Gumroad: the best platform to sell digital products

What is Gumroad?

Gumroad is a web platform where you can sell all types of digital products easily and quickly. You can offer courses in PDF, Word, Excel formats, audio and video, images, software, eBooks, movies and more.

The idea of creating Gumroad came from Sahil Lavingia, who founded Pinterest, one of the most used social networks in the world. Since 2011, this platform has been in activity and has already sold millions of products.

Some of its notable features are:

• It has a page builder so you have a 100% personalized landing page.
• You can link your Gumroad landing page to your website through a share button.
• It is possible to create a subscription program and manage it by access. You can also receive monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual payments.
• It is easy to create discount coupons and control the validity time.
• It is compatible with different currencies.
• Supports a large number of file formats and sizes.
• Offers sales analytics.
• It has email and follower data management functions, so you can send notifications to your community.

How does the Gumroad affiliate program work?

Whether you have your own products that you want to sell, or you are thinking about being an ambassador for other creators, the Gumroad affiliate program is an ideal option for you.

To explain how it works, we will do it from the perspective of the creator of the products, as this will also cover the process for those who want to be affiliate representatives:

1. Users who want to join your account first have to create their own Gumroad account, this way the platform can manage their payments.
2. Then you must add them from your account panel as affiliates.
3. They receive a link that redirects customers to your product page to purchase them. This link comes with the “/a/” section to identify you as an affiliate; The rest of the characters identify the page, just like any URL works.
4. Once the affiliate has the link they can start using it.
5. Each time a data subject clicks on the link, cookies are stored in their browser for 30 days. During that time, the customer has the opportunity to purchase with that link and thus be able to credit the purchase to the affiliate who shared it.
6. When the purchase is complete, Gumroad takes their commission and leaves the rest for you to share with your affiliate based on the commission they have agreed upon and that is set up beforehand.
7. After 7 days of the purchase, the affiliate receives the payment in the account they registered for it.

Another way to do this is by enabling the affiliate program feature so that other users can see that you are accepting sales representatives. They will fill out a form that you have edited with the questions and requirements that you think are relevant; When they finish filling out the form they just have to send it to you.

Then you evaluate the proposals to accept or reject them as they seem appropriate for your products. Within the application form, the applicant indicates the percentage they want to earn from sales, but you can adjust it later by agreeing on an arrangement satisfactory to both parties.

When this is complete, simply add your affiliate using the steps above and start working right away.

How to create an account on Gumroad?

Creating an account on Gumroad is very simple, as much as adding your data manually or simply syncing them with your Facebook or Twitter profile. But to make it clearer, these are the steps:

Sign up:

Go to the Gumroad website and click on the Start selling entry in the top options panel (or on any of the buttons with the same name on the home page).

Complete the personal information. You can do it manually, for which you will need to complete a verification of the email you attach, or by synchronizing your Facebook or Twitter account.

Complete your profile:

Next, complete your profile by adding a username, profile photo, name, bio and country.

Upload product:

The next step will be to upload your product and create a link to it. Then, design the landing page to welcome interested parties and convince them to buy from you.

Now just share that link with everyone.

What commissions does Gumroad offer as an affiliate?

The percentage of sales commissions that the reseller affiliate can earn on Gumroad does not depend on the latter but is adjusted by the product owner as agreed with the affiliate.

This does not mean that the owner can give the entire sale to the affiliate, since the platform must receive its part, so the commissions are regulated to be able to assign a percentage ranging from 1% to 90%.

In this case, the platform does not charge transaction fees to the affiliate, only to the product owner. In addition, Gumroad covers PayPal payment commissions so that the sales amount is net for the affiliate.

How does Gumroad pay?

The Gumroad platform only has (so far) 2 payment methods: direct bank transfer or PayPal. This is for both creators and affiliates; Likewise, both must meet the same requirements to receive payments.

Here we briefly describe the requirements of each case:

1. For bank transfers:

• Be legally resident in one of the countries approved by the platform (you can see the complete list in the Gumroad Help section).
• Provide a legal document that certifies residency in one of the approved countries.
• Provide a legal document that certifies residency in one of the approved countries. Have a bank account in one of the countries, since payment will be in local currency.

2. For payments to PayPal:

• Be resident in one of the countries that is not included in the list approved for bank transfers.
• Be enabled to receive payments through PayPal (a business account is not necessary, individual accounts are also valid).

How can you make money with Gumroad?

There are several strategic actions that will allow you to make money effectively with Gumroad, either as an affiliate or as a creator. And they are these:

Choose a niche

The first step is to select the market or niche you want to work on. This is essential since this way you will know what conversion strategies you will use to capture leads and bring customers to your product links on Gumroad.

To choose a niche you must take into account the profitability of the product you plan to offer, and along with that, the percentage of profit it can leave you.

The latter applies mainly to affiliates since they should not choose to sell a product just because it is expensive, thinking that this way they will have more profits.

As we already indicated, it is the owner of the product who determines how much commission they will pay for the sale.

Get a domain and web hosting

Now that you know what you want to sell, it’s time to get a domain name for your website and hosting. The first is the address that will allow your visitors to know that this site is yours or that it belongs to your brand.

While hosting is the storage service for your site’s data. Depending on the company you choose, you will have a certain number of resources to manage your project, for example, data transfer, disk space, among others.

A piece of advice: buy the domain with the same company you are hosting with, so the integration will be direct.

Create your website with WordPress and Wasabi Theme

The WordPress content management system is the most used in the world, and it is for a reason: it is super easy to use and it is free. In fact, many hostings already include it pre-installed, or failing that, with an installation in just a few clicks.

For its part, the template or theme will allow you to give greater customization to the website. Wasabi Theme is really the best option for affiliate projects because of its optimized settings for this use, as well as the SEO settings that you can take advantage of.

Don’t forget about SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO for its acronym in English, is the set of strategies and actions that make content reach the first page of Google results and the rest of the search engines. As you can see, it is something that you have to work on to generate sales with your affiliate links.

One of the aspects that greatly influence SEO is the theme you use, and here the recommendation to use Wasabi Theme is evident again.

How can all this help you make money with Gumroad?

Easy: the more you stand out in your niche, the more affiliate links you can get and you can ask for more commission for each sale.

Read the complete free guide

In these 4 steps I have summarized what you can do to make money with Gumroad, but it has only been the tip of the iceberg. Each point has specific aspects that you need to master.

But don’t be scared, our complete guide to creating niche pages will help you in the process, and the best thing is that it’s free.

Are there alternatives to Gumroad?

If you have not been convinced by Gumroad or you think that you could integrate it with other platforms to have a greater reach, well, there is news: there are several alternatives to Gumroad that will interest you.

Here is a brief list:

• GoSpaces: this is a complete marketplace that allows you to sell physical and digital products. You can create an affiliate system and fully manage payments and commissions.
• Payhip: this alternative is quite simple, focused mainly on the sale of digital books, Payhip is a good solution to reach a larger audience. You can also sell other products such as music, images and others. The commission is 5% per transaction.
• Kajabi: very similar to Gumroad in operation and product management options. The main difference is that it has a minimum monthly payment regardless of the sales you have; so you have to sell a lot to see profits.
• Hotmart: perhaps the best known. This is because Hotmart has great features, allowing the creator to work with another figure, besides the affiliate, to promote their products.