Five Reasons To Sell Your Digital Products on Gumroad

The simplest passive-income-generating online storefront ever

I’ve written before about how creating and selling digital products can be a great form of passive income for online creators. This week I’ve been re-vamping my Gumroad storefront, and adding a few new products.

Gumroad might not be the first choice of many digital product creators, but it has a lot of advantages that make it the perfect choice for me. My word for this year is ‘simplify’, and there are few online platforms as simple and straightforward as this one.

Here are the reasons I choose to sell my digital products through Gumroad.

1. No up-front costs

Unlike alternatives like Etsy, there’s no up-front costs whatsoever to set up your digital products for sale on Gumroad. It’s free to make a creator account, and then you can simply start adding products.

Gumroad take a commission of 10% on every product, so you’ll have to factor that in when you set your prices. There may also be credit card or PayPal fees (get all the details here) but if your products don’t sell, you don’t pay.

2. Easy and intuitive to set up

I don’t consider myself particularly tech savvy, but I found it easy to get my Gumroad account set up and make my storefront look fairly pretty and professional. Here’s what it looks like.

Once you have your account set up as a creator, you simply click on ‘Add Product’ and follow the instructions.

You’ll need a main cover image for each product, along with a square image for the thumbnails that will show up in the Gumroad Library, Discover and Profile pages.

Then it’s just a case of setting a price, adding a product description, uploading the product itself, and hitting publish.

You’ll then be asked if you want to include your product in Gumroad Discover (you do — see below).

3. Sell through Gumroad Discover

We all know that setting up an online store is less than half the battle. Next you need to drive traffic to your store. This isn’t easy, with Gumroad, or any other selling platform.

You can, however, include your products in the Gumroad Discover program. This means the platform will recommend your products to prospective customers who are browsing the site, helping you grow beyond your existing audience and find new — hopefully repeat — customers.

There’s a fee when you sell through the Discover program, but again, you only pay it if a product sells (and, of course, only if it sells through the program).

4. The name-your-price option

I love the option that allows your customers to pay whatever they want for a particular product. Simply set a minimum price (it can be $0 if you’re prepared to offer your product as a freebie), then allow the option of paying more.

I launch most new products with a name-your-price sale, often setting the lowest price at just $1. Some people will take the product at $1. Others will pay a lot more.

I also offer freebies through Gumroad, and then I usually set the price as $0 or above. Believe it or not some people actually pay for a product they could have for free, often paying just a dollar or two. I guess they look on it as a kind of tip.

5. Basic marketing functions are built-in

Gumroad has a built-in email marketing functionality, allowing you to send out offers to previous customers, letting them know about a new product, a sale, or a name-your-price deal.

You can also make coupon codes (or just create a custom link with a deal or discount ‘baked in’) to send out via email (or of course to send to your own list, share on social media or mention anywhere else).

Just to demonstrate, here’s the ‘50% off’ link to my Freelance Writer’s Success Kit. Click through that link and you’ll reach a page with the 50% discount already baked in. If you click through and buy, you’ll get the discount applied automatically.

So what kind of things can I sell on Gumroad?

I sell success kits, which are bundles of resources that I create and package on a specific topic. So far, as well as the one mentioned above, I have a Busy Blogger’s Success Kit and an Affiliate Marketer’s Success Kit.

I also sell printable journals and planners, like my Do Less But Better Journal and this Dream Life Planner.

But really you can sell whatever you want. Guides, eBooks, bundles, checklists, artwork and graphics, to name a few. You can also use Gumroad to host an online course or membership site.

Yes there are better, more complex, all-the-bells-and-whistles online storefront options. I’m certainly not claiming this simple, intuitive, free-upfront platform is all things to all creators. But if you’re thinking of creating digital products and need an easy, breezy, affordable selling platform, Gumroad is well worth considering.

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