I Used Gumroad as a Crash Course in Sales — It Finally Taught Me How to Sell
Let me be honest with you.
When I started writing, selling a product was the farthest thing from my mind. I never wanted to be that guy who scammed his readers by charging an exorbitant price for some digital product.
For at least two years, I didn’t create a single digital product. The truth is, I never really liked marketing or sales.
My intention was simple — if people found my posts valuable, they’d read them and maybe give them a clap or two. That’s all I wanted. But then I tried building a startup, and that’s when I realized the importance of sales and marketing.
No matter how good your product is, if you can’t market and sell it effectively, it holds no value whatsoever.
Looking back, I think one of the key reasons my startup failed was my lack of expertise in marketing and sales. I knew I had to learn those skills.
And what better way to learn than by actually doing it? By getting my hands dirty and practically applying various sales and marketing tactics?
That’s when I decided to create digital products on Gumroad and start marketing and selling them. It was the perfect way for me to learn these crucial skills through hands-on experience.
I created 8 products, and 1 bundle
To learn marketing and sales, I needed products I could actually sell.
So I leaned into my existing skills and spent half a year creating 8 different digital products, plus one bundle.
The first product capitalized on my writing skills.
The Art of Writing- How to Make a Living Doing What You Love
In it, I broke down my daily routine, sharing the straightforward yet powerful process that elevated my writing to new heights.
I revealed how I managed to boost my income from a modest $300 per month to a whopping $7,000 as an online creator, and more.
For the second product, I tapped into my expertise with ChatGPT.
I pulled back the curtain, revealing the exact tips, tricks, and tactics I used to level up my ChatGPT game and get mind-blowing results.
I went on to create several other products in various niches.
But let’s be real — when I first released these products, no one was exactly beating down my door to buy them.
An unknown guy selling niche digital products? It was a tough sell initially.
I tried every marketing tactic
Let’s be real, I was a marketing newbie with zero experience under my belt.
But I was determined to make these products sell, so I tried every tactic I could learn in those early days.
Tactic #1: Social media blasts
I started by sharing my products on all the usual social channels — Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it.
Kept it simple, dropped the links, hit publish.
I figured at just $5 to $10 a pop, they’d practically sell themselves, right?
But that didn’t go quite as expected. Tumbleweeds. No one was biting.
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Tactic #2: My captive audience
With that strategy bombing, I turned to the audiences I’d already built.
I had a decent following on Medium and a budding one on Substack, so I shared the products with them instead.
On Substack, I wrote up a simple post letting my readers know about my new book “Build a 6-Figure Solo Business from Scratch.”
No hyped up claims, no crazy sales pitch. Just a straightforward announcement.
And you know what? Within 6 hours, I had over 15 sales in the bag.
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Tactic #3: The Gumroad discover feature
When I was just getting started on Gumroad, their “Discover” feature didn’t really move the needle for me.
But as my products kept selling over time, that little section definitely started driving some extra sales my way.
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Tactic #4: Discount frenzy
People love a good deal, am I right?
That’s why pretty much every company under the sun runs sales and promotions. I decided to hop on that train too.
For major holidays like Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year’s, I hooked my followers up with exclusive discounts on my products.
And boy, did they eat it up!
Those sales periods were absolute madness — I’m talking around 150 sales in total from the various offers.
Tactic #5: Surprise gifts & giveaways
My final marketing play involved surprise gifts and giveaways for my loyal audience.
Specifically, I’d randomly pick subscribers and send them bonus products or resource bundles, just as a thank you.
You would not believe the messages I got — apparently, these were the best surprise gifts some of them had ever received!
But I didn’t stop there.
I also ran a $1,000 cold hard cash giveaway for one lucky random subscriber.
That campaign? It drove insane sales.
Like, absolutely bonkers numbers. People were buying up left and right for a chance at that grand prize.
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Tactic #6: The value-first approach
The holiday promotions and giveaways were awesome for driving short-term sales spikes.
But I wanted something more sustainable — a way to consistently sell my products month after month.
That’s when I shifted to a value-based sales approach. The philosophy? Give away insane amounts of value first, then try to sell.
Here’s how it worked: I’d write a wildly informative blog post packed with tactics, tips, and step-by-step walkthroughs.
Stuff my audience couldn’t get anywhere else.
Only after delivering massive upfront value would I mention one of my products as a next-step for readers hungry for more.
It’s a “you first” kind of strategy.
By hooking readers with a bestselling free piece of content, I’ve already won them over and built tremendous goodwill by the time I make an offer.
If they dig what I’m putting out into the world, maybe — just maybe — they’ll value my paid products too.
The approach worked like a charm.
Readers got overwhelming value from the free stuff, which drove them to invest in my paid offerings. It created a steady stream of sales by transitioning fans into customers.
These days, I don’t even directly promote my products most of the time.
I just focus on creating ridiculous amounts of free value first. The sales just naturally follow from there.
The results
After implementing all those tactics, from social media blasts to surprise giveaways to the value-first approach, the sales started rolling in.
To date, I’ve made 1,105 product sales and counting.
These days, my little product portfolio generates at least $1,000 per month like clockwork.
Nothing mind-blowing, but for someone who just wanted to learn marketing and sales by doing? I’ll take it!
But I’m not satisfied stopping there.
My next goal is to level up to $2,000 per month in passive product income. To get there, I know I’ll need to dial up the value I provide through my content and audience interactions.
More blogs, more resources, more surprise-and-delight moments.
Luckily, I’ve got the drive and energy to make that happen.
This marketing game has gone from a eschewed necessity to a full-blown passion project for me.
With every sale, every new subscriber, every piece of feedback, I get more fired up to take this to new heights.
$2,000 per month is simply the next stepping stone.
After that, who knows what the future holds?
The sky’s the limit when you’ve got a constant hustle for adding ridiculous amounts of real value to people’s lives.
Hope you like it.
That’s it — thanks.
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