There were a load of questions, and I tried to sum them up in a few buckets and answer them for you. So without further ado:
Do I have to pay $10 a month? Nope. There will continue to be a free tier. You will still be able to take advantage of all the benefits of instant payouts.
Our goal is to make the switch something you want to do–not something that is forced onto you.
Do I have to switch to instant payouts? Nope. We understand there are reasons to keep things the same–and we hope to shrink that list every month. For transparency, the major issues are:
1. Simplified accounting because of the current weekly payout.
While you can just file one invoice a week with Gumroad, you’re probably aware that our reporting tools are sub-par. We hope that you’ll find Stripe and PayPal’s data much more manageable (and detailed, given they are payments companies, while we just pretend to be one).
We also hope that this new world will encourage a switch to monthly reporting, in which you can bundle up all of your transactions for the past month and report them at once–which we believe every country supports.
Finally, we will be releasing guides on the best way to manage your Gumroad finances in this new world long before it is available.
2. Gumroad handles EU VAT for me.
True, because Gumroad is currently the one being paid at first, we collect and remit EU VAT. It’s a great feature, but it also gives you no flexibility.
With instant payouts, you will have the option to disable EU VAT collection + remittance for your products. We expect most creators will opt for this, and get rid of the headache for yourself and your customers.
If you keep EU VAT enabled after you switch, you will be responsible for paying EU VAT. Responsible how? No one really knows, to be honest. We send the EU a very large check every quarter, and we have yet to hear back from them. Not even a “thank you!”
In any case, we do plan to release a tool to make generating this report easy – you’ll get an email at the end of every quarter with the numbers you owe. Unfortunately, the actual remittence process remains as painful or as easy as your country decides to make it.
For now, if you do plan to keep paying EU VAT, we begrudgingly recommend you not to switch to the new world yet. We have a few ideas up our sleeves, but they’ll remain there for now…
3. Gumroad works in my country, while Stripe and PayPal do not.
There are a few countries that neither Stripe nor PayPal are in. If you’re in one of these countries, let us know and we’ll pass it onto them.
The good news is that we will be able to support bank transfers to more countries than we do today. (Four today, 23 after the switch.)
What about cryptocurrencies? Payments in my native currency? I don’t want to elaborate too much, but if Gumroad stops being the payments-middleman, it also stops being the bottleneck to many more things. That includes things like more countries, more payment methods, more payout methods, native currency payouts… should all happen faster after this change. Hold onto your hats!
Does this change the restrictions around adult content on Gumroad? Yes. Because Gumroad is no longer the middleman, we won’t be forced to take down content our payments partners don’t support. Really excited about this, as an area we’ve flubbed in the past. We will do better!
Isn’t open source a security risk? Yes, it is. It is the number one reason we can’t do it sooner–it will take many months to make sure the code is bulletproof and doesn’t compromise ourselves or our creators.
When I contribute to an open-source Gumroad? It’s a huge project, so not for a while. We will open it up to beta users before hand, so reply if that’s interesting to you. Still, it is several months out, if not more.
Why would you do this?For numerous reasons. Put simply: it’s good for the world, and good for Gumroad. Plus, we’re scared so many creators rely on Gumroad, Inc and hope we can make ourselves less essential. That fact scares us, too.
You’re a business! Be more professional and stop promoting your personal stuff!
I’m just a creator trying to create a service that helps other creators create stuff. If I didn’t have to run a business to do that, I wouldn’t! Plus, I think it’s cool to know who makes the stuff you use. But I understand that’s not the relationship everyone wants with their eCommerce tool, so I’ll stop shilling for social media engagement.
On that note though, you really should follow Gumroad on Twitter. We hope to have a much more interesting feed in the year to come.
Hopefully, we were able to answer some of your concerns and lower your stress levels. One day, we hope to be at a place where the new model makes sense for everyone! We’re not perfect, but we’re trying.