Balint Erdi is an Ember.js consultant from Budapest, Hungary. After making a screencast series about how to build an Ember app, he transformed and expanded the content and released it in book form, naming it Rock and Roll with Ember.js. He chose Gumroad for selling and distributing his book and bundled packages, and after sharing his experiences with us, he expanded his thoughts into a post that illustrates the type of path that we hope is the most prevailing for creators with Gumroad. Here’s Balint.
My decision to use Gumroad for selling a product predates the idea of what that product should be. I had only used Gumroad for buying a couple of books, but I found the purchase and delivery process so slick I knew I wanted to use it when I had my own product.
So when I decided to write a technical book on Ember.js, a client-side javascript framework, I went straight to Gumroad.
After months of evenings and sometimes days spent writing content and code, I set a launch date of February 18th, 2015, and started to prepare book packages for Rock and Roll with Ember.js.
Setting up the products
I created three different products in Gumroad, one for each book package, and uploaded the assets (in my case, the book in PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats) for each. Next, I wanted to make sure the products could be bought, so I set the price to zero and purchased each of them by using the short product URLs for each. Once I verified the files were delivered, I set the prices to their normal values and proceeded to integrating the products into my sales page.
Integrating the products
It almost feels like a stretch to call it integration. Being able to sell your product from your landing page means simply linking to the Gumroad product. That was it, so once that was done, I pushed the Publish button and launched my first product.
Exporting customer data
I wanted to add each buyer to my Mailchimp mailing list so they could receive a heartfelt thank you message and information on how to take advantage of the deals that were also part of the bundle. I set up an integration to do that, but for customers who were already on my list, that did not work. I resolved it by downloading a CSV of all customers and then sending out the welcome email from Mailchimp for those who did not get the message initially. (Editor’s note: while effective, this action can now also be easily achieved using Workflows.)
Offer codes
A lot of people helped me make the book better and I wanted to thank them by offering them the book at a lower price. This was a breeze with Gumroad. You can set up offer codes that give either a percentage or a dollar discount, and even limit the number of times that offer code can be used. Furthermore, each offer code has its own URL so customers don’t have to hassle with inputting the code in the form.
Cross-selling on the Gumroad platform
Marketing can be the hardest part of selling your product if you self-publish. Thankfully, Gumroad also lends a hand with getting your product in front of more people using Recommendations. With the click of a checkbox, your product will be offered to buyers of other Gumroad products.
Opting in to this feature has yielded $465 so far (evidenced by my Gumroad Analytics tab).
Not bad ROI for a 5 second action, right?
Adhering to the EU VAT law
The EU passed a law that mandated that VAT be paid for digital products based on the purchaser’s country.
With my business being located in Hungary, an EU country, and my product being an e-book, I was on the hook for finding out where my customers are from, charging VAT based on their country, collecting the tax and reporting it to the appropriate institution.
This would have meant a lot of time wasted doing paperwork, so I was delighted to find out Gumroad rolled out their EU VAT feature that took the burden off my shoulders. I don’t have to do anything, and they even report the collected tax to the appropriate institution.
That means I can concentrate on marketing and selling my product without even thinking about the law’s existence (my EU customers are less fortunate, though).
Releasing product updates
Three weeks after I published my book, I released an update. I uploaded the new files, removed the old ones, and clicked Save. The platform offered to send an email to all buyers of the book with a download link to the new version. This update took me 3 minutes but only because I had a slow internet connection and the PDF is quite large.
Top-notch support
I had a couple of questions as I was setting up my products. Gumroad’s support always wrote me back promptly and their answers were straight to the point and helpful.
This all might sound like I’m doing marketing for Gumroad, but I can’t recall the last time I had such a great experience with an online service and I will go out of my way to recommend it to anybody who wants to sell digital products.
How has your experience been? We’re always interested in hearing your feedback.