Ko-fi Shop - Sell digital & physical products

June 10, 2020 09:21

 

What’s a Ko-fi Shop?

Your Ko-fi Shop is a simple, no-fuss way to sell both digital and physical items. Add a product, share a link and start making sales in just a few minutes.

 

What can I sell?

You can sell digital and physical products in your Ko-fi Shop, here are just a few ideas.

Digital Product Ideas:

• Art and design: Offer high-resolution files of your artwork, wallpapers, or photoshoots.
• Exclusive content: Share tutorials, behind-the-scenes videos, or exclusive early access to your special recordings.
• Digital files: Sell your software, original music or templates.

Physical Product Ideas:

• Merchandise: Design and sell physical items like stickers, t-shirts, postcards, and notepads that reflect your personal brand or artwork.
• Crafts: Sell unique handmade items like jewelry, crochet, or hand-painted ornaments.
• Printed works: If you're a writer or comic artist, consider selling physical copies of your ebooks, guides, novels, or comics.

Still looking for more? Here’s 40+ product ideas!

 

How to add a product

Adding a product is easy!

Head over to Ko-fi Shop and tap “Add Product”, choose a name your buyers will understand and select if it’s a digital file or a physical item.

For digital products, you can upload or link to files, while for physical products, you can set variants and shipping options. Each has a slightly different setup, but we've made it super easy to add a product and start selling.

 

Adding product information

1. Name: A name your buyers will understand e.g. “frog sticker set”.
2. Description: Tell your supporters more about the item. Think sizes, specs, number of pages, how to use it etc. The first few words are shown to people browsing your shop.
3. Preview images: Upload up to 10 images of your product. Use 1:1 or 2:1 ratio for best results. e.g. 600x600px or 600x300px.

     Tip

   Why not add a GIF to make your product more eye-catching?

4. Embed media: Add links to videos or audio files. These show in the same place as the preview images.
5. Summary: A clear sentence to tell the buyer exactly what they get e.g. “A puppy themed acrylic pin” or “10 emote templates in .psd format”
6. Categories: Add categories to make it easier for buyers to find what they’re looking for. When a buyer picks a category, they’ll just see items in that category.
7. Assets (digital only): Either upload your files or link to them. Once a buyer pays they’ll get instant access to these files and will still be able to access them if you update the file in the future.
8. Price: Enter an amount you want to charge for the item.
9. Enable ‘Pay what you want’ option: Many buyers want to support creators they love, tick this option to let buyers pay more than the minimum price (the amount you put in ‘Price’).
10. Options and variants (physical only): If you have different options like size, color, etc you can add variants with custom prices.

 

Set shipping rates (physical items only)

Set two prices: one for solo purchases and another for when the item is part of a larger order.

Shipping costs are calculated based on the highest 'Shipping price' in an order, plus the 'Price with others' for each additional item.

Learn more about shipping pricing

Set shipping destinations

Control where your items ship and tailor prices for each location.

Enable worldwide shipping: Choose this for global sales with a consistent shipping rate, ideal for lightweight, easy-to-ship items like stickers. Specific destination prices override this rate.

Adding a destination: Use 'Add a Destination' to specify continents or countries you'll ship to, setting unique rates for these locations. If you’ve turned off worldwide shipping, only people from these destinations will be able to buy this product.

Add shipping information

Give customers more information like estimated delivery times, your chosen shipping service, and how they'll receive tracking updates.

Additional options

There are even more advanced options to help you control your shop.

Leaving a message or instructions for buyers: Set a custom message for buyers post-purchase, like a thank-you note or extra product instructions.

Limiting the quantity available: Specify how many units are available. For instance, for 10 limited edition prints, set the quantity to 10. The product will be marked 'sold out' when it reaches zero. You can also manually set a product's count to '0' to list it as 'sold out'.

Allowing buyers to choose a quantity: Enable this if you're okay with customers purchasing multiples of the same item.

Exempt from sales tax: Select this to bypass your default sales tax settings for specific items. Remember to update your sales tax information and consult a tax advisor for clarity on taxable items.

 

Choosing an audience for the item

Choose who can buy your item. You can make it available to everyone, or limit it to your members or monthly supporters. This exclusivity can help boost your regular monthly income.

• All monthly supporters: This makes the item accessible to anyone paying you monthly.
• Specific tiers: Select this to restrict the item to certain membership levels.

Buyers will be encouraged to join your membership in order to buy the item (or download the item if it’s set to free).

 

Check your shop contact details are correct

When customers make a purchase, they receive an email receipt that includes your contact email for any queries. Initially, your Ko-fi Shop uses your account email as the contact address. You can update this email address to be different from your Ko-fi account email address in the 'Contact Details' section of your shop setup page.

 

Request a telephone number for physical shipping

Certain couriers might need a phone number for delivery. If you tick this box, anyone buying a physical item must provide a phone number at checkout. It's recommended to turn this on only if your courier specifically requires it.

 

Offer buyers access to supporter-only content

Make your supporters feel even more special by rewarding them with supporter-only content. In Additional Settings, just tick “Purchases unlock supporter-only content” and set the minimum price to unlock content.

Once your supporters hit that spend in your shop, they’ll be delighted with exclusive access to special content like images, posts, or videos.

It's a nice way to say thanks and give them a little extra joy for supporting your work.

Learn more about supporter-only content.

 

Offering discounts or promotions

Discount codes are a great way to encourage more sales. You can even use discount codes as benefits for your membership tiers.

Add a discount code for your entire shop or target specific categories for discounts- perfect for seasonal sales or promoting new product types.

Learn more about discount codes.

 

Changing the sort order of your products

To rearrange the order of items in your shop, just visit your own shop page and select Rearrange. You could choose a pre-set sort order or pick ‘Custom Ordering’ to drag and drop your products into your preferred order.

 

Sharing your Ko-fi Shop and products

Easily share your Ko-fi Shop by adding “/shop” to your Ko-fi page URL.

You can upload a custom preview image to change the image that shows when you share your shop. Head to 'Sharing Preview Image' and upload a picture with a 2:1 (1000x500px) aspect ratio, to replace our default image.

Want to spotlight a specific product? Just below the purchase button of any item, click on ‘Share this’ and select a sharing icon to post about that particular item.

 

Share a specific category from your shop

Help your supporters quickly find what they're looking for in your shop! Just share a link to a specific shop category. When they click it, they'll go straight to the items in that category. It's super handy if your shop offers lots of different things, you want to highlight a special category, or if there's a sale going on.

Here's how to get your link to share:

1. Go to your shop page at ko-fi.com/yourusername/shop.
2. Click on the category you want to share.
3. Grab the link from your browser's address bar (it'll look something like ko-fi.com/yourusername/shop/yourcategory.)

And that's it, you're all set to share.

 

What buyers see

After a supporter buys from your shop, they'll see a thank you screen with your personalized message. For digital items, logged-in supporters can download directly from this screen, while others are prompted to create a Ko-fi account. They also get an email receipt with order details and any digital file links. Plus, if you update an order with shipping info, the buyer is notified about this too.

 

Fulfilling orders

When an order comes in, you'll receive an email notification and can view the order under the 'Orders' tab in your shop setup page.

For digital products, no action is needed from you; buyers are automatically directed to download the files.

For physical orders, use the 'Shop Orders (not shipped)' filter to organize your packaging and shipping tasks. Once shipped, you can update the order status and add tracking details, which notifies the buyer via email about their shipment.

We’re happy to help you with any questions about Ko-fi Shop. If you’ve got any feedback or feature requests, we’d love to hear from you here.

 

FAQ