How to Make WooCommerce Products.

How to Make WooCommerce Products Tutorial Overview.

This tutorial will explain in-depth how to make WooCommerce products. We will give you an overview of all the WooCommerce product types and then show you how to make simple products, variable products, grouped products, virtual products, downloadable products and external/affiliate products.

Quickies.

• What are the Different Types of WooCommerce Products?
• How to Make a WooCommerce Simple Product.
• How to Make a WooCommerce Variable Product.
• What is a Product Attribute in WooCommerce?
• How to Edit a Variable WooCommerce Product.
• How to Make a WooCommerce Grouped Product.
• How to Make a WooCommerce Virtual Product.
• How to Make a WooCommerce Downloadable Product.
• How to Make a WooCommerce External/Affiliate Product.

What are the Different Types of WooCommerce Products?

Before you start to make WooCommerce products for your WordPress website, it is important that you know what type of product is going to work best for your situation. There are many different types of products that you can sell with WordPress and WooCommerce, so this tutorial will go over the different types of products to hopefully give you a better starting point.

WooCommerce Simple Product.

A simple product is the most basic and common type. They have no variations or options and have one SKU.

Example: If you sell autographed baseball cards on your website, you would use simple products.

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WooCommerce Variable Product.

Variable products let you sell multiple types of products using attributes and variations. This gives you control over price, stock, and an image for each product variation.

Example: If you sell baseball caps on your website, your customer would be able to choose the team logo, the color, and the size of the cap. The attributes would be color, team, and size. One of the variations could be a white, size 7 3/8 cap with a Phillies logo on it. Or maybe a black, size 7 1/4 cap with a Yankees logo on it. As you might imagine, the number of these products can grow very quickly depending on the number of attributes and variations you have.

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WooCommerce Grouped Product.

A grouped product is a group of simple products that are similar and can be purchased separately. They are viewed together as one product type and are set up in a parent-child relationship.

Example: I sell baseball fan starter kits on my website. I group these products by the team, so one of the parent products I have is a Phillies fan starter pack. The products, or children, in this group, are a Phillies baseball cap, a Phillies jersey, a Phillies pennant, and a pack of Phillies Blunts.

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WooCommerce Virtual Product.

A virtual product is a product that does not require shipping like a service or subscription. Using a virtual product will disable all shipping related functions in WooCommerce.

Example: If you have ever paid for access to a specific sports channel it was a virtual product. Or if you have ever bought baseball tickets online and received them by email they were virtual products.

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WooCommerce Downloadable Product.

A downloadable product is, you guessed it, downloadable. This type of product does not require shipping.

Examples: A song, an e-book, and a stock image.

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WooCommerce External/Affiliate Product.

A WooCommerce external/affiliate product is a product that you sell but don’t have in your physical possession. If you are interested in becoming a reseller or an affiliate this will apply to you. When you set up the external product it will link to another website, like Amazon, where your customer will complete the transaction process. This is a very convenient and effective way to make a great income as you don’t have to deal with inventory, shipping or taxes.

Example: I sell baseball bats on my website through a supplier in Kentucky. I am never in possession of the bats but my customers buy them on my website and receive them directly from Kentucky.

Skip to Instructions

The following instructions assume that you have already installed WooCommerce on your WordPress website. If you need to install WooCommerce check this out: How to Install WooCommerce on a WordPress Website.

How to Make a WooCommerce Simple Product.

1. Login to the Admin area of the WordPress website.
2. Click on Products in the admin sidebar.
3. Click on Add New towards the top of the page.

4. Enter the name of the product in the Product Name field.
5. Enter the full description of the product in the main text editor. This will be displayed on the product page in the Description tab on the front-end of the website.

Simple Product Data Section.

6. Select Simple Product in the drop-down menu. There are many tabs and settings in this section and depending on your product you may not need to use all of them.
7. General Tab: Enter the regular price of the product. Optional: Sale Price, Sale Price To and From Dates, Tax Status, and Tax Class.

8. Inventory Tab: Enter the Stock Status. Or if you enable Stock Management you will be able to set Stock Quantity, Allow Backorders, and set a Low Stock Threshold. Optional: SKU, Manage Stock, and Sold Individually.

9. Shipping Tab – Optional: Enter the Weight, Dimensions, and Shipping Class. Shipping in WooCommerce can get very complex very quickly. There are multiple shipping plugins out there and many ways to configure shipping options. Join my mailing list for a shipping tutorial coming soon.

10. Linked Products Tab – Optional: Enter any Upsells and Cross-sells.

11. Attributes Tab – Optional: Add Attributes to the product. Attributes are usually used for variable products.

12. Advanced Tab – Optional: Add a Purchase Note, set Menu Order, and Enable or Disable Reviews.

13. Enter a brief description of the product in the Product Short Description section. This will be displayed next to the product, on the Product page on the front-end of your website.

14. Product Categories Section: Create and/or assign categories for the product here.
15. Product Tags Section: Assign descriptive tags to the product. This will help with the online search results.

16. Product Image Section: Select the main image for the product.
17. Product Gallery Section: Add multiple, additional images to the product.

18. Publish, Save, or Update the product. You can also save the product as a Draft if you want to publish at a later date.

How to Make a WooCommerce Variable Product.

1. Login to the Admin area of the WordPress website.
2. Click on Products in the admin sidebar.
3. Click on Add New at the top-left of the page.

4. Enter the name of the product in the Product Name field.
5. Enter the full description of the product in the main text editor. This will be displayed on the product page in the Description tab on the front-end of the website. You will be able to edit this for each product variation later if needed.

Variable Product Data Section.

6. Select Variable Product in the drop-down menu. There are many tabs and settings in this section and depending on your product you may not need to use all of them.

7. Inventory Tab – Options: SKU, Manage Stock, and Sold Individually. If you enable Stock Management you will also be able to set Stock Quantity, Allow Backorders, and set a Low Stock Threshold.

Important: Only make selections on this tab that will apply to every product variation you will create.
Example: I sell baseball t-shirts in 3 colors. They all have the same SKU so I will enter the SKU in this section and it will carry through to every t-shirt variation. I also sell baseball caps that come in different colors and teams. My hats all have different SKU’s so I will enter each SKU separately on each product variation later.

8. Shipping Tab – Optional: If all of your variations have the same shipping details, enter the Weight, Dimensions, and Shipping Class in this section. If not, you can enter the shipping details for each variation later. Shipping in WooCommerce can get very complex very quickly. There are multiple shipping plugins out there and many ways to configure shipping options. Join my mailing list for a shipping tutorial coming soon.

Example: I sell baseball caps that all have the same weight and shipping dimensions so I will enter the shipping and dimensions info in this section. I also sell Phillies blunts that come in packs of 4, 16, and 32. They have a different dimension and weight for each variation so I will enter this info later.

9. Attributes Tab:

What is a Product Attribute in WooCommerce?

A WooCommerce attribute is a characteristic of a product. There are two parts of an attribute in WooCommerce: the name and the value.

Example: I sell baseball caps on my website. My caps have 3 attributes each and each attribute has 4 different values. My attributes are Color, Size, and Team. The values for my Color attribute are Black, White, Blue and Red. The values for my Size attribute are 7-1/8, 7-1/4, 7-3/8, and 7-1/2. The values for my Team attribute are Yankees, Indians, White Sox, and Phillies.

10. Next to Custom Product Attribute click Add.
11. Enter the name of the attribute in the Name field.
12. Enter each value of the attribute separated by the | symbol in the Value(s) field.

Example: I entered “Color” in the Name field. Then I entered “Black | White | Blue | Red” in the Value(s) field since those are the 4 colors of the hats I will be selling.

13. Select the box next to Used for Variations and click Save Attributes.
14. Repeat steps 10 through 13 until you have entered all of the attributes for the product.
15. Variations Tab:
16. In this step we will create products from your attributes. There are a couple ways to do this:

a. You can create a product for every possible variation combination all at once. This method will not work for me because I don’t sell white Yankees hats.
b. You can choose which variations you want to create.

17. If you want to create a product from every possible combination of attributes, select Create Variations from all Attributes in the drop-down box. Click Go.

Note: This method will only create 50 products each time you run it. You may need to run it multiple times if you have a lot of variations.

18. If you want to be specific about what products to create select Add Variation in the drop-down box. This will let you add your product variations one at a time. Save the variations.

19. Edit a product.

How to Edit a Variable WooCommerce Product.

20. Once you have created all of the variations, hover over one of the variations and you will see a down arrow to the right.
21. Click on the down arrow to edit the details about each product.

22. If you have a different image for each product variation you should enter it here. This will allow your customers to view the actual product on the front of your website instead of a default image. Other Options: SKU, Product Type, Regular Price, Sale Price, Stock Status, Weight, Dimensions, Shipping Class, Description.

Tip: If all of your products are the same price you can save some time by selecting Set Regular Prices in the drop-down box. Enter the price of the product and it will set the same price for all your products. There are other options you can set across the board in the drop-down.

Example: All of my hats cost $25.00 and have the same shipping dimensions and weight. I was able to set those details without having to edit each variation.

23. You should now have all of your variable products set up.
24. Advanced Tab – Optional: Add Purchase Note, set the Menu Order, and Enable or Disable Reviews.

25. Enter a brief description of the product in the Product Short Description section. This will be displayed next to the product, on the product page on the front-end of your website.

26. Product Categories Section: Create and/or assign categories to the product here.
27. Product Tags Section: Assign descriptive tags to your product which will help with search results online.

28. Product Image Section: Select the main image for the product. This will be the default image that shows up for your product. If you set up a different image for each variation, it will be displayed on the front-end of your website when you select the variation.
29. Product Gallery Section: Add multiple, additional images to the product.

30. Publish, Save, or Update the variable product. You can also save the product as a Draft if you want to publish at a later date.

How to Make a WooCommerce Grouped Product.

To make a grouped product you must first make the products you want to put in the group. If the products are not already made, go make all of the products you will be putting in the group. Once you have the products made you need to make a parent product. The parent product is not really a product it’s more like a place to store all of the products in the group.

Example: My parent product will be named Phillies Fan Starter Pack and I will add different Phillies items to it.

1. Login to the Admin area of the WordPress website.
2. Click on Products in the navigation menu.
3. Click on Add New at the top of the page.

4. Enter the name of the product in the Product Name field.
5. Enter the full description of the product in the main text editor. This will be displayed on the product page in the Description tab on the front-end of the website.

Grouped Product Data Section.

6. Select Grouped Product in the drop-down menu. There are many tabs and settings in this section and depending on your product you may not need to use all of them.

Note: You will notice that when you select Grouped Product, the price disappears. The price will be calculated as you add products to the group.

7. Inventory Tab – Optional: Enter the SKU, Stock Quantity, Allow Backorders and Stock Threshold.

8. Linked Products Tab: This is where the magic happens. Next to Grouped Products, select all of the products you want to add to this group.
9. The Upsells section is used to recommend a product in the shopping cart instead of the one your customer is currently viewing.

10. Attributes Tab – Optional: Add Attributes to the product. Attributes are usually used for variable products.
11. Advanced Tab – Optional: Set the Menu Order and Enable or Disable Reviews.

12. Enter a brief description of the product in the Product Short Description section. This will be displayed next to the product, on the Product page on the front-end of your website.

13. Product Categories Section: Create and/or assign categories to the product.
14. Product Tags Section: Assign descriptive tags to the product. This will help with your online search results.

15. Product Image Section: Select the main image for the product.
16. Product Gallery Section: Add multiple, additional images to the product.

17. Publish, Save, or Update the grouped product. You can also save the product as a Draft if you want to publish at a later date.

How to Make a WooCommerce Virtual Product.

1. Login to the Admin area of the WordPress website.
2. Click on Products in the admin sidebar.
3. Click on Add New at the top of the page.

4. Enter the name of the product in the Product Name field.
5. Enter the full description of the product in the main text editor. This will be displayed on the product page in the Description tab on the front-end of the website.

Virtual Product Data Section.

6. Select the product type in the drop-down menu. Click the box next to Virtual. There are many tabs and settings in this section and depending on your product you may not need to use all of them.
7. General Tab: Enter the regular price of the product. Optional: Enter the Sale Price, Schedule Sale Price to and from dates, Tax Status, and Tax Class.

8. Inventory Tab: Enter the Stock Status. If you enable Stock Management, you will be able to set Stock Quantity, Allow Backorders, and set a Low Stock Threshold. Optional: SKU, Manage Stock, and Sold Individually.

9. Linked Products Tab – Optional: Enter any Upsells and Cross-sells.

10. Attributes Tab – Optional: Add Attributes to the product. Attributes are usually used for variable products.
11. Advanced Tab – Optional: Add a Purchase Note, set Menu Order, and Enable or Disable Reviews.

12. Enter a brief description of the product in the Product Short Description section. This will be displayed next to the product, on the Product page on the front-end of your website.

13. Product Categories Section: Create and/or assign categories to the product here.
14. Product Tags Section: Assign descriptive tags to your product which will help with search results online.

15. Product Image Section: Select the main image for the product.
16. Product Gallery Section: Add multiple, additional images to the product.

17. Publish, Save, or Update the virtual product. You can also save the product as a Draft if you want to publish at a later date.

How to Make a WooCommerce Downloadable Product.

1. Login to the Admin area of the WordPress website.
2. Click on Products in the admin sidebar.
3. Click on Add New at the top of the page.

4. Enter the name of the product in the Product Name field.
5. Enter the full description of the product in the main text editor. This will be displayed on the product page in the Description tab on the front of the website.

Downloadable Product Data Section.

6. Select the product type in the drop-down menu. Click the box next to Downloadable. There are many tabs and settings in this section and depending on your product you may not need to use all of them.
7. General Tab: Enter the regular price of the product. Optional: Enter the Sale Price, Schedule Sale Price to and from dates, Tax Status, and Tax Class.
8. Next to Downloadable Files, click Add File. Enter the File Name and the File URL. If you have added or want to add the downloadable file to your WordPress website, click Choose File and you can upload the file or choose a file from your media library. Optional: Set a Download Limit and a Download Expiration date.

9. Inventory Tab: Enter the Stock Status. Or if you enable Stock Management you will be able to set Stock Quantity, Allow Backorders, and set a Low Stock Threshold. Optional: SKU, Manage Stock, and Sold Individually.

10. Shipping Tab – Optional: Enter the Weight, Dimensions, and Shipping Class. Shipping in WooCommerce can get very complex very quickly. There are multiple shipping plugins out there and many ways to configure shipping options. Look for a WooCommerce shipping tutorial in the future.

11. Linked Products Tab – Optional: Enter any Upsells and Cross-sells.

12. Attributes Tab – Optional: Add Attributes to the product. Attributes are usually used for variable products.
13. Advanced Tab – Optional: Add a Purchase Note, set Menu Order, and Enable or Disable Reviews.

14. Enter a brief description of the product in the Product Short Description section. This will be displayed next to the product, on the Product page on the front-end of your website.

15. Product Categories Section: Create and/or assign categories to the product here.
16. Product Tags Section: Assign descriptive tags to your product which will help with search results online.

17. Publish, Save, or Update the downloadable product. You can also save the product as a Draft if you want to publish at a later date.

How to Make a WooCommerce External/Affiliate Product.

1. Login to the Admin area of the WordPress website.
2. Click on Products in the admin sidebar.
3. Click on Add New at the top of the page.

4. Enter the name of the product in the Product Name field.
5. Enter the full description of the product in the main text editor. This will be displayed on the product page in the Description tab on the front of the website.

External/Affiliate Product Data Section.

6. Select External/Affiliate Product in the drop-down menu. There are many tabs and settings in this section and depending on your product you may not need to use all of them.

7. General Tab: Enter the Product URL. The URL needs to be the location of your product. If you are an affiliate be sure to put your affiliate link for the product you are selling here. Enter the Button Text and the regular Price. Optional: Enter the Sale Price, Schedule Sale Price to and from dates, Tax Status, and Tax Class.

8. Inventory Tab – Optional: Enter the SKU of the product.

9. Linked Products Tab – Optional: Enter any Upsells for the product.

10. Attributes Tab – Optional: Add Attributes to the product. Attributes are usually used for variable products.
11. Advanced Tab – Optional: Set the Menu Order, and Enable or Disable Reviews.

12. Enter a brief description of the product in the Product Short Description section. This will be displayed next to the product, on the Product page on the front-end of your website.

13. Product Categories Section: Create and/or assign categories to the product here.
14. Product Tags Section: Assign descriptive tags to your product which will help with search results online.

15. Product Image Section: Select the main image for the product.
16. Product Gallery Section: Add multiple, additional images to the product.

17. Publish, Save, or Update the external/affiliate product. You can also save the product as a Draft if you want to publish at a later date.

Thanks for checking out our tutorial on how to make WooCommerce products. Please feel free to leave questions and comments and check out my other tutorials and reviews @ TwentySixForty.

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