Alternatives For Selling Digital Products?

Your post says you know about Gumroad. Another resource is TradeBit.com - both can extend your reach for sales of digital goods.

You don't request payments from your accounts at either place. GumRoad pays every two weeks and TradeBit pays weekly for sales they accept through their system (on a delay).

That's where testing helps. Keep the listings that sell at least a few a year and don't renew ones that don't sell. It doesn't matter what a site charges. Nobody is happy paying fees Amazon and eBay charge but, when it comes down to making sales, they bring traffic to your stores. My better selling eBay store listings are in paid Google search results (paid by eBay, not me), as they use their expertise and buying power to bring traffic to my listings.

TradeBit may seem expensive, 25% to 50% of sales, but when part of that is used to bring traffic and pay affiliates (the way Amazon and eBay do with their fees), those are expenses you do not have to pay directly and affiliate programs you don't need to manage.

Both Gumroad and TradeBit are delayed payments. With digital goods, this is not important as there is no inventory to purchase and restock. For example, TradeBit is a three week delay. This means they deal with charge-backs, returns, bad credit cards, etc.to help store owners avoid dealing directly with those hassles when using PayPal or merchant accounts.

Hey Nathan,


Gumroad is an excellent option. They offer both PayPal and Direct Deposit to your bank account.

Just check out https://help.gumroad.com/11164-Payments/getting-paid to scan the various payment options offered.


Regards,
Chintan

Thanks to both of you for your help. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me this information.

Hi Nathan.

When I first had my account frozen by paypal it was a shock.

I'd launched a new site and in around 3 days we exceeded the $1000 limit that triggers a request for information about the account holder.

It is to do with money laundering.

Even if you use Gumroad and they pay into your paypal account if you exceed the $1000 PP will seek verification of who you are and whether you are a registered business.

Usually they want identification information including tax details and ownership details of the back account associated with the paypal account.

It is no biggie.

You send you info as requested and it took about 2-3 days to sort it out.

Since I've had $42K go through the account in one week...now that is well out of the ordinary for the regular transactions we do ( usually 7-8 per week) and no problems.

I would stick with Paypal because of the trust factor they have developed in the marketplace.

My business also uses Eway who are an Australian payment gateway.

Stats over the last 4 years or so are roughly 65% of my online customers use Eway and 30% use Paypal - other 5% do funds transfer.

I'm not sure whether the preference is due to the Eway option coming up first in the preferred payment options on my checkout pages or there is a true preference.

One of the common misconceptions we hear is people thinking they need to have a paypal account to pay via paypal.

That may skew my results toward the Eway option.

If you use Paypal ongoing just be prepared to provide identity information if you breach their $1000 trigger point.

Kind regards,

Ozi

I completely understand the OPs fear of having his PP account frozen for volume of sales. While I have never had it happen since roughly 75% of my income comes from promoting as an affiliate. I do launch products from time to time, mostly PLR & MRR product packages. I've never had a problem as I think the most sales I've done on the first day of a launch was around 40-50. This is not enough to trigger PP since I usually have anywhere from 25-50 transactions every day anyway from affiliate sales.

However, if you are a really successful product creator and you have launches that can result in 500+ sales on launch day alone, you definitely have reason to worry a little. I have several vendors whose products I consistently promote, and so I've become quite friendly with a few of them. I have discussed this topic before with some of them and they all agree that if you are about to do a launch that will result in an above average amount of sales into your account you must call PP at least 3 days before the launch and talk to a customer service rep and have them put a note on your account that explains that there will be a large numbers of sales on this date, etc.

I also understand that some of the really successful product creators who do a very large volume of sales even have their own dedicated account managers that they can talk to. This is ideal because having someone already in PP who knows that you are in fact who you claim to be greatly reduces the chances of your account being temporarily suspended.

If you anticipate a large number of sales coming in, or even just a very large single payment, I would advise you to call them and let you know. That 10-15 minute phone call could end up saving you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in missed sales.

I'm not sure about the $1000 in 3 days rule that another poster talked about. I have made over $1000 in 3 days in affiliate commissions many times and not had any issues with suspensions. Then again, maybe they look at it on an account by account basis. For instance, somebody that usually averages $50-$100 per day in sales all of a sudden starting to bring in $500-$1000 a day is bound to set off alarm bells.

I have a couple of suggestions in addition to Tradebit. I would also check out Payloadz and E-Junkie. They are quite good. I have used both in the past and in fact, the very first sale I ever made online was using E-Junkie.

I 2nd Gumroad. There's also Bitcoin, you could even offer a slight discount for those who pay in Bitcoin since them paying in Bitcoin allows you to access the money immediately, plus you never have to worry about funds being frozen by a 3rd party and fees are the lowest i've seen, we're talking pennies per transaction. Transactions are also final, no chargebacks.

There's also a decentralized marketplace being released soon called OpenBazaar that will allow you to sell physical and digital goods for no fee... https://openbazaar.org