The Gumroad Blog

Launch Day Tactics: Making the Most of Email Marketing

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:09:30 -0700

Our mission at Gumroad is to empower sellers to make a living doing what they love. Besides giving you the tools to sell your work, we want to help give you the knowledge to use them effectively so that you can maximize your sales.

Despite the growing use of social networks, email is still the best way to market your product. Research shows that email converts 3-5X better than Facebook and Twitter and leads to more revenue. That’s why we’ve put together some helpful email tips for you.

Test subject lines

Attention grabbing headlines are crucial. Just like your middle school teacher taught you, you need an intro to capture your reader. Readers respond to emotional hooks. In fact, 35% of people open emails based just on the subject line. As perhaps the biggest contributor to your email campaign’s success, be sure to test and optimize your subject lines: many email services allow you to see open rates.

Send multiple emails

Sending multiple emails is a great way to increase sales and ensure that your message is getting in front of as many of your fans and subscribers as possible. Even if it’s “just a reminder”, sending a second (or third) email can drive a huge bump in sales. Gumroad seller Nathan Barry utlized this tactic on the release of his latest product, Authority. Nathan writes:

I sent two emails on launch day. The first email was at 9:20 a.m. Eastern (supposed to be 20 minutes earlier) announcing the launch, and the second was later that day as a reminder that the launch sale would end soon. In this chart of revenue per hour, can you figure out when the second email was sent?

Yep, about 8:00 p.m.

Looking at the stats for that second email, you may think it was a failure. The open rate was only 40.2% and the click rate was only 9.3%. Both are quite low compared to the list average. Even worse, 89 people unsubscribed, which is 1.3% of the entire list. Compared to my normal list stats, those are terrible.

But then you look at the hourly sales graph and see that email drove at least $5,000 in revenue. Does it still seem like a failure?

Mix content with commerce

While sending multiple emails can be a winning strategy, nobody likes to be bombarded with emails that just say “Buy, Buy, Buy”. By adding useful content to your emails, your readers will want to open them. Adding free content to your emails is a great way to get your fans hooked, and give them a tease of what your product is all about. As Gary Vaynerchuk said in his interview with Gumroad:

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

Email offers

Providing your email list with a special offer is a great way to boost conversion. Buyers are always looking for value. An “exclusive” or “limited time” $5 off can make a huge difference in whether people buy or not.

Reach your audience at the right time

Open and click rates vary based on the time of day. While morning emails are opened most, as that’s the first thing most people do when they get to their desk, clicks of links in emails peak in the late afternoon. As you’re aiming to get users to click through to your product, be aware of where your subscriber base is located. You can even segment emails based on time zone.

Keep it short

While you can’t technically make a sale from your email, you can certainly lose one by having too long of an email. The last thing you want is for your readers to delete your email before they even get to the call to action. Your goal is to provide value to the reader and get them intrigued enough to click through to your product.

Have some of these ideas worked for you? Have other tips we should include? We love hearing your feedback, so feel free to get in touch here.

Purchasing From The Profile Page

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:38:38 -0700

Your profile page is your showcase, your gallery. It houses all the items you’re selling on Gumroad, so it only makes sense that your fans be able to purchase right from there. Now they can! It’s like buying from the museum, without having to stop in the gift shop.

Enabling purchases from the profile page simplifies the buying process and eliminates a step for your fans, as they no longer need to click through to the product page. Now, instead of driving fans to a unique product page, you can send people to your profile page where they can see everything you’re selling, and hopefully buy more than just one product!

If you’d like a profile, but haven’t set one up yet, visit your settings page, add a username, and then hit “Update account details”. Now your fans can visit gumroad.com/YourUsername to see all of your products

If for any reason you don’t want a product to show on your profile page, you can disable it from showing up by clicking ‘More Options’ and un-checking ‘Visible on profile page’.

We’re extremely excited about buying from profile pages, and believe that the improved simplicity will lead to increased sales of more of your products. For additional information on profile pages, please see our guide to reaching your audience. As always, we love hearing your feedback, which you can send here.

Love it? Buy Again

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:57:20 -0700

You really outdid yourself with your last creation. You’ve written the next great American novel, or recorded the next Billboard Top 10 single. It’s no wonder people would want to buy multiple copies or give a copy to friends and family. Now they can with our simple “Buy Again” option.

Buy Again allows your fans to obtain multiple quantities of your products, right from their purchase receipt for items that have fixed prices.

To make this as easy as possible, hitting Buy Again will pull the credit card information from the first purchase. If your customer bought a physical item or an item with variants, Buy Again allows them to get a second one shipped to another address, or get a different variation of the product. If they’d like to gift the product to someone, they can input that persons email address.

If an item has pay what you want pricing enabled, Buy Again will give way to “Give More”. The coolest part about Buy Again is that it’s another way for you to make more sales, without any additional work!

As we continue to make selling easier for creators, we welcome your feedback, which you can send here.

A Picture Worth 1,000 Words: Background Images For Your Products

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 11:42:00 -0700

You’ve worked hard to build your audience. Your fans recognize and love your brand. To help you give them more to love, we’ve given you the ability to customize your Gumroad product’s background image.

To upload a background image for your product, go to your products url and find the Edit Panel on the right hand side. To help you get started and make customizing your products even easier, we’ve given you the ability to pull styles from your Twitter profile. Importing styles from Twitter will match your product’s background image, background colors and link colors with those on your Twitter profile.

If you don’t want to take your background image from Twitter, you can manually add one. Under ‘Background Image’ click “Add” and select the image from your computer. If you’d like to tile the image, you can enable that by clicking the checkbox. To remove your background image, simply click “Remove”.

The ability to add a background image to your product page is just one more way that you can customize Gumroad to fit your branding needs. For more information on how to customize your product, see our guide on styling Gumroad.

Instantly Stream Video on Gumroad

Wed, 29 May 2013 10:08:15 -0700

Gumroad is extremely excited to announce the addition of video streaming and are pleased to partner with Maria Menounos and “Serial Buddies“ for the debut of streaming. Your customers can get instant, on-demand video, on any device, at any time. Just like all other products on Gumroad, streaming can integrate right into your existing site, or can be a stand-alone product at your unique Gumroad url.

The addition of streaming on Gumroad allows film creators to sell and instantly distribute their work, with no overhead cost. Currently, filmmakers are stuck paying between 15 and 50% to offer downloads and streams of their films, while having to push potential buyers to external marketplaces to purchase. Using our overlay, filmmakers can integrate the payment and streaming right into their site, where transactions can happen securely inline.

Our simple fee structure of 5% + 25¢ ensures that creators take home as much money as possible, and with the ability to upload files up to 4GB in size, Gumroad is ideal for hosting film.

Our launch partner, Serial Buddies, is coming off a highly successful run in AMC theaters, with pre-orders done exclusively through Gumroad. Featuring an all-star cast including Maria Menounous, Kathy Lee Gifford, Artie Lage, and Christopher Lloyd, it is sure to kill!

We’re extremely excited about streaming and offering yet another way for creatives to sell directly to their audiences. For more information on streaming and how to sell films on Gumroad, please see this guide. As always, we love hearing feedback, which you can send here.

Know More, Sell More: Gumroad + Google Analytics

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:16:18 -0700

Part of enabling creatives to make a living doing what they love is helping them reach the right audience at the right time. Previously, we wrote about our great analytics, and now we’ve enabled the ability for sellers to tie their Gumroad accounts to Google Analytics.

Linking your Gumroad and Google Analytics accounts will allow you to track traffic to your Gumroad product pages or to the overlay embedded on your site. The added ability to track with Google’s analytics allows you to see what browsers and devices your audience is viewing your products on, real time traffic, and compare sets of dates against each other.

To link your accounts find your Google Analytics Property ID number and input it on the ‘Profile’ tab in your ‘Settings’. For a step by step walk through of how to do this, please see this video.

Linking your accounts allows you more insight into your audience, so that you can reach them better and make more money. As always, we love hearing your comments, which you can send to us here.

The More the Merrier: 'Give More' on Gumroad

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:04:00 -0700

Gumroad enables creators to sell directly to their audience — so that they can make a living doing what they love. We want sellers to make as much money as possible, so we developed the ability for buyers to ‘Give More’.

Think an item you purchased on Gumroad should be worth more? Didn’t have the deep pockets then that you have now? Buyers can now make an additional contribution for any item that uses our “Pay-what-you-want” pricing.

Our new ‘Give More’ feature provides the average product a 9.4% increase in sales. The coolest part is this is additional revenue for sellers without having to do anything!

The average additional contribution has been $11, but we’ve seen contributions up to $56.

Additional contributions can be made by clicking “Give More” in the top right corner of your purchase receipt.

As we continue to empower creators to make a living doing what they love, we enjoy hearing your feedback, which can be sent here.

Gumroad Stories: Kyle Webster

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:12:00 -0700

Today’s seller story comes from Kyle Webster, an artist who has done work for huge publications such as Time, The New Yorker, Wall St. Journal, and ESPN. Kyle is using Gumroad to sell Kyle’s ULTIMATE Photoshop Brush Pack 1, a pack of 26 custom brushes he’s created over the past two years.

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

I am selling a set of custom Photoshop brushes. I have been creating brushes for my own illustration work since this feature was first introduced in Photoshop nearly a decade ago. When Photoshop CS5 was released, the power of the brush builder was greatly amplified and I decided to put together a set of ‘Ultimate’ brushes that emulate natural media. Other illustrators and designers consistently asked me about my brushes and the ‘natural’ look of my work. I started to see the real value in my brush set and decided it would be worth selling to the digital art community.

Why is Gumroad a good fit for the brush set?

The brush set is a small download (2.3 MBs) and it can instantly be installed by the user. Gumroad’s streamlined sales pages are perfect for such a product. My customers do not have to cut through any clutter - they immediately see the video that demonstrates the brushes, they see the price, and they click to buy. I can’t imagine a more perfect delivery system.

What were the biggest contributors to your success?

I have a substantial number of followers on Twitter and I am plugged into the illustration and design communities. Before launching the product, I did some pre-release marketing with teaser images, descriptions of some of the brushes, and a sort of countdown, if you will, before the big day. This got the sales engine revved up before the product was even available and it built up some anticipation that really helped things take off from day one. Having a consistent message about the product across Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr helped a lot, and a couple of popular blogs announced the release of the brush set on the first and second day, which led to great sales bumps. Word spreads so quickly over the internet when something of value becomes available - I think the timing was good for this kind of product. There are so many digital artists now and most of them are constantly looking for new and better tools.

What have been your favorite things about using the Gumroad platform?

First of all, the intuitive and easy user experience for the seller AND the buyer is second to none. I created a sales page in a matter of minutes. I was astonished at how easy the process was and when it was over, I had a moment of disbelief when my first sale rolled right in. I thought, ‘How can it be this simple to sell online?’ Second, the ability to update products and stay in touch with customers is amazing. And third, I love the Analytics page - there is just enough information there to help me figure out where to focus my marketing efforts and it’s addictive to watch the sales grow.

What could we do better?

I wish I had something to offer here. I really love Gumroad. The only complaint I have received (and it is a small one) came from customers who wished to pay via PayPal. Mind you, this request came from perhaps only 2% of the total number of customers.

To learn more about how to sell Photoshop Plugins on Gumroad, see our guide.

Improved Seller Analytics

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:55:00 -0700

We’re very excited to announce a new and improved seller analytics dashboard. Our new analytics unlock even more powerful insights, as we aim to help you improve conversions and make more money.

We’ve redesigned the dashboard to make it more crisp, colorful and to show more detail for referrals, sales, and conversions. You can access it right now by clicking on the ‘Analytics’ tab once logged into your Gumroad account.

One of the biggest changes is the new dashboard can now display custom dates, as opposed to the previous sales data for just the last month. This allows you to see how conversion shifts month to month over time. Additionally, you can toggle this to show all products, a selection of products, or just one at a time.

We’ve also expanded the referrer table to show all sites that drive traffic to your products. The referrer table can be sorted by views, conversion rate, number of sales, or total money generated from that source.

We believe that this more in-depth sales data can be a powerful tool for understanding your customer base, optimizing your marketing efforts, and increasing bottom line revenue. We’re excited to continue building powerful tools to unlock this data in useful ways and help you be more successful. As always, we’d love to hear what you think.

How to: Sell eBooks

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:19:00 -0700

Gumroad aims to help creatives sell to their audience, no matter where they are or what you make. We recently published a guide on How to Sell Photoshop Plugins and today we’d like to expand on how to sell eBooks. The barrier to writing and publishing an eBook has lowered significantly in the past few years; and, there are some tips and tricks that we’d like to share to make it even easier still.

While they say “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, cover images are very important. It’s the first thing people see when they arrive at your product, and it should increase people’s interest in making the purchase. A good cover image can drive significantly more revenue, as well: products with cover images convert 4.5% higher than those without them.

There are a growing number of eBook readers, devices, and file types, and not all devices support all formats. Because of that, we recommend offering your eBook in different formats. You can do this by creating multiple products for the different types, or packaging the different types into one zip file. This gives the buyers the power to select the type that is right for them.

The simplest format to offer your book in is a PDF. You can easily create a PDF from any word editor, and buyers can easily consume the PDF on any device they choose (their computer, iPad, iPhone, or Kindle). If you do decide to go with a PDF, make sure to use our PDF Stamping. Stamping your PDF will apply a special graphic, as well as the email address of each unique buyer, to the top right of the first page of your PDF.

As always, pricing your product is one of the most important aspects to your sales. Products that enable pay-what-you-want pricing earn up to 20% more than their asking price, on average. This gives the buyers flexibility to pay what they want for the product, and then give more later on if they feel it was worth more than they originally paid. Additionally, you can create offers to give buyers discounts for a limited time. You can distribute an offer code to your mailing list subscribers, Twitter followers, or even use an offer code as a launch-day special to drive extra buzz.

We always love hearing your feedback on what works for you, and encourage you to shoot us a note. For more information on how to sell eBooks on Gumroad, check out this handy guide.

Gumroad meets Flight

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:49:00 -0700

Flight is an event-driven JavaScript web application framework created by Twitter. Over the past few weeks, we have refactored our JavaScript code using Flight. The main goals of refactoring were to increase testability of our web application and improve development productivity.

We rebuilt the entire product edit page with Flight. Overall, we are very happy with Flight and have included some of our key findings below.

Migration

We are a very small team and didn’t want to spend too much time refactoring existing code. Before deciding to use Flight, we tried a few other alternatives. Flight ended up being the most appealing to us because 1) it is very lightweight, and 2) it is agnostic towards client-server communication. The latter property allowed us to refactor our JavaScript code without changing any server-side code, which would have taken us much longer.

Productivity

We organized our files into five separate folders: ui, data, mixins, pages, utils. These are mostly self-explanatory, except for the pages folder, which includes modules that initialize pages (e.g. product_edit.js for the edit page). Introducing structure to our files has made it easier to read, review, and refactor code, especially when collaborating with colleagues. This turned out to be a big productivity win for us.

Naming Events

Flight’s event driven nature resulted in us creating a lot of custom events. This meant that we needed to name each of these events ourselves. We found it important to keep event naming consistent as this can dramatically increase readability and productivity. We ended up customizing TweetDecks’ event naming convention and thus far, it has been working pretty well. However, we haven’t figured out how to scale consistent event naming.

Tests

We have decided to use Jasmine and its plugin jasmine-jquery to write specs for our Flight code. This is mainly because we use RSpec for our Rails application and wanted to maintain consistency in how we test our code. The fact that Flight allowed us to organize our code into components made it so much easier to unit test each component independently.

However, Flight does not have good support for tests yet. One of the most important things that we found missing was being able to test data that was passed with triggering of events. Since Flight components communicate through events, the data passed along with the events is an important part of the contract among components that we need to test. To add an ability to test it we forked jasmine-jquery and added a toHaveBeenTriggeredOnAndWith function. In addition to this, we implemented a few more jasmine helpers to make testing Flight components easier.

Integration with RoR

Gumroad is a Rails application and we have decided to serve Flight code using the Rails asset pipeline. For optimization features that are not available with the asset pipeline, such as bundling modules, we used r.js.

For integrating jasmine tests we used jasmine-gem. In addition, jasmine-headless-webkit was helpful for running jasmine specs headlessly with CI. Unfortunately, these gems are not designed for AMD and make assets available only through the asset pipeline directives. This meant that we had to work around a few issues to make our jasmine specs work nicely with these gems and our Rails application. This is discussed in detail in a separate post.

Future

We believe Flight is the right solution for our problems, and we’ll continue to use it as we scale Gumroad. We frequently found ourselves extracting shared common functionality among our application into mixins. These mixins are mostly reusable in other applications too, so we are hoping to open source these in the future. More importantly, we are excited to see packaged common modules open sourced by the community.

If you enjoy thinking about and working on these types of problems, come join our team!

Gumroad + Twitter Product Cards

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:54:00 -0700

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.

How to: Sell Photoshop Plugins

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:27:00 -0700

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.

Gumroad Stories: Zac Gorman

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:28:00 -0700

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.

Gumroad at SXSW

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:56:00 -0700

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.

Introducing Offers!

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:01:00 -0800

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.

Break Into The Big Leagues

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:40:32 -0800

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!

Want personal access to some of the stars of Silicon Valley? We’re giving away a four-day, three-night trip to San Francisco— one lucky winner and travel companion will get to meet with startup visionaries, tour leading tech companies, and see an insider’s view of the industry.

“We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs us of the chance to be extraordinary, and leads us to the mediocre.”
- Uta Hagen

How to: Sell Films

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:37:00 -0800

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!

The Data Behind Pay-What-You-Want Pricing

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:05:00 -0800

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.

Gary V Teaches You How To Sell

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:56:00 -0800

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.”