You may create the best digital downloads the online market has to offer, but you won’t be able to succeed if you don’t have a strong marketing plan. How do you make a sale when your target audience isn’t even aware your brand exists? As a content merchant, one of your most important responsibilities is managing marketing and promotion. How do you pay for this expensive and risky necessity, though? When you’re just starting out, every penny of startup funding you have is precious. When a substantial portion of your audience is likely to scroll past sponsored social media posts and banner ads, it’s not always easy to justify investing what little capital you have. What if there were a way you could instead invest in guaranteed promotion you pay for only when it works?

Marketing and Selling Digital Downloads: What You Need

You may have a basic idea of what you need to get your digital downloads business started, but you may be surprised what is and isn’t essential. For example, the single largest investment most new merchants make isn’t even necessary: a professional website. You can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a site built by a web designer, featuring all the complex sales bells and whistles. This will delay profitability, and may not even be accessible with your current level of funding. Or, you could take advantage of tools which make it possible for you to use free blog sites, inexpensive do-it-yourself template sites or a social media profile. Choose a high-quality eCommerce platform to partner with, and you’ll have access to a wide range of tools and services you need to succeed.

Services like PayLoadz.com make it easy to cut and paste simple HTML code, turning any site you want into a sales portal. Payments are processed through names you and your customers trust, like PayPal and Google Wallet. Your digital downloads are hosted securely, and instantly delivered to your buyers upon completion of a transaction. High-quality services will even include access to affiliate networks, which makes marketing inexpensive, effective and accessible to any online merchant.

How Affiliate Marketing Helps You Sell Digital Downloads

You know that there are no guarantees with banner ads and sponsored social media posts. What you may not know is that there is a reliable and effective alternative. Affiliate marketing networks connect you with promoters who work to boost your brand’s signal, because they only get paid when they make a sale for you. Similar to a commission-based sales system, your affiliates collect a small portion of the proceeds from only the sales they generate. This means you’re paying for marketing only when its effective, and your affiliates have a built-in incentive to get the word out about your digital downloads.

Get started today, and make these low-cost, no-risk systems work for you.