Jatra Community
Jatra Community

  • Can I sell digital products directly within my community?

    Paul Mills

    Paul Mills

    @aL1PKCS
    Updated: Jun 17, 2025
    Views: 185

    We are building a community of entrepreneurs who need help with marketing. In the last 3 months, we have added about 170 members organically.

    One of our members recently suggested that we should add a products section on the community where members can list their digital products. Essentially, the suggestion is to turn a section of the community into a digital marketplace.

    The idea looks good on paper; but it’s likely to require a lot of maintenance to build it. I’m worried about the community losing its neutrality as marketers will turn into promoters.

    Do you think we should introduce marketplace to sell digital products through the community?

    3
    Replies
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Replies

  • Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • 1mo

    I think selling digital products through your community is an excellent idea. It carries even more weight as the suggestion has come directly from your members.

    Selling digital products through your community should not be challenging. Don't aim to run a full-fledged marketplace where you handle payments and delivery. I sense that your members want to have a place where:

    • They can discover useful products
    • Ability to promote their products

    Your community can surely benefit from such a marketplace. I suggest:

    Simply start listing the products with a link to the product-page. Keep it highly moderated. Here's how to proceed:

    1. Create a public channel with restricted posting rights
    2. Ask members to submit product heading, 2-line description, image and link
    3. Publish the product with link in the channel.

    Test with about 20 products and see the response from the community. If they like it - continue.

    I hope it helps. Let me know if you have questions.

  • Paul Mills

    @aL1PKCS • 1mo

    Appreciate your response. My main concern is members thinking that the community is commerce oriented and dilute the quality of discussions over the time.

    I am focused on keeping the quality of discussions top notch. I think it's the USP of my community. Let me know your thoughts.

  • NRVS S

    @w7VFgWv • 1mo

    It's definitely a nuanced question. Just spitballing here ... but how about a separate sidebar for product recommendations? Anytime the system sees a link (external or internal), it cuts that sentence out and creates a "post" on the side. Members can see the main thread commercial free.

  • Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • 1mo

    NRVS - Yes, that's a great idea. Jatra will have a product post-type that will let community owners add any product of their choice. New products are not published every day; so it will still appear on the main feed when it's published; but the index of product will live in a separate channel.

    ....and the beautiful part is - you can have any number of channels! How cool is that!

  • NRVS S

    @w7VFgWv • 1mo

    I'll have to see how it's integrated with the main thread, but yes, a different post type is a good start. In general, product info is important to have in a community if you can avoid the spam.

  • Paula Derrenger

    @paulad • 1mo

    I think integrating the product sales page within the community is an excellent idea. My community could promote our products through our community. I'll create a feedback post.

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