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WooCommerce: How to add a virtual – digital product

Hi and welcome back to our guide on how to properly install and configure WooCommerce.

In the last chapter we have finally seen how to create a simple product in your store, today we are going to give you a little how-to on digital and downloadable products.

Digital or downloadable products, as the name suggests, are virtual products that don’t need shipping.

It could be a record, a drawing, a short story, an ebook etc.

In order to create this kind of product, you need to go through the very same initial phase as for physical products.

Go to Products > New Product:

Add a new product

After entering a name and a description, scroll down until you find a box called Product data.

Select 'Simple product' in the Product data

In the upper bar, you’ll find “Virtual” and “Downloadable”:

Select virtual or downloadable product

The first option, once selected, removes the shipping section about the product data, since we are creating a digital product that doesn’t require shipping. The fields to fill in include Regular Price, Sale Price, Tax Status and Tax Class.

Example of virtual product

We can even set sale price dates:

Set the sale price

This product won’t have shipping fees applied. If you want your customers to be able to download their product as soon as they have purchased it, you’ll need to select “Downloadable”.

Select downloadable for downloadable product

A few new options will be displayed:

  • Downloadable files – This is where you upload the file that will be available for customers to download after their purchase.
  • Download limit – The number of times a product can be downloaded.
  • Download expiry – The number of days before a download link expires.

Once your product is created, remember you can set the general options of downloadable products as shown in this chapter in the guide.

Clearly, the same process can be applied to variable products as well, which we are going to analyze in a future article.

If you want to read more about other helpful articles to create your online store, do not hesitate to enter the WooCommerce Essential Guides section.

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