After 5 Months of Selling eBooks on Gumroad — Here’s What Doesn’t Work

What you shouldn’t do to make money on Gumroad

Time really does fly.

I mean wasn’t it just yesterday when I launched my very first eBook on Gumroad?

Today, 5 months later, I’m literally here to tell you that it works.

100% magic

Ebooks + Gumroad is a formula for passive income.

But I’m not just going to stop there.

Because I’m sure you’re curious.

• How Much Did I Make After 5 Months on Gumroad?
• What would tell my past self before starting this business?
• and what doesn’t work to make passive income on Gumroad.

Well brace yourself because today’s story has all of that juice.

So let’s go through how these past 5 months have been and what I would do differently.

Selling eBooks On Gumroad

How did I even come up with the idea?

Well, I knew I had something of value to share, and I knew there was a market for my knowledge.

All I had to do was

• put my knowledge on paper,
• upload it to Gumroad
• and get to work

Remember, it took me years to learn what I know, which I now share in my eBooks, but it took me days to turn that knowledge into passive income.

So here’s a quick brainstorming session.

Think about all of the experiences you have right now that took you time to build on.

• Maybe you just know better ways to make food tastier
• Or have kids that turned out really respectful and disciplined

Your experience is basically the bloodline of your eBook.

Because your eBook is literally a written course.

So while you’re writing your eBook, ask yourself a simple question.

What does a beginner need to know to reach the point where you are?

Once you figure out the answer, put it down on paper.

Because that’s your eBook’s outline and table of content.

Remember, what you’re writing in your eBook should be everything a beginner has to know to get the results you have.

And once your eBook’s outline is ready, it’s time to get the entire content out on paper.

Sure, the normal way people know to write their eBooks is with a laptop and notepad.

Chapter by Chapter.

But that’s way too stressful.

During these 5 months, I found a better way to write ebooks.

I just spoke them instead.

Sure it sounds crazy but I no longer had to wait days or even weeks to make my first eBook draft.

• I just had to sit down
• Make a 1hr recording of me saying everything I’d want a newbie to know about what my eBook teaches them.
• Take the recording and transcribe it into text with Fiverr, Rev.com or YouTubetranscript.com
• Turn the rowdy text into a minimalistic PDF and you have your eBook ready.

How Much Did I Make Selling eBooks on Gumroad

I sell my eBooks on Gumroad but I promote them on Medium.

So every sale I make on Gumroad is most likely from Medium.

And so far, I’ve made a total of 312 sales which has resulted in $3,154.48.

That’s how much money selling eBooks on Gumroad through Medium made me.

Crazy right?

So if you want to make similar amounts or even more, here’s what I didn’t do to get to this point.

So with that said, here’s what doesn’t work for selling ebooks on Gumroad with Medium

1. Writing a Book just about anything

So you wake up one morning and decide it’s time you wrote a book.

Good for you but there’s just one problem.

You don’t bother to do any market research.

You just hop right into writing the book and hope that it sells like hotcakes when it launches.

But that’s far from how selling works.

With selling, there has to be a need.

Yes, someone has to have a need for what you sell.

Because needs breed emotions.

And people buy based on their emotions only to justify based on their logic.

So stop for one second.

That book you have in mind might not be quite a good idea.

At least until proven otherwise.

• Do the work,
• conduct market research
• and consolidate that people actually need what you sell before you put in the work.

But how exactly do you even go about doing your market research?

Well it’s simple, the goal is to spot a need.

And one of the best ways to do this is with the largest eBook Marketplace in the world.

Amazon Kindle.

On Amazon’s website, type in the name of your potential eBook and see what pops up.

• Are there books with a similar title as yours?
• Do these books have a reasonable amount of reviews and ratings?
• Or is there nothing on Amazon concerning what you plan on writing?

This research process speaks volumes.

With Amazon being the largest eBook marketplace in the world, demand on their platform is essentially demand everywhere else.

So if your potential eBook idea doesn’t sell that much on Amazon, you should probably reconsider it.

You’re better off investing the time into writing eBooks that will actually end up being sold.

2. Selling like a salesman

As humans, we hate being sold to and as soon as we know it’s a sales pitch, we run.

But why?

Because we hate the thought of being pushed into buying and spending our hard-earned money.

When you take the old salesman route and attempt to coerce potential buyers into purchasing your snake oil, you end up pushing them away.

Because the new way to sell is to not sell.

Sounds crazy, I know.

But it’s the truth.

The best way to sell is to not sell at all.

Instead give value with your stories, then make recommendations.

Let me explain.

The way we’re used to selling whatever we have to offer is super basic

• Find a potential buyer
• And sweet talk them into seeing reasons why they need your eBook

But there’s a problem with this tactic.

When a potential buyer knows you want to sell to them, they have their guards up.

They put almost no faith in what you have to sell and at that point, you’ve lost a potential buyer.

You really don’t want that, do you?

That said, we need to sketch out a better way to sell your eBook.

So let me introduce you to the law of reciprocity.

I talk about this law all the time and I love it.

As humans, we are reciprocal beings, and tend to give back a mirror of what we get.

This principle is essentially a building block for how you should sell your eBooks to achieve consistent sales.

Give value upfront.

• You can’t write shabby stories on Medium and expect to make consistent sales.
• You can’t share cookie cutter strategies and expect to make consistent sales.

There needs to be something specifically valuable about the stories you write that makes readers come back for more.

Because when you give that much value, you have the moral justification to ask them to buy your eBook in return.

3. Winging your eBook’s branding

Congrats, you just wrote the best book a buyer could ever ask for, but

• your book cover sucks.
• the title is way too basic
• and to make things worse, the product page is nothing to write home about

All of these three scenarios are a good way to not make sales on Gumroad.

Think about it: no one really knows what’s in your book until they buy it.

While it’s ethical to deliver quality content in your eBook, it’s inconsequential when it comes to selling.

• Because a good product with bad branding = Poor sales
• But shockingly, even a bad product can be made to sell if its branding does the work.

Now I’m definitely not saying to sell awful products just because the branding does most of the work with getting sales.

I’m just saying to not neglect the importance of

• a good book cover,
• a catchy book name
• and a well structured and written product description

Because for every buyer that finds your book online, they will judge it by its cover.

4. Thinking you just have to build it and people will come

The worst mistake I ever made in building online businesses was thinking that all I had to do was build, and people would come.

But that was far from the truth.

There’s more to making eBook sales than just writing the eBook.

Because how in the world is anyone supposed to know about your eBook if you don’t talk about it?

Exactly!!

There’s no way.

I knew this early enough, so I made the decision to drive as much traffic as I could to my eBooks.

The plan was to let as many people know about my eBook.

Because literally, the more, the merrier.

So I chose Medium as my traffic source.

Next, I had to pick a single topic to focus my Medium page around.

It had to be a topic related to the theme of my eBook; that way, I would only attract readers who were potential buyers for my eBook.

Once I knew what my main topic was going to be about, I

• Wrote one story every single day
• and made sure to maintain a high quality output with my stories

Now, many people don’t believe, but Medium is one of the best traffic sources for selling eBooks, for so many reasons.

I’m living proof because after just my first month on Medium, I grew my first 1k followers.

5 Months later, I’m now at 34k followers with over 273,000 views every month.

All of these views translate into clicks and then sales for my eBook.

That’s why I love Medium so much.

Literally $3,154.48 in just 5 months.

So clear that perception that you’re just going to write the eBook and people would buy.

Because it doesn’t work that way.

Instead understand that it takes both

• A product of high quality,
• it’s branding
• and consistent traffic to make sales.

Conclusion

eBooks on Gumroad with Medium as the traffic source is literally one of the best ways to make passive income.

I know because I’ve tried it and it works.

And even if you’re a beginner, in any niche at all, it’ll still work 100%.

So what are you waiting for?

• Create that eBook today
• Start writing on Medium
• Drive traffic to your store
• and watch how the passive income rolls in.

Now, Remember how I mentioned growing over 34k Followers, with over 273,462 views every month.

Well, I wrote an entire book sharing exactly how I did it.

It’s called the Medium Income Playbook.

In this ebook, I share my exact thought process behind

• Finding endless profitable content ideas related to your specific topic
• Creating click-worthy titles and viral headlines to capture readers' attention.
• Creating engaging stories that convert readers into loyal subscribers and even buyers.
• My writing principles (Quantity vs quality, KLT principle and the MVA principle)
• And I’ll also share my personal experiences on how I managed to grow to over 34k followers (as I speak) on Medium in less than 5 months.

Literally everything you need to go from zero followers to making passive income as a writer is in the Medium Income Playbook.

So If you want to start your very own profitable Medium page,

Check out the steps I personally follow and have now shared in the Medium Income playbook.

You can click here to Grab The Medium Income Playbook.