Gumroad Review: How to Make Money on This Amazing Platform

This article is a detailed Gumroad review. In it we will talk about the benefits of using the platform and how you can start making money selling your digital products on it.

Are you a content creator who wishes to make some online income on the side? Do you want to know which platform is your best choice?

Gumroad is an excellent choice for beginners, so continue reading to find out what makes it a better option than the rest.

What Is Gumroad?

Gumroad is an online service that acts mainly as a digital marketplace platform.

It allows users to publish their digital products and sell them.

In other words, Gumroad is a simple yet powerful e-commerce platform for selling both digital and physical products.

The entire idea behind the platform was created by Sahil Lavingia in September 2011.

After he faced problems selling a digital product online via various other e-commerce websites, he decided to create a self-promoting platform for users worldwide.

After more than a decade after its launch, millions of people use Gumroad.

Famous artists sold their content through it, like Eminem, David Banner, Bon Jovi, Ryan Leslie, and more. Many best-selling authors also use this platform to sell their books. 

What Types of Products Can You Sell on Gumroad?

Gumroad is an e-commerce platform that mainly provides digital product selling services. Some examples of the digital content that you can sell on this platform include:

• E-books
• Online courses
• Templates
• WordPress plugins
• Memberships to a private group or forum
• Blogs and written content
• Photographs and photography services
• Softwares and apps

Besides digital content, the platform allows you to sell physical products you will need to ship to customers. 

The choices with physical products are endless, and you can practically sell anything you can think of. Some examples include: 

• Physical books and planners
• Mugs with logos
• Stickers
• Badges
• Greeting cards.

Benefits of Using Gumroad

If you’re considering to choose Gumroad as your primary sales channel, then here are some benefits that will probably convince you.

Easy to use

The first thing you’ll notice about this platform is how intuitive it is. Its whole design represents the idea of the founder: to deliver an easy-to-manage solution for its users.

The goal of Gumroad is to help creators create their products and manage their marketing and sales. It lets users create their personalized web store directly through the platform or integrate an existing one.

The platform discloses every feature transparently and intuitively so that virtually anyone can understand the selling and payment process and navigate the platform easily.

Simple payment process

The two main reasons so many creators use Gumroad are:

• They can easily sell their digital product and
• They can easily manage the payments.

Since all the information it provides is transparent, you will know from the start that the platform supports all the most common credit cards like Mastercard, Visa, American Express, or Discover.

Unfortunately, when it comes to online payment systems, Gumroad only supports Paypal. This means you won’t be able to use Skrill or Payoneer to receive funds through your sales.

The profits from all your sales are transferred to your Gumroad account. From there, you can choose to transfer them to your bank account or to your Paypal account.

You can do this manually or automatically at the end of each week. 

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It allows you to create your website

The platform allows you to create your website from scratch directly through its integrated design tools. 

It has numerous templates to choose from, and you can use them to create your custom logo and brand under which you will sell your products.

After enabling you to create the website, the platform also lets you use its mechanisms for marketing it on social media like Facebook and Instagram. 

The integration of Gumroad Analytics also helps you keep track of essential data, such as the number of sales, the most popular products and how much they are sold on the platform, traffic on your website, and how many visits it gets every month. 

Easy shipping and handling management

Because it supports the sale of physical products, Gumroad allows you to handle them more easily. With it, you can adjust the shipping fees and select the countries where you wish to ship the products. 

The management of the prices is also great, as the platform allows you to give discounts or provide offer codes to your customers.

This helps attract more customers and establish yourself as a reliable and trustworthy creator. 

Shipping charges are also automatically adjusted by the platform, depending on where the customer lives.

The platform algorithms double-check your customer’s address to ensure it delivers the product to the right place.

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Helps you establish your e-commerce presence

This is another major benefit of using Gumroad as your main service platform.

By allowing you to create your website, set the prices, and easily receive payments, the platform will indirectly help you establish your brand and e-commerce presence on the market. 

To be more specific, the platform has other means and mechanisms to help you establish an e-commerce presence as well by letting you:

• Use affiliate marketing
• Use custom URLs
• Implement widgets into your website
• Use social media previews to showcase your website and products.

Using these useful tools will make it much easier to implement a conversion strategy, as you can increase your sales by becoming a trusted creator. 

Built-in analytics from the platform allow you to manage and review how customer conversion is going and adjust anything if needed. 

Gumroad Pricing

Pricing is a highlight of the Gumroad platform, as it does not charge any monthly fee. Besides offering a free start, the real trademark of Gumroad is that you pay fewer fees as you earn more money.

Each transaction has a fee of 30 cents, plus a small percentage. For example:

• Earnings below $1000 pay 9% of the sum in fees
• Earnings between $1000 and $10.000 pay 7% in fees
• Earnings between $10.000 and $100.000 pay 5% in fees
• Earnings above $100.000 pay less than 3% in fees.

So, the more you earn, the less you pay Gumroads for their services.

Even better, all the features of the previous sections are available right from the start for free, without the need for a subscription or upfront payment. 

Is Gumroad Safe?

By now, you must be also thinking about Gumroad’s safety and reliability. And you’re probably wondering if the platform offers security and regular payments and whether or not it is free to begin.

To help convince you of how well-established the platform is, consider that several months after its launch in 2011, it received an investment of $1.1 million. 

In 2018, the platform’s gross merchandise volume was $4.2 million, which grew to a staggering $142 million in 2020. 

These numbers reflect the pandemic situation, but that pandemic skyrocketed and established the Gumroad platform into prosperity even further.

At the beginning of this article, we also mentioned that Gumroad is popular among famous artists like Eminem and Bon Jovi. Thousands of creators have earned money through this platform, and many of them made over $1.000.000.

Now that you know all this information, you shouldn’t have any doubts about the platform. As you can see, thousands of creators trust it, and many use it as their main source of income.

Gumroad vs Etsy

Here are two important things need to be considered when comparing Gumroad to Etsy. 

How easy they are to use

Regarding usability and interface, Gumroad provides a simpler and more user-friendly approach, especially for beginner creators. 

Product updating and management are simpler with Gumroad, and every step is labeled and clear. There is simply nothing that can go wrong with using its features.

On the other hand, Etsy offers a more complex interface with many customization options. It lets the user make everything personalized, which would be more suitable for experienced creators. 

Since its traffic is keyword-based, every piece of information needs to be accurate and correct to optimize sales.

The marketing strategy approach

Both platforms have different approaches when it comes to marketing strategy. Gumroad focuses more on affiliate marketing and allows creators to promote their products through affiliate partnerships.

More trusted affiliates get larger commissions than others, depending on the creator. This feature is free on the platform.

On the other hand, Etsy uses keywords and Etsy ads as its main marketing strategy. Ads are implemented into the website, and Etsy manages them with minimal intervention from the user. 

Keyword research is also one of the essential parts of a marketing strategy for Etsy. Through them, creators can increase customer traffic and potentially the overall revenue.

So, which one is better?

Our choice is definitely Gumroad. It’s much easier to use and for new content creators who want to sell their digital products it’s definitely the best choice.

Gumroad vs Sellfy

Which platform is better? Gumroad or Sellfy?

Let’s find out the main differences.

The interface and usability

Both platforms have an easy-to-use design and approach when talking about usability and interface, but Sellfy provides more features. 

Because of the increased number of features but the simplified interface, Sellfy offers a better experience, especially to intermediate and experienced sellers. 

On the other hand, Gumroad is simple and more beginner-friendly, and its approach is not meant to overwhelm the seller with options and information.

The features

The two platforms have similar features.

Sellfy is more advanced and complex and it includes features like a storefront builder, upselling, product trials, and limited integration.

All of these features make it slightly better and more customizable than Gumroad.

The pricing methods

Another important difference between the two platforms is the pricing methods.

Sellfy uses a monthly subscription – so you have to pay a monthly fee – while, as we mentioned before, Gumroad earns a fee from each sale the user makes. 

Receiving payments is also different, as Sellfy supports Paypal and Stripe but doesn’t support money transfers made directly to credit or debit cards. 

On the other hand, Gumroad supports direct bank and credit card transfers but doesn’t support other online payment methods except for Paypal.

So, which one is better?

Here too, our choice is Gumroad. Not only it’s easier and more intuitive than Sellfy, but the pricing is much better since you don’t have to pay any subscription.

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