Gumroad

At Gumroad, we’re always looking for ways to give you the most powerful tools possible to sell and promote your work. That’s why we’re extremely excited to announce that we’ve teamed up with Twitter as an exclusive launch partner, to offer their new Twitter Product Cards for all products on Gumroad, starting today. 

Twitter is consistently one of the highest converting sources for Gumroad sellers, and with the addition of Product Cards, potential buyers will be able to view your product’s title, price, description and even your preview image, all inside of a Tweet containing your Gumroad link. We’re confident the ability for potential buyers to see the product directly in their Twitter stream will result in increased sales of your Gumroad products.

We’re thrilled to be one of Twitter’s select partners for this launch, and believe this partnership aligns with our mission of allowing creatives to sell directly to their audience, wherever they are.

Gumroad exists to help any creative sell the stuff they make directly to their audience. Recently, Gary V shared some strategies with our sellers for how to sell on the web. A few weeks ago, we also gave you tips on How To Sell Films on Gumroad. Today we’d like to share some insights into selling Photoshop plugins.

With many Photoshop plugins, there will be more than one file you’ll need to upload for your product. To do this, place all of the necessary files into a .zip file, and upload that as your product. When your buyer downloads, they’ll be able to unzip the folder and receive all of the files.

As with all products on Gumroad, conversion increases when you add a preview image, like the one above. In fact, products with preview images convert 4.5% higher than those without. You can add a preview image to your product on the Product Edit page.

Pricing your product can be tough, which is why we offer pay-what-you-want pricing, in addition to standard pricing. Pay-what-you-want is a good way to run initial research on the demand for your Photoshop plugin. While the average price for Photoshop extensions is $25, we recommend offering packages at different price points. As Nathan Barry states,

“Offering multiple packages is the best decision I made throughout this process. It has, without a doubt, made me an extra $10,000”.

You can offer multiple packages either by creating separate products, or by using variants with our webhooks functionality to deliver additional content. Variants offer a great way for you to create different packages such as individual or team licences, with the price updating dynamically. Our good friends at UI Parade have done this with their new product Pixel Dropr, offering a a “Plugin”, “Personal”, and “Team Bundle” package.

Like you, we care about design which is why we’ve built Gumroad to be as simple and beautiful as possible. Please see our guide to learn more about selling Photoshop Plugins on Gumroad. We always love hearing your feedback, which you can send here. 

Today’s seller story comes from cartoonist Zac Gorman. Zac is the author of Magical Game Time Volume 1, a 139 page collection of comics, sketches, and character drawings. Based in Detroit, Zac was one of the pioneers of the current explosion of comics on Gumroad.

What are you selling? What’s the story behind it?

I’m selling a collection of comics inspired by classic video games and the formative experiences that we had playing them, called Magical Game Time. The comics were previously available online on my website magicalgametime.com.

The comic is my way to pay homage to these great games and also a way to examine the intimate, personal connection that we have with them. I started it because there was some sort of emotion I really wanted to capture in the interaction we have with games.

The decision to sell the PDF collection was inspired by the combination of a sudden financial setback, which made me look for a way to monetize the comic while still providing my audience with something they can enjoy, and the ease of posting the collection to Gumroad.

Why is Gumroad a good fit for the comic?

Gumroad was a great fit for me because it was easy. Not only the ease of posting the PDF but for my users as well. The pay-what-you-will option made it available to everybody who wanted to buy it, from regular fans of my site, to brand new ones who might just want to see what it’s all about.

What were the biggest contributors to your success?

Thankfully, I had an audience prior to posting the book who was kind enough to show an outpouring of support. After only twenty four hours or so, I’d already earned enough to alleviate my financial burden and I was able to get on my feet again and back making comics.

What could we do better?

If there was anything that I could change about Gumroad, it’d be a way for my audience to be able to pay using PayPal as opposed to just a credit card. I have a lot of younger fans and international fans who would’ve found a PayPal option easier.

For more information on how you can sell comics on Gumroad, please see our guide to selling comics. 

The Gumroad team has been lucky enough to spend the past week at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Besides over-indulging in Texas BBQ, we ran a pop-up meeting space for two days which we, naturally, called Café Gumroad.

For those of you who haven’t been to SXSW before, and as those of you who have been know all too well, the sheer amount of things to do, people to see, and events to attend can sometimes get a bit overwhelming. Our goal was to provide a place where people could book meetings with fellow SXSW attendees, grab a free latte, and take a break from the bustle to get some real work done in a friendly, laid back atmosphere. 

We were absolutely blown away by the response. Meeting some of our sellers face to face for the first time, as well as the fact that we got to introduce ourselves to some future sellers, was an incredible experience for the entire team. It was invaluable for us to get face to face feedback from the Gumroad community and we were excited to be able to return the love with some Gumroad swag.

We want to give a special thanks to our hosts Caffe Medici for providing us with a beautiful space and great drinks, as well as everyone who booked meetings at Cafe Gumroad, and all those who stopped by to say hello.

We’re very excited to announce Offers on Gumroad. With Offers, you can give a discount to buyers in one of two ways; either sending them to a unique url, or giving them a code to input on the normal purchase form. The amount that you set for the offer code discount will be deducted from the price upon entering a valid code.

To set up an Offer for your buyers, click on your product to go to the ‘Product Edit’ page and click “More Options”. Here you can input a name for your code and dollar amount for the discount you would like to be applied. Say you want to limit the offer to the first 20 buyers to use the code - you can do that by setting a quantity.

The name you input will also become a part of a unique url you can share. For example, if the offer code is “thanks”, the url gum.co/demo/thanks will take a buyer to a page with the discount already applied.

Additionally, you can include the offer code input field on your Purchase page. This offer code would also be entitled “thanks”, and the price will change automatically once it is entered. 

We’re working hard to make Gumroad the most flexible platform for you to sell what you make, and believe that Offers adds another great feature for sellers. As always, we love hearing your feedback, which you can send here.

Our friends over at General Assembly (@GA) want to help you Break Into The Big Leagues, with a sweepstakes giveaway for a trip to Silicon Valley. The trip includes airfare, accommodations, and tours of some of the hottest  tech companies. The sweepstakes ends March 6th, so be sure to enter soon!

Gumroad exists to help any creative sell the stuff they make directly to their audience. Recently, Gary V shared some strategies with our sellers for how to sell on the web. Today, we’d like to focus on how to sell films on Gumroad.

Using Gumroad to sell film content is super simple. To start, log in to your Gumroad account and click the “Add” button to create your product. Then, type your film’s title, upload the film content (we host up to 4GB), and set your price. You can use our pay-what-you-want pricing, or set a standard price for your buyers to pay. After your film finishes uploading, click the check mark to the right to save your changes and create your product.

After your product is created, clicking on the title will take you to the ‘Product Edit’ page, where you can make further edits and customizations. From this page, you’re able to write a description for the film, as well as include a preview. Your preview can be an image, or a video preview from Vimeo or YouTube. We recommend using a video preview if possible, as products containing video previews convert 7% higher than those without.

If you’d like to include DVDs, or other physical products with your film, you can require buyers provide their shipping information with just one additional click inside the ‘More options’ tab.

If your film isn’t released yet, but you’d like to accept pre-orders, we also make that super simple. Just create the product as you normally would, but make it clear to your buyers that they are pre-ordering the film. For the file attachment, just upload a PDF with info on the film (or, even better, some bonus content). The buyers will be able to download this content immediately after pre-ordering. On release day, just update the file with the final film content, and notify your buyers in one click right from Gumroad. Their original, secure download links will automatically update to serve the film, and we’ll even auto-insert their unique link into the notification email.

You can learn more about selling films on Gumroad here. As you’re gearing up for your film launch, we’re here to help. Feel free to ping us with any questions or concerns and as always, we’d love to hear what you think! 

One of our favorite features for sellers at Gumroad is flexible pricing. Flexible pricing allows sellers to set a minimum threshold for the price of their product rather than choosing an absolute amount. Hundreds of sellers have used this feature to their advantage. Here are a couple of our favorite use cases!

Magical Game Time Vol. 1 is a collection of Zac Gorman’s comics, sketches, and character drawings. The product was posted on Zac’s blog and less than 18 hours after creating the product, purchases started rolling in! The product was priced at $1+, but most users ended up paying more than that. The average price paid for the item was over $6 (ranging from $1 to $100) with over 80% of buyers paying more than the minimum price, and over 30% of buyers paying over five times the original price. 

Another great use of flexible pricing was by Heroku Hacker’s Guide author Randall Degges. Randall initially priced the product at $5. After some excellent feedback and buyers offering to pay more than $5 for the product, Randall utilized Gumroad’s flexible pricing option and changed it to $5+. From that point on, 25% of buyers paid more than the minimum $5, with the average price paid more than 20% higher.

Next, Randall changed the price to $10+ and 10% of buyers paid more than the minimum $10, resulting in an average price nearly 10% higher than the original $10. All-in-all, Heroku Hacker’s Guide has sold at an average price more than 50% higher than the original listing price. 

We understand that optimizing the price of your product is hard. Utilizing flexible pricing makes it easy for buyers to pay what they think is the right value for the product, and allows sellers to make more money than they otherwise would have made. This is one of the many features that we have built to make sellers lives easier. Stay tuned for many more features to come, and feel free to send your feedback here. 

Today we had a chance to chat with Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), as part of his #1aDay interview series, about his thoughts on content creation and the changing landscape of commerce. 

“Content and commerce are becoming brother and sister in this war of business opportunities.”

“You need to be thinking about what’s happening next, not what’s happening now.”

“If you’re watching this, and don’t realize we’re living through the most opportunistic era, entreprenuerially, ever, then you aren’t an entrepreneur.”

“Content is undervalued, commerce is just starting.”

We’re super excited to announce that, starting today, we now offer payouts via direct deposit. If you’re located in the United States, you can now have your earnings deposited directly into your bank account at the end of each pay period, at no additional cost to you.

To set up direct deposit, go to your ‘Settings’ and click “Payout”. Click “direct deposit”, enter your routing and account numbers, and then “Save”. Payouts will still happen on the same schedule — we’ll initiate an ACH transfer from Gumroad into your account every two weeks.

If you aren’t in the U.S., we still support payouts through PayPal for international Gumroad sellers.

We’re working hard to make Gumroad the best platform to sell what you make, and we love your feedback. You can shoot us an email, or leave your thoughts in the comments below.