Though it took several months, the pandemic eventually took a toll on my business. My monthly revenue fell to about what I was making at the end of my first year in business. I needed to find another source of revenue, and a tweet by Ross Simmonds, founder, and CEO of Foundation, a content marketing company, helped me do just that.
He said I didn’t permission to sell a course on Gumroad. What was Gumroad? I never heard of it. So, I checked it out, and I am grateful I did. It has helped provide that extra revenue stream for me. Perhaps it can do the same for other creators. If you are interested, here is my Gumroad review:
What is Gumroad?
Gumroad is an online platform that offers all kinds of creators a way to sell their products simply, and it is great for selling digital products and selling ebooks. Gumroad provides a place where artists, writers, and other creative professionals can set up “shop” to sell their wares to their customers.
With a few simple steps, you can create a new shopping page that you can link to from your website or social media platforms. The goal of Gumroad is to make selling products as “simple and cheap as possible.” But, to get started, basically, all you need is an email address and an account where Gumroad can send your money.
How Do You Make Money on Gumroad? Create product
You earn money on Gumroad by setting up an account, creating your product description, and sharing your link with your customers. You set the price. You can also choose to let your customers “pay what you want.”
You decide on the types of products you’re selling: A download (it can be something new or repurposed), subscription, membership, or physical product. You can also set up an affiliate program to have others share your product link. They earn a percentage from the sale when they share their unique affiliate link. (If you are into affiliate marketing, I offer affiliates a 30% commission when they sell my products.) When people use the Gumroad website and purchase one of your products, the sale gets logged and tracked at checkout, and you will later receive a commission from the service.
Is Gumroad Free?
Yes and no. Gumroad has two types of accounts for creators: Free and premium. The free account is the default one that is set up when you sign up for Gumroad. You can upgrade to the premium account anytime. The cost of the premium account on Gumroad is $10 per month (or $108 per year).
It does not cost any money to sign up for a Gumroad account, so in that sense, it is free. But, as you will see below, if you sell anything on your website or on Gumroad, you will pay a fee (except if you give it away for free).
What is Better: Gumroad Free or Gumroad Premium?
People I talk to have been very pleased with Gumroad’s free account.
What You Get With a Free Account
- Create and customize your Gumroad storefront
- Sell as many products as you want, where each product can have as many files as you want
- Use Custom CSS to stylize your page
- Send out up to 4 updates per month
- Create a $0+ (pay what you want) product up to 25MB in size
- Third-party analytics
- Custom delivery products
- Set up 1 automated email workflow
- For free accounts, the fee we take on each sale is just 8.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale. That means, no matter what, you keep the vast majority of the proceeds – as you deserve.
What You Get With a Premium Account
- Gumroad’s premium features start at $10/month (or $108/year), and the fee we take on each sale shrinks to just 3.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale.
- If you choose to connect your PayPal account directly with Gumroad, we’ll charge just a 1% processing fee; PayPal will have its own fees too, which vary from country to country and which you can find in their Help Center.
- Gumroad’s premium features include all of the features of a free account, but on top of that you get:
- Remove Gumroad branding from your product page and receipts
- HD Streaming on your uploaded video files
- Unlimited posts and workflows for your customers
- The ability to use custom domains
- Create a $0+ (pay what you want) product up to 250MB in size
The above information was taken directly from Gumroad.
Gumroad Fees
Gumroad charges creators a transaction fee for each purchase over $0. If you sell a product for any amount over $0, Gumroad gets a portion of it. (So, if you run a special where the item you have is given away, there is no fee associated with that.) The transaction fee covers several things, including the credit card and PayPal processing fees (so you don’t have to), file hosting costs, email server costs, chargeback fees, and refund fees.
The transaction fee amount depends on whether you have a free or premium account. The free account transaction fee is 8.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale. If you choose to connect your PayPal account, Gumroad will charge a 6% processing fee. (Note that PayPal has its own fees.) The premium account fee is 3.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale. Connection to your PayPal account Gumroad will charge just 1% processing fee, again PayPayl charges their own fees).
Gumroad also has a feature that may promote your product called Gumroad Discover. If your product is purchased from this searchable section of Gumroad, an additional 10% fee is taken from the sale.
What to Sell on Gumroad
You can sell almost anything on Gumroad. You can sell a digital product like an e-book or digital artwork or original music or an online course you created.
You can also sell physical products, too, like T-shirts or artwork or books. You can also sell subscriptions if you have something like a training video that you want to release once a week. You can also sell items hosted on another site, by inserting the URL when creating the product description. Gumroad doesn’t limit the number of items you can sell or the format you have to use.
What You Cannot Sell on Gumroad
While Gumroad offers you a wide berth on what they will allow you to sell from their platform, there are some limits. Gumroad won’t let you sell:
- Anything that encourages or promotes discrimination
- Any content that reveals personal information about anyone you have not received express authorization to do so.
- Any “high-risk” products (see Gumroad’s comprehensive list for more information):
- Reselling software you’ve purchased previously
- Web hosting or servers
- Tickets to events — or events you are hosting
- Selling any physical goods you didn’t create or don’t own the rights to sell
- Jewelry (even if you did create it)
- Selling furniture you didn’t create
- Any used products or electronics.
- Any physical products that violate Gumroad’s terms of service or federal laws of the US
- Steam keys or hacks to other websites
- Pornography
- Food, medicine, or beauty products
- Gift cards
My Experience After I Started Selling a Digital Product on Gumroad
I wanted to create an online course teaching content optimization, but I knew it would take some time to write lessons, format ebooks, create graphics, and record videos. I have a subscription to a service that allows me to create online courses and charge students/members for them. I also have a self-hosted solution. However, with each of those solutions, there is a significant learning curve.
How I Got my Start Selling on Gumroad
As mentioned earlier, I didn’t know anything about Gumroad until I saw the tweet from Ross Simmonds. I saw it as an opportunity to put something together regarding content optimization, which is becoming a specialty of mine.
So, I am using Gumroad to build out my course. And, the good news is I get to sell the course piece-by-piece. When I first uploaded my product, it was the Content Optimization Guide. I put a $47 price tag on it. I realize the price was high, but there was a method to my madness.
The plan from the start was to create a course and eventually offer it through a learning management service (LMS). The hosted platform I have is Fresh LMS, and the self-hosted solution I have is LearnDash. But, Gumroad is letting me build the course and earn money as I go.
When the course is complete and published using an LMS, it will be at a higher price point. But, my Gumroad customers will get access to all of it because they were willing to make the $47 investment. However, you can get all of it for $25 when you use this discount code: gumroad (but it is only for the first 25 purchasers).
How my Sales on Gumroad “Shot Through the Roof”
OK, shot through the roof might be a little gratuitous, but for me, the unexpected sales were a bonanza. When I first offered my Content Optimization Guide on my Gumroad sales page, I sold some — nothing to write home about. Then, I started adding content … another ebook, a checklist, and six videos explaining my processes for keyword research creating blog outlines, and how I optimize content. The guide became a kit, then a course.
But, sales were sluggish until someone in the Frase Insider Facebook group asked if there were a book that showed how to use Frase, a SaaS content creation/optimization tool. I said I created a Content Optimization Kit on Gumroad, which included how I use Frase to optimize content. I said I would DM him the link if he were interested. He was. So, I offered a discount. It was late at night, and I went to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, I was inundated with notifications from Frase Insider members asking for the link because they wanted to buy my product. I was stunned. Every time I turned around, someone else purchased the Content Optimization Kit. I was so grateful … and surprised.
I discovered that Gumroad could not only be a way to earn some extra income, but it could be a legitimate stream of revenue. I’ve made a decent amount selling on Gumroad.
How Can You Leverage Your Skills to Sell on Gumroad?
As a journalist, you have developed plenty of skills that can be used to earn money on Gumroad. Have you always wanted to write a book? Put it in an e-book format and sell it on Gumroad. Are you especially good at writing in a certain format? Create a tutorial for others to download to improve their writing. Have you always wanted to teach writing? Why not create a course? Gumroad is an excellent platform to use to promote your product. Just keep in mind, that whatever you create, you want to make it a quality product. The most common products sold on Gumroad are e-books, films, tutorials, music, and software.
5 Steps to Sell Successfully on Gumroad
Now that you know the ins and outs of Gumroad, what you can sell and what you can’t. It’s time to figure out how you can sell your creations on Gumroad.
1. Set up a Gumroad Account
You can’t make any money until you actually have an account with the service, along with a Gumroad profile. While you can start with a premium membership, it may make more sense to start with the free account and see how it goes. If your products start selling like mad, then you may want to upgrade. Sign up for Gumroad here.
2. Add or Upload Your Product
Whether you have decided to sell a tutorial on common grammar mistakes, a template, or an e-book on writing prose for-profit, or a complete course on how to make bath soaps for fun and money, you have to put it on the platform. If you are going to sell tutorials or e-books, upload them as a pdf. If you are going to sell a course, then upload it in a zip file. If you have a physical product, you can sell it on Gumroad. You’ll want to upload a picture of it.
Gumroad makes it easy to determine how you will sell your product as well. You can choose to sell it as a single product, as a subscription, or even pre-sell it. You can also choose a fixed price for your product, offer a coupon code or allow your customer to pay what they want. There are reasons why you may choose one of the options over the other, whether as a way to build your customer base or to figure out what people are willing to pay for your product. Regardless, Gumroad’s process for setting up your product is simple and intuitive.
Make sure to put some thought into your product title and product description as well as your product image. A picture is worth a thousand words, and you want yours to scream “BUY ME!” You’ve put the effort into creating your product, you should do the same when creating your product’s page on Gumroad.
3. Market Your Downloadable Products or Offer Subscription Products
With Gumroad, it is so simple to market your products. You get a link that you can insert into your social media accounts, send emails, and add a button on your website that will take your customers to your Gumroad product page. But it’s up to you to share the link. You might be able to get some organic sales, but promoting your products should definitely increase your exposure and hopefully boost those product sales.
Todd Jones, a digital marketer out of Conway, Ark., said by using Gumroad, you can test out your product. It costs nothing to get started, so there is nothing to lose. If it is not selling, add to it. Improve it. Perhaps you will see those conversion rates increase when what you offer becomes more comprehensive.
One of the nice things about Gumroad is you can test not only your product but your product price. I initially set a high price, but then offered a discount.
If you offer a service, like coaching, then you can sell a subscription.
4. Leverage Gumroad’s Features, Like Discover Mode
Gumroad not only gives you a platform to sell your products online, but it has several features that can help you boost your sales. As mentioned above, Gumroad has Gumroad Discover. You have to opt-in to this feature, but it will allow your product to be recommended to potential customers. You pay a fee for this service, but it can definitely help you grow your customer base.
Gumroad also captures emails for each download and purchase. This allows you to sort of curate email lists of people who have already expressed some interest in your products by purchasing them. You can use this information to send information about upcoming products or maybe even help you convert someone from just downloading your free material to a paying customer. You need to be careful with your correspondence because you only received their email because of a purchase. It is not like they signed up for your email newsletter.
You should also consider offering your product link to affiliates. By using the affiliate program, you offer a percentage of the sale of your product to your affiliates who are promoting your product. This will increase your customer base, and you’ll help others earn some money, too. Gumroad makes it easy to offer affiliate sales and create unique affiliate URLs for your partners.
I am not sure if I have ever seen a service like Gumroad anywhere else that allows creators to gain instant access to a marketplace to sell their digital products online.
5. Receive Payment
When customers buy from you, they have payment options: They can pay with a credit card, a debit card, or PayPal. And when Gumroad pays you, there are payment options as well. Depending upon the country where you live, your options will include getting paid by direct deposit, through your debit card, or PayPal.
You’ll receive your payment on Fridays for sales made up to the previous Friday. As long as you have $10 USD in your balance, you will receive payment on the next payout cycle. I get paid via PayPal, and I always love seeing a notification about getting money deposited into my bank account. As stated on Gumroad, “money from your sale has to sit in your balance for at least 7 days.”
Your Next Step
Now that you know all about Gumroad, well, at least the basics, your next step is to signup for Gumroad now. You’ll never make any money on the products you have created until you put them out there for the world to see. Gumroad has taken a lot of the hassle out of creating an online store. You are without excuse for giving it a try. It is easy to get started. Try converting some of your blog posts in an ebook and then sell the ebook on Gumroad. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
Can you think of a product you want to sell or offer as digital downloads? Are you a coach? You could set up a monthly subscription and give customers access to you for one-on-one coaching every month (a subscription allows for MRR, aka recurring payments).
Even if you have nothing created that you can sell, you can still earn money with Gumroad as an affiliate. Drop me a note, and you can start earning a 30% commission when you sell my Gumroad products.
A note about this post: On June 21, 2022, I updated my post using a content optimization tool from Contadu. At the time of these changes, this article ranked No. 22 in the Google rankings for the search term “sell on Gumroad.” According to the tool, my Content Score was 51. Following Contadu’s recommendations, I raised the score to 65. So, keep your eyes fixed here in the coming weeks to see if Contadu’s tool helps me rank higher.
On June 28, this post rose to No. 8. But, it slipped down to No. 9 on June 30, so I optimized the content using Frase.
On July 8, 2022 this post rose to No. 7, making it to Page 1, where there were only seven organic search results instead of the traditional 10.
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