“Surely ‘Digital Products’ are a scam that doesn’t exist?”
That’s the actual title of a thread on Mumsnet.
One of the first replies said: “Yeah it’s just the new MLM.”
Over on Reddit, someone else put it even more plainly: “Digital Products…what the hell are they?”
They went on: “I keep hearing this digital product stuff and have absolutely no clue what these things are and how you would sell them.”
If you’ve ever typed “are digital products a scam?” or “what are digital products?” into Google or ChatGPT, with one eyebrow firmly raised, you’re in very good company.
And honestly?
Your eyebrow has a point.
I’ve been online for about 30 years, so I’ve watched every get-rich-quick wave come in and go out again.
Some of what’s being sold to you as “digital products” right now is hype.
Some of it is the most sensible, low-risk way I know for someone over 40 to earn money from what they already know.
Let’s separate the two, shall we?
First, what actually is a digital product?
A digital product is something you make once, that someone pays for and downloads (or logs in to), and that you don’t have to post, pack or restock.
That’s it.
The simplest one is a PDF.
A checklist, a toolkit, a planner, a set of templates, a short workbook, a recipe collection, a script for a difficult conversation.
Then there are slightly bigger ones, like a recorded workshop, an online course or a membership.
The Reddit poster wanted it explained “like I’m a 5 year old”, so here goes.
You know something useful, you write it down properly, and people who need it pay you a few pounds to read it.
The “digital” bit just means it arrives in their inbox instead of their letterbox.
(Not quite as mysterious as the TikTok crowd make it sound, is it?)
So why does it feel like a scam?
Because a lot of what you’ve seen is one.
Or it’s built so the only people reliably making money are the ones selling the dream.
Here’s what I’d steer well clear of.
🍎 The “resell this and get rich” bundles
You’ll see the letters MRR (master resell rights) and PLR (private label rights) everywhere.
The pitch is that you buy a bundle of ready-made products, then sell the same bundle to other people and keep 100% of the profit.
And what’s usually inside the bundle?
A guide to selling the bundle.
One reply in that Reddit thread summed it up perfectly: “It’s normally a pdf book telling people how to sell pdf books about learning how to sell pdf books.”
If the main thing a product teaches you is how to sell that same product, put your purse away.
🍎 The “passive income” promise
Notice what happens in your body when someone says “make money while you sleep”.
For a lot of us over 40, there’s a little tightening in the jaw and a voice that says “hmm, and who’s paying for the yacht in your video?”
Trust that voice.
A good digital product can keep selling while you’re walking the dog, which is lovely.
But somebody has to make it well, and somebody has to tell the right people it exists.
That somebody is you, at least at the start.
🍎 The AI-generated junk
Yes, you can ask a robot to write a 40-page ebook in four minutes.
So can everyone else, which is why marketplaces are filling up with ebooks that read like they were written by a fridge.
Buyers can smell it, and they don’t come back.
🍎 “You need a huge following first”
The Reddit poster asked this too: “Do you need a huge IG following or some other platform?”
No, you don’t.
You need the right people, not lots of people.
A few people who already trust you will buy a useful £9 toolkit far more readily than 10,000 strangers who followed you for a dance trend.
Now, here’s what’s real 🍊
A specific PDF that solves a specific problem for a specific person, sold to people who already trust you.
That’s the whole recipe.
Specific problem: not “wellbeing”, but “how to get back to sleep at 3am during perimenopause”.
Specific person: not “everyone”, but “the person who’s just been made redundant at 47 and needs a CV that doesn’t scream 1998”.
Sold to people who already trust you: your email list, your Facebook group, your clients, your old colleagues on LinkedIn, the people who already ask you questions.
(Those examples are just examples, by the way, so please don’t go and make my perimenopause toolkit unless it’s genuinely yours to write.)
The same Reddit thread had this wise bit too: “You don’t ‘just make a pdf in canva and sell it for $30’ when thousands of other people are doing the same thing.”
Exactly.
A generic planner on a marketplace is an apple in a crowd of a thousand identical apples.
A toolkit written by you, about the thing you actually lived through or spent 20 years doing, is an orange.
Nobody else can copy your particular mix of job, life and scar tissue, however clever their robot.
Why it suits over-40s particularly well
You’ve got decades of material.
Jobs, children, parents, divorces, house moves, illnesses, hobbies, redundancies, triumphs and a few disasters you laugh about now.
Every one of those is a problem you solved that someone else is standing in the middle of right now.
It’s low risk, because it costs you time and a bit of thought rather than a bank loan.
It doesn’t need your knees, a shop or a van.
It doesn’t need you to reinvent your whole life before you’ve tested whether anyone wants it.
And, crucially, people often trust experience.
The person buying “how to cope in the first month after your dad goes into a care home” wants it written by someone who’s been there, not by a 24-year-old with a ring light.
If you’re not sure yet what yours would be, I’ve written about 30 things people over 40 already know that others will pay to learn.
And if you want even more ideas, my free guide 33 PDF Product Ideas You Can Sell This Week is a good place to start.
How to tell if an idea is real or hype (the 30-second test)
Before you buy a course, a bundle or a “done-for-you” anything, ask four questions.
1. Who is it for?
If the answer is “anyone”, it’s for no one.
2. What problem does it solve?
If the problem is “you don’t have a digital product yet”, that’s a sales pitch, not a problem.
3. Why would they buy it from you?
Real products have a real reason, and that reason is usually your experience.
4. How does it make you feel?
If your stomach drops and your shoulders creep up towards your ears, listen.
If you feel yourself lean forward and think “oh, I could actually write that”, listen to that too.
Your body is often a better scam detector than your inbox.
Your questions, answered plainly
What are digital products?
Things people buy and download (or access online), rather than have posted to them.
PDFs, templates, workbooks, recorded workshops and online courses are all digital products.
Are digital products a scam?
The product itself isn’t a scam, any more than a book is a scam.
The schemes around some of them can be, especially resell bundles where the main lesson is how to sell the bundle.
If it solves a real problem for a real person, it’s a product, not a scam.
Can you really make money selling digital products?
Yes, but not the way the “passive income” videos promise.
A generic product dropped onto a crowded marketplace usually sinks without trace.
A specific product, offered to people who already trust you and described so they feel it was written for them, is how it actually works.
Do you need a huge following to sell digital products?
No.
You need a small number of the right people, and a way to tell them your product exists.
An email list of a few hundred people who know you can be worth far more than a big audience who don’t.
How do I create a PDF I can sell?
Pick one problem you’ve already solved, for one kind of person.
Write down how you’d walk a friend through it, step by step, in plain English.
Then put the same care into the description and the sales page, because that’s the part that does the selling.
Choose the orange, not the apples
You don’t need a resell bundle, a robot-written ebook or 10,000 followers.
You need one useful thing you know, written down well, for one person who needs it.
Start with my free guide, 33 PDF Product Ideas You Can Sell This Week, and see which idea makes you lean forward.
And when you’re ready to turn that idea into an offer people can’t scroll past, with sales copy that sounds like you, that’s exactly what the Irresistible Offers Programme is for.
Leave the apples to the hype merchants.
You’ve got oranges to sell.
Veronica Pullen
Latest posts by Veronica Pullen (see all)
- Digital Products: Scam, or the Most Sensible Side Income for Over-40s? - October 25, 2026
- What Could You Sell? 30 Things People Over 40 Already Know That Others Will Pay to Learn - October 18, 2026
- Somatic Copy Case Study: Turning Katya Varbanova’s Difficult Announcement Into 100% Positive Feedback - April 1, 2026
Connect on Social Media