You probably saw the Santas and wreaths attacking shelf space before Halloween’s corpse grew cold a few weeks ago. The holiday season is upon us whether you like it or not. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Handmade Sunday, Cyber Monday, Foodie Tuesday, Washable Wednesday, Therapeutic Thursday… It’s hysteria until 2015.
But you don’t have people camping outside your storefront. You don’t have literal doorbusters. You’re not selling televisions, blenders, or stereos. You make films, recipes, and music. So does that mean you should completely ignore the upcoming holiday insanity? Or should you stack ‘em deep ‘n sell ‘em cheap?
Here are some things to help you decide how much you want to take part in the madness that is the holiday season.
Pricing and Sales
There are as many philosophies on discounts as there are ways to discount a product. If you want to offer a sale for the holiday season, Gumroad makes it easy to create a discount by dollar amount or percentage. Offers can be applied to one or all of your products.
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Learn more about offer codes here.
To dig deeper, our Resource Center is loaded with information and strategies on pricing. There you’ll find everything you need from what your product page should look like to pricing to running a successful launch.
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Holiday Editions
You might want to consider creating a special edition of your product by bundling it up with some extras. Selling a film? Include a PDF of your script or screen test photos from pre-production. Got a book? Bundle it with interviews with the people you talked to during the writing process. Add a few demo or live versions of songs to your album. Hey, holidays aside, these are things you should consider. Our Pricing Your Product resource has great information on bundles and tiered pricing.
Creating multi-file products is easy. When you add a file to a new product, you’ll be prompted to add more. Add as many as you like. You can reorder them later if you need to.
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You can also combine a special edition with an offer to create a flash sale. Setting the quantity of offers to a certain amount and/or only running a discount for a short period of time creates scarcity, and if you’ve so much as accidentally walked into an economics class for two minutes, you know about supply and demand.
I see you have a pack of gum. May I have a piece?
Why, sure, friend.
I see you have a stick of gum. May I have it?
My last piece? Beat it!
Gifting
'Tis the season, 'tisn't it? It’s easy to gift a purchase with Gumroad. During checkout, if a buyer clicks the gift icon during checkout, new fields will appear for the recipient's address and an optional personalized message.
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Learn more about gifting here.
Communication
Of course, none of this matters if your audience doesn’t know about it. Send an email to your list or an update to your buyers through your Customers tab in your Gumroad account. Let them know about gifting and what bundles and discounts you’re offering. You might not have a row of tents outside your door, but you can still be a part of the spree. Happy holidays!