How Much Money Can You Make Selling Ebooks on Gumroad?
I’ve been running side hustles for over 20 years and recently wrote a book about what worked for me. It’s called The Side Hustle & Passive Income Blueprint. The platform I chose to sell it on was Gumroad. That got me wondering how much money creators actually make selling on the platform.
In the online world, most businesses and side hustles are a kind of winner-takes-all game. You’re essentially competing against the whole world, so it’s all a few that make it to the top in any sector.
While reasearching, I came across this article that had a breakdown of how much income sellers earned in 2020. Note that this is income not profit. Fees from Gumroad, Stripe, and PayPal will take around 15-17% of that. There will also be other costs such as paying a designer to design both the ebook and a cover, and also marketing costs.
I wasn’t surprised to find out that very few earn the top amounts, while the vast majority share the scraps. This is Pareto Principle in action.
These figures are from 2020 when sellers generated a total income of $142 million.
8 people earned over $1 million on Gumroad in 2020
But I was pretty shocked to realize that some creators could earn this amount of money in a year. But these could be corporations with big marketing departments, so their expenses could also be high. But still, a cool $1 million in a year is something to apsire to.
But what about the rest?
Here’s a breakdown from the article.
8 creators made a minimum of $1,000,000 (0.01%)
179 creators made a minimum of $100,000 (0.23%)
1,853 creators made a minimum of $10,000 (2.42%)
7,945 creators made a minimum of $1,000 (10.39%)
20,591 creators made a minimum of $100 (26.92%)
45,917 creators made under $100 (60.03%)
There are a total of 76,493 creators listed above. There are probably others that made $0.
So, only around one creator out of every 9,500 gets to make $1 million.
The overwhelming majority (60%) make under $100 a year.
Does this put me off?
Not at all. In fact, it encourages me. I’m pretty suprised that there were only 76,493 creators making money in 2020. Of course, the figures will be different today, but they’re unlikely to be wildly different.
What I take from the above figures is that I’ll never make $1 million a year from Gumroad sales. Hell, I won’t even make $100,000 a year. I’m simply not that good, so there’s no point pretending.
But to make good money, you don’t need to be the best.
One out of every 40 people made above $10,000 a year. It’s these creators that I see as my real competition. I don’t know If I can emulate them, but I know it’s at least realistic. Many of my past side hustles have made over $10,000 a year, so I’m up for the challenge.
Around 1 in 8 made at least $1,000 a year. That’s only $83 a month. I’m already at that level, so I’m off to a decent start.
But I’d need to 10X my current sales to get to the next level. Game on.
I don’t see the bottom 60% as competiton at all. These are probably mostly people that uploaded a product because they thought sales would be easy but then gave up when they realized they needed to put in some work.
How can I get from $1,000 a year to $10,000 year?
There are only two ways to do this and I aim to do both.
Create more ebooks. Almost all my sales have come from my first ebook, The Side Hustle & Passive Income Blueprint. In theory, if I can create a total of 10 ebooks, I should earn 10 times the income. Not so easy in practice though. I’m fully aware of that.
Do more marketing. So far, sales have come from links in forums, Gumroad suggestions, and a couple in the last month from Google. I plan to add Instragram and Pinterest accounts to drive more traffic.
Both of these will take time, so I’m not expecting quick results. This might take me a year or two. Or even three or four. It’s entirely possible that I’ll give up and sell the business at some point in between. I almost sold it last month but decided not to.
My earnings to date
Between 19 Feb and today, I’ve made 227 sales and earned $880.66. This means I’m on target to reach $1,000 in a full year. That would put me in the top 13% of creators on the platform. I’m nothing special when it comes to creating ebooks, so if I can do it, anyone can.
Getting to $10,000 a year would put me in the top 3%. $10,000 a year isn’t anything fancy, but it’s certainly a nice side income that can become more passive over time.
My main book, The Side Hustle & Passive Income Blueprint, had 132 sales and earned $862.64.
My free book, 101 Side Hustle Facts That Will Blow Your Mind, had 95 downloads and made $18.02 from donations. I might delete this book because it’s just plain text. When anyone downloads it, they may mistakenly think that my paid books are also plain text. In fact, they’re quite beautifully designed.
My newest book, Unleash Your Potential: 366 Days of Motivational Quotes, has only just been published and doesn’t have any sales yet. This is the first time I’ve mentioned it anywhere. I might create a separate Substack newsletter for that book and just send out on quote a day.
Next up is probably an ecommerce book.
Do you have any products for sale on Gumroad or are you planning any? Let me know in the comments section below.
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