Selling Something With No Shipping

What it suits

More small businesses than realise it, because the product usually already exists.

• Guides and manuals, particularly ones you already give away in a lesser form.
• Templates and documents, such as checklists, contracts, or spreadsheets.
• Plans and specifications, where the drawing is the deliverable.
• Recorded training, from work you already teach in person.
• Data and reports, where you have compiled something others need.

The pattern worth noticing is that most of these are by-products of work already done. A trade that has built the same estimate template two hundred times has a product; a consultant who explains the same thing in every engagement has one too.

Delivery has to work without you

The first structural difference, and the one that produces support requests.

Somebody buys at two in the morning and expects the file immediately. That means automatic delivery, and it means the failure modes matter.

What goes wrong: the delivery email lands in a junk folder, the download link expires before they use it, the file is too large for the platform, or they open it on a phone and cannot do anything with it.

The fixes are unglamorous. A download available on the confirmation page as well as by email, a link that stays valid for a reasonable period, a clear statement of the file format and size before purchase, and a note about what is needed to open it.

Stating the format before purchase matters more than it sounds. Somebody buying a spreadsheet template needs to know whether it will open in what they have.

Refunds, which cannot work the usual way

A digital product cannot be returned, because the buyer keeps it regardless.

That makes the refund policy a decision rather than a mechanic. The options are a no-refund policy stated clearly before purchase, a refund window offered on trust, or refunds only where the file was faulty or misdescribed.

Consumer protection rules and card scheme requirements both bear on this, and a policy that is not clearly disclosed before purchase is weaker than one that is. Whatever you choose, it needs to be visible at checkout rather than in a linked page nobody opens.

Practically, a generous policy on a low-priced item costs little and prevents chargebacks, which are more expensive than the refund and damage your payment standing.

Tax, which depends on the buyer

The part most likely to be got wrong, and worth getting advice on rather than guessing.

For digital goods and services, tax treatment frequently depends on where the customer is located rather than where the seller is. That is a different rule from physical goods and it applies to sales within Canada and to sales abroad.

Which means a store selling downloads internationally may have obligations in places it has never been, depending on volume and the jurisdiction's rules.

The requirements differ by province and country and change, so this is a question for your accountant before launching rather than after the first year. What matters at the build stage is that the platform can determine the buyer's location and apply the correct treatment, which not all of them do well.

Protecting the file

Worth a realistic position rather than an anxious one.

Anything downloadable can be shared, and measures preventing it mostly inconvenience legitimate buyers. Elaborate protection on a modestly priced document is effort spent on the wrong problem.

What is proportionate: personalising the file with the buyer's name or order reference, which discourages casual sharing at no cost to the buyer, and keeping the price low enough that buying is easier than finding a copy.

For higher-value material, hosting it behind a login rather than as a download changes the calculation, since access can be revoked and the file is not sitting on somebody's desktop.

Pricing it

Different from physical goods because there is no unit cost.

The price is entirely a judgement about value to the buyer, which makes it uncomfortable for businesses used to costing a job. The useful anchor is what the buyer saves: an hour of their time, a professional fee they avoid, or a mistake they do not make.

Low prices are not automatically better. A document priced at a few dollars can read as insubstantial, where the same document at a serious price reads as professional, and volume at the low price rarely compensates.

Where it fits alongside a service

The most useful arrangement for a small business.

A digital product is a way for somebody not ready to hire you to buy something, which starts a relationship rather than ending an enquiry. A guide bought today is a client conversation later.

It also produces a list of people who have paid you money, which is a considerably better audience than one assembled from a newsletter signup, and it follows the same account and delivery mechanics as any store arrangement described in trade pricing on a public store.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.