marketing. Existing sites like this include Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land.

If you intend to write articles about SEO, consider including affiliate links to digital products that could assist readers with their SEO efforts.

Whop hosts a multitude of ecommerce hubs known as ‘whops’. Often, a single whop can offer various digital products. So, if you want your article to link to a whop specializing in SEO, head to Whop’s Discover tab and do a search for ‘SEO’.

You should see a long list of whops to choose from. Click on one and then scroll down to see how consumers have rated the whop on average (if, indeed, it has attracted ratings from consumers).

As you can see, one prominent SEO-themed whop, The SEO Boardroom, has garnered an average rating of 5.0 stars from 39 reviews.

By scrolling further down the page, you can see reviews that go into more detail about why consumers like the whop.

By reading these reviews, you can learn more about what the whop offers. So, you can also help yourself to decipher how much the whop would truly benefit the type of people who read your article.

How to start a digital dropshipping business

You can dropship digital or physical products online. However, digital dropshipping can be appreciably easier to get to grips with. Even connecting to a new supplier can take just a few clicks, without any tiresome forms to fill in.

From selecting the right products to partnering with creators, here’s an in-depth guide on how to start digital dropshipping for beginners.

1. Choose a digital product niche

It’s good to start by thinking about where your interests and expertise lie (we will go into example of specific niches further along in this guide). Remember that you need to create content interesting and informative enough to tempt people into clicking the affiliate links you place in it.

For example, it stands to reason that fitness buffs should create content centered around how to get fit. However, there are already many fitness buffs online doing exactly that. For this reason, it can be hard to stand out without focusing on a specific subcategory of fitness.

What if you particularly enjoy running? If so, why not create content advising beginners how to get into this type of exercise? This video by YouTuber Caty Culp shows the kind of thing you could do.

Where would the affiliate link go in this instance? In the text description attached to the video or on the YouTuber’s profile page. On camera, you could say something like “Click the link in the description below!”

New to YouTube? Even the biggest influencers on the Google-owned video platform had to start somewhere. Here’s how to become a YouTuber and earn money with online video content.

2. Register with the right content platform

You might already regularly post on a platform where you would be able to throw affiliate links into your content with ease. However, if you’ve spotted any other enticing content platforms where creators are permitted to share affiliate links, you know what to do…

Be willing to look beyond the big names like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and so on. The idea is to ‘find your tribe’ rather than simply amass the highest possible number of fans. As demonstrated by influencer marketing statistics, the most followed influencers are not always those firing on all cylinders when it comes to fostering engagement.

So, don’t be too quick to rule out joining certain platforms slightly off the beaten track, like Substack.

Keep in mind that some sites will not actually allow you to include your affiliate links in posts. High-profile examples of these platforms include Instagram and TikTok. That’s why there’s now a buoyant market for link-in-bio tools like Linktree and Stan Store.

These tools let you create a single webpage where you can list multiple links (including, yes, affiliate links to digital products). You can then link to that one webpage in your personal profile on the likes of Instagram and TikTok.

That way, when you use those sites to publicize digital products, you can direct your followers to the all-in-one link in your bio.

3. Find a creator to partner with

Yes, now it’s time to figure out where to get those affiliate links you are going to put into your content. Whop has an affiliate scheme where you can get paid a commission for each user you refer to a whop.

It’s worth heeding that not all whops are participating in this scheme. However, it’s easy to check which ones actually are. First, register an account with Whop if you haven’t already. Then, when you’re logged into Whop, click Affiliates on the left-hand navigation bar.

The first time you do this, you’ll be faced with a rather sparse Affiliates dashboard, like the one pictured below.

Why is it so empty? It’s because you haven’t yet become an affiliate for any whops. So, the next step is to click Discover whops.

This will bring up a Find affiliate offers popup allowing you to efficiently browse a broad range of digital products available on Whop. To sort through the whops listed on the popup, you can use these three filters:

Category: What kind of market is the whop targeting with its products? Options you will see in the dropdown menu include Art & Creativity, Diet & Nutrition, and Education & Career.
Price range: The options here start at Under $10 and go right through to $500+. The pricier the creator’s products, the more you could get paid for referring customers to them.
Commission percentage: What percentage of the product price would you be paid in commission if someone did make a purchase using the affiliate link you post? That’s the question you need to keep in mind as you use this filter.

Let’s put forward a hypothetical situation to explain how you would use these filters. You own a sports blog and are currently preparing a new article about sports betting. You want to use this article to promote a whop, but can’t decide which.

Maybe you don’t want to be too demanding about either the digital products’ price or the percentage of that price you would get as a commission. After all, being excessively picky like this could narrow down your options far more than you would like.

So, with the filters, you could select:

Sports Betting & Arbitrage as the category
$200 - $500 as the price range
25% to 50% as the commission percentage

Using these selections, you don’t have to look far for a promising and relevant whop to partner with for your article. In the screenshot below, the third-highest option is SITHLORDCHAMBAS MAXBET PACKAGE, where subscribers get access to bets from a profitable sports consultant.

With this whop, the size of the commission is 30%, while each subscription to the package costs $299 per week. So, if someone subscribes via your affiliate link, you will be paid 30% of $299 every week they remain subscribed. That’s weekly recurring revenue of $89.70!

That’s all from just one subscriber, too. Your weekly earnings from this affiliate link can rack up if many more of your readers use it to subscribe to this SITHLORDCHAMBAS package.

It certainly bodes well that the whop is very highly rated, having attracted an overall rating of 4.87 stars from 142 reviews. So, when your article introduces this whop to readers, they could decide to purchase from the whop due to its relevance and quality.

Decided to partner with this whop? Then hit the blue Add button on its search listing. This move will add the whop to your affiliates dashboard.

What if you can’t make your mind up about whether you ought to become an affiliate of this whop? Just click on its title to be sent to its dedicated page on the Whop website. That way, you can learn more about the whop (including exactly what people say about it in the reviews) before reaching a final decision.

You can digitally dropship as many different whops as you like — you don’t have to choose just one. So, in your article about sports betting, you could also include affiliate links to various other sports betting whops, like the popular itsTrill2x Exclusive…

This particular whop doesn’t adhere to a subscription model. Instead, the consumer makes a single, one-off payment to unlock access for a specific, predetermined length of time. Here’s how the different packages compare in cost:

Access cost	Access duration
$500	1 day
$3,200	1 week
$7,500	1 month

So, you could potentially make as much as $2,250 from a single referral! This amount is 30% of $7,500, the asking price for one month’s access.

4. Market the products

For you, this is going to be the really fun part of digital dropshipping. That’s because, ideally, the marketing content you use for digital dropshipping purposes won’t actually look like marketing content. If it did, this could put people off clicking the affiliate links within.

In short, your biggest priority with this content should be to make it enjoyable and useful to consume. As this content comes together, you could soon spot opportunities to insert the affiliate links in ways that look organic rather than ‘salesy’.

The types of digital content you create to promote other creators’ digital products can include articles, ebooks, videos, and online classes. However, what if you are short of inspiration? It’s time to dive into your Affiliates dashboard on Whop.

Once you’ve added more than one whop to it, it will look something like this:

On any of the included listings, clicking See content will show you what downloadable content (if any) the creator has made available. This might give you a few ideas for what to discuss in your own content (the marketing type).

When you’re underway with creating content, click Copy Affiliate Link on the listing for the whop you want to promote. You can then add this link seamlessly to the content.

Imagine, say, if you’re writing an article on how readers can improve their training for running an ultramarathon (or ‘ultra’). Using the above instructions, you could fetch the affiliate link for the Ultra Running Training Review whop.

This link could then be embedded in anchor text describing what the whop offers. So, in a phrase like “consider getting expert feedback on your ultra training plan”, the bolded text here could be used as the anchor text.

There are many different ways to get the word out about digital products, and you can let your imagination run riot. When you enjoy creating promotional content, chances are that other people will enjoy consuming it, too. As a result, they could also be spurred into clicking on the affiliate links weaved into it.

Popular digital dropshipping products

When it comes to digital dropshipping, how to start can be the biggest part of the puzzle. It can be useful to first think about what kind of digital products you should focus on dropshipping.

As statistics show various digital product categories thriving, here are some especially worth considering for your dropshipping business.

Ebooks

These days, when someone wants a new book to read, they can easily access it electronically on their e-reader device, smartphone, or tablet.

You can digitally dropship ebooks by sharing an ebook affiliate link with your followers on Instagram or TikTok. Read all about how to sell ebooks on TikTok and join the #BookTok trend.

Online courses

The genesis of online courses can be traced back to the early 2000s. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until the 2010s that they started really hitting their stride.

The COVID-19 pandemic further fuelled the popularity of online courses. It is now expected that consumers in the online learning market will surpass 1.1 billion by 2029.

Whop is home to thousands of online courses and communities - just head to Whop, grab your affiliate link, and share across your socials.

Digital artwork

Thanks to creativity-oriented devices and accessories like the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, it can be delightfully straightforward to make money as a digital artist.

You don’t even need to make the art yourself. Since digital artworks exist electronically rather than as painted canvases, you can easily sell them on behalf of the original artists behind them.

Software licenses

Not only can you offer licenses for software, you can help members of your target audience to choose from a range of software options available.

On Whop, KSR offers a software license you could promote — especially if your digital content is aimed at helping entrepreneurs to supercharge their productivity.

This whop could be of interest to small businesses striving to choose the best software for their needs. So, you could mention KSR Software License in, say, a video tutorial about how startups can accelerate their growth.

The best products for digital dropshipping include podcasts, communities, and fitness plans. Here’s a closer look at digital dropshipping products that will make you rich.