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Selling digital products on your own website instead of a marketplace
Selling digital products on your own website means you keep the customer relationship, set your own presentation and pay a platform fee instead of a marketplace commission, but you also bring your own traffic. For creators who already have an audience, that trade usually favours their own site.
Indunil Asanka · Co-founder
3 min read · Published
Selling digital products on your own website gives you the customer’s email, your own presentation and a predictable fee, in exchange for bringing your own buyers. If you already have followers, an email list or a portfolio that people find, your own store usually earns more per sale and builds something you keep. If nobody knows you yet, a marketplace’s search may sell more at first. The table under this article sets the differences side by side.
What you gain
The customer. On your own store, every order carries the buyer’s email and name. You can send a receipt in your own voice, answer questions directly and, with consent, invite them to your newsletter. On many marketplaces the buyer belongs to the platform.
Presentation. Your product page can show before and after photos, explain who the product is for, answer questions and sit beside your portfolio, instead of fitting a marketplace template next to competitors’ listings.
Control of the rules. Marketplace policies on fees, payouts and listing rules change, and your shop changes with them. On your own site the terms are yours, within consumer law and your payment provider’s rules.
What you give up
Search traffic. A marketplace brings people who were browsing for something like your product. Your site brings only the people you send it. That is the main reason many creators keep a marketplace presence while building their own.
Built in trust. First time buyers know the marketplace. On your site, trust comes from a clear page, real reviews, a known payment page such as Stripe Checkout and a simple refund policy.
How delivery works on your own store
The file is uploaded to the product, privately, and never published with the website. After payment, the buyer sees download buttons on the thank you page and in the receipt email. In OneCraft’s store each purchased item allows 5 downloads within 7 days of payment, and each click is checked and turned into a link that lasts ten minutes, so a link pasted into a forum stops working quickly. A file can be any type up to 500 MB per variant, which covers zipped preset packs, ebooks in two formats and template bundles. The digital products page walks through it.
Formats as variants
Sell one product in the forms people need as variants: an ebook as EPUB or PDF, a template for Notion or Google Sheets, presets for desktop or mobile. Each variant carries its own file and price, and buyers choose on the product page. Stock tracking can stay off, since a file never runs out. The page on what a digital download product is covers the basics.
Fees, compared honestly
A marketplace charges listing and transaction fees, sometimes payment processing on top. Your own store costs a builder plan, the platform’s fee on each payment and card fees. On OneCraft the store is part of paid plans from $8 a month, with a platform fee of 2 percent on Starter, 1 percent on Pro and 0.5 percent on Pro+, plus Stripe fees, and payouts go to your own Stripe account. Put your last three months of sales into both models before deciding.
A move plan that does not lose sales
- Build your shop with your best three products first, using the photo preset, ebook or template shop templates as a start.
- Keep your marketplace listings live.
- Point your social links and newsletter at your own product pages.
- Watch which channel each sale comes from for a few months.
- Move remaining products once your own traffic carries the weight, and keep a marketplace presence for discovery if it still sells.
If you also sell physical items, one cart can hold both, and buyers get their downloads straight away while the parcel follows. For the wider question of building the shop, the online store builder page covers products, stock and checkout.
| Question | Marketplace | Your own site |
|---|---|---|
| Who brings buyers | The marketplace search and audience | You: social, email, search, word of mouth |
| Who owns the customer | The marketplace, with limited contact | You, with the buyer email on each order |
| Presentation | Their listing template | Your pages, your brand |
| Fees | Marketplace listing and transaction fees | Builder plan, platform fee and card fees |
| Delivery | Built in | Store delivers download links after payment |
| Rules | Marketplace policies can change | Your own terms, within law and payment rules |
Questions people ask
Is it cheaper to sell digital products on my own site?
Often, once sales are steady, because a builder plan plus a small platform fee and card fees can cost less than marketplace commissions. At very low sales a marketplace can be cheaper, since you pay only when you sell. Compare with your real monthly numbers.
How do buyers receive files from my own store?
After payment the store shows download buttons on the thank you page and in the receipt email. Each link checks the order and turns into a short lived link to the private file, with limits such as five downloads within seven days, so a shared link stops working quickly.
Will I lose sales by leaving a marketplace?
You may lose buyers who found you through marketplace search. Keep listings on the marketplace while you build your own traffic, or keep your bestsellers there and move new products to your site. Watch where sales come from for a few months before deciding.
How do I protect digital files from sharing?
Keep files private rather than at public addresses, limit downloads and expire links after a few days, and state the licence clearly. Watermarks or personalised files help for some products. Accept that some sharing happens and focus on making buying easy for honest customers.
Do I need to charge tax on digital products?
Possibly. Australia applies GST to digital products sold by registered businesses, and many countries tax digital sales to their residents. Marketplaces often handle some of this for you; on your own site you are responsible, so set the tax in your store after advice.
Written by
Indunil Asanka · Co-founder
Builds the generation pipelines behind OneCraft: the slide, flyer and poster layout engines, the document grid and the render workers that turn a written brief into a finished file.
LinkedIn profileWritten and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .
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