Why am I being charged monthly for providing free sample pack? (Gumroad)
interpolator
Hi polycount,
To start off with, this post is not about me calling out gumroad, as it's a great platform, but just checking with the community if this sounds like a fair practice. So I am an alpha map seller on the website and after the creating the store there since the new year to now I have over 6k customers. Now this sounds incredible, but only 2.4k of those customers actually paid something the rest are the people who downloaded my free 15 sample alpha pack. Now gumroad charges the seller every month 10 dollars, unless you go up a tier, which is based on how many customers you have. So basically right now instead of being charged for the 2.4k customers I am charged for full 6k which is $75 a month! Is it just me or does anyone else this that it's quite unfair to count those free downloads? If I knew about this I would've just uploaded the free 15 sample pack on another website and let people download from there.
It's not the end of the world, as I easily make this money back every month, but I can see how this could be an issue for those smaller sellers who don't release many products on regular basis. Like I said previously this post is not to call out Gumroad, as it's a great platform, but I feel this could be done in a better way.
To start off with, this post is not about me calling out gumroad, as it's a great platform, but just checking with the community if this sounds like a fair practice. So I am an alpha map seller on the website and after the creating the store there since the new year to now I have over 6k customers. Now this sounds incredible, but only 2.4k of those customers actually paid something the rest are the people who downloaded my free 15 sample alpha pack. Now gumroad charges the seller every month 10 dollars, unless you go up a tier, which is based on how many customers you have. So basically right now instead of being charged for the 2.4k customers I am charged for full 6k which is $75 a month! Is it just me or does anyone else this that it's quite unfair to count those free downloads? If I knew about this I would've just uploaded the free 15 sample pack on another website and let people download from there.
It's not the end of the world, as I easily make this money back every month, but I can see how this could be an issue for those smaller sellers who don't release many products on regular basis. Like I said previously this post is not to call out Gumroad, as it's a great platform, but I feel this could be done in a better way.
Replies
It is the same story with renting softwares, you never know if you will cover the expenses unless you are already working with clients on a daily basis and they actually pay.
Lately it's even been gaining enough traction that the regular foot-traffic sales from it have outpaced Gumroad for me.
They also allow you to give people Affiliate links, though I haven't messed with that. Basically if people direct others to your store front with the link, they get a small percent of the sales from that person's visit. It incentivises other people to help advertise for you.
Gumroad definitely has some problems.
A lot of people don't know this, but many things on Gumroad literally cannot be found by customers, because nothing will appear through anything except a direct link provided by the seller until it gets at least one sale, which is insane.
If someone does follow a direct link to one of your items, they can't go from there to your main store front or any of your other items, even if they want to.
The searching just sucks in general, making it hard to find stuff without being directly linked.
Long story short, raise your prices, create more poducts and activley ask people to buy your stuff if you think it has actual value.
Too many people are pricing their tutorials at 5 bucks when they shouldnve charging atleast 30. Dont find ways to scrimp and cut costs, focus on creating more value for people and making more money.