Physical or Digital items?

[bluetrance05]

When managing an E-Commerce business, which do you prefer to sell: physical or digital items? I was thinking of the downsides of both but which do you think gets more traffic? If you sell physical items, you need to have a shipping feature for your site for the customers to be able to compute their shipping expenses. If you sell digital items, you need a greater bandwidth or more server space for your ECommerce webhosting solution.

[webnubie]

I would prefer to sell digital products. It is easier and simpler to manage. I don't want to deal with shipping things which you will need for selling physical products. The bandwidth is not a big deal as nowadays we can get web hosting service with sufficient bandwidth for more affordable price.

[centelo]

With digital you are not going to worry about shipping, which many people (even myself) tend to hate when you are paying too much for shipping costs. I am sure its less hassle in other areas too, but thats the first which comes to mind for me.

[webnubie]

You are right about the shipping costs, Centelo. My friend living outside the US just bought a book about Yoga on Amazon. It costs around $10 (32% off), but the regular shipping costs about $9.xx. It's like paying twice for the same item.

[Skipper]

I agree with most of what's been said - when selling digital items you don't need to deal with inventory, storage, or shipping. Given the choice, I'd go with digital in a heartbeat.

[carl owen]

Digital items are certainly considered as a better option when it comes to E-commerce sites. The shipping as well as the overall management of the E-commerce sites which sell physical items is difficult in comparison to sites which sell digital items.

Though, Web Hosting sites cannot be considered as sites which sell Digital products, still you can consider it as an Example. If you notice, most of the hosting providers do not offer Colocation services (hosting your own hardware at the data center) and this is due to the shipping and management involved in the same.

However, BODhost does offer Colocation services ;)

[Thomas]

Well if taken between Digital and Physical items, it purely depends on the kind and nature of your business.

A person having business of Furniture will not be able to sell and send it digitally and a person having a business of web hosting cannot sell and ship it. ;)

[Crazzy]

I don't have a specific preference but I usually had sites that offered physical products. Although I was giving a few ebooks for free I never dealt with selling digital products.