How to Go from $0 to $4000 on Gumroad
My First 6 Weeks on Gumroad
Table of Contents
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For as long as I can remember, I dreamt about earning an income while I slept. I would fantasize about waking up, checking my bank account, and seeing it grow overnight.
Over the past 5 years, I’ve tried countless methods of earning money online – from freelancing to OnlyFans affiliate marketing and everything in between.
I became obsessed with building online income streams. I got up before the sun. I worked late into the evenings.
This was not a get-rich-quick journey.
But, throughout this process, I built and tested the exact strategy that I am going to teach you – and I know it works.
My goal here is to help you sell Digital Products in record time. You don’t need to spend 5 years testing ideas – because today is your lucky day.
You are going to learn the exact strategy I used to earn my first $4000 on Gumroad in 5 weeks.
Sales: 257 | Views: 25,354 | Total: $4,920.44
Most importantly, my aim is to show you how you can earn YOUR FIRST $4000 on Gumroad. I will give you all the hacks you need to speed up your process.
This is a no bullshit, no fluff, step-by-step guide to making money on Gumroad.
My Rules for This Project
Before launching the product, I set myself rules. They are as follows:
- I cannot spend more than 10 hours creating the product.
- I cannot spend more than 1 hour a day marketing the product.
- It must cost me $0 to create.
- It has to earn $1000 in 30 days.
And guess what:
- It took me less than 7 hours to build the product.
- I spent less than 15 minutes a day marketing it.
- It cost $0 to create.
- I made $3669 in 30 days – very nice 😉 Borat voice
Sales: 179 | Views: 17,185 | Total: $3,669.59
$3669 in 30 days – (11th April ’23 – 11th May ’23)
I know you want to learn how to do this – so let me show you. Replicate my strategy below so that you can make serious money on Gumroad.
This FREE guide is broken into THREE sections:
- Idea
- Product Creation
- Marketing
You will learn how to go from an idea, to creating a product, and getting enough eyeballs on it until you get to $4000.
Oh, and you will learn how to receive emails like this from Gumroad 😉
Table of Contents
- Overview
- My Rules for This Project
- This FREE guide is broken into THREE sections
- Table of contents
1. Choose an IDEA that SELLS
- Reverse Engineer Your Process
- Choose a Niche
- Identify Pain Points to Target
2. Create a PRODUCT that SELLS
- Solve a Problem
- Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
- Keep it Simple, Stupid. The MVP Approach
- Ship. Quit. Learn.
3. How to Actually Make Money with MARKETING
- The Secret Sauce
- Where Does Your Niche Hang Out?
- Copywriting: Weaponizing Words
- Fear Sells
4. Time to Take ACTION
- It’s Your Turn
1. Choose an IDEA that SELLS
Reverse Engineer Your Process
Most people think that a successful business is created in a lightbulb moment. A brilliant idea that comes to you in the shower, or while you are walking down a busy street. Some incredible invention that comes out of nowhere and miraculously everyone in the world wants to become your customer.
This is wrong.
I do not want you to create some revolutionary product and then try to find an audience that wants to use it.
No. No. No. A million times no. That is a waste of time, energy, and money.
Because you have no f**king clue whether anyone would want to buy your stupid product or service to begin with.
Our goal here is sales. We want digital dollars flowing into our accounts, and fast.
Creating a product that nobody wants/needs/gives-a-rats-ass about will not help us achieve that.
So, we are going to flip the script.
Rather than coming up with an idea then trying to force product market fit – we are going to reverse engineer our strategy to ensure sales…
How, you ask?
Well, instead of going:
IDEA → PRODUCT CREATION → AUDIENCE
I want you to reverse engineer this process and go:
NICHE → PROBLEM → PRODUCT CREATION
*Don’t do this 🙁 | Do this instead 🙂 *
Steps to Reverse Engineering Your Ideas
At its most simple, this process is as follows:
- First, identify the niches and subcultures you belong to.
a. These are the things you are an expert in, or the people who you can truly help. - Find an intersection between the niches/subcultures you choose.
- Identify the Problem. Ask yourself – “What do these people need help with?”
- Once you know the problem you are solving, only then do you build a product that solves the problem for your niche.
- Market your product to your Niche.
- Sell and get paid.
This allows you to identify a viable market, get inside your customers brain, ship a product quickly, and keep it simple.
If it fails – you fail fast. If it succeeds, you scale fast.
Let’s look at each of this steps in more depth, so that you can copy this method and make money online.
Choose a Niche
“Riches Are In The Niches. The reason to commit to the niche is because of how much more you will make. Simply put, niching down will make you far more money.” – Alex Hormozi
In his book, 100m Offers, Hormozi hammers home the point that you need to choose a niche. If not – he threatens to Niche Slap You.
Why? Because, if you try to sell to everyone you sell to no one.
How to Choose a Niche
To start, choose subcultures and interests that you know well. Write a list down on paper of anything that you are interested in or know well.
There is literally 1000’s of things you could write here, so lets look at a few options that could make you money online now:
- Freelancing
- Brand Building
- Twitter Growth
- Copywriting
- Cold Calls/Emails
- Video Editing
- ChatGPT
- FB Ads
- Google Ads
- Web Development
- Graphic Design
- Midjourney
- Notion Templates
- SEO
- Scriptwriting
- Youtube Growth Hacks
- TikTok Marketing
- Instagram Growth
- Podcast Editing
- E-Book Creation
- App Development
- Linkedin Profile Optimization
Are you an expert in any of these things? Could you teach someone how to do it?
If you are still stuck for ideas, I suggest using the rule of 5.
The Rule Of 5
- A topic you consider yourself to be in the top 5% of the world.
- An activity you have been doing for 5 years.
Write down these two things, combine them and you will have created a niche that you are a superhero in.
When I started this process, I wrote down a long list of my interests and eliminated anything that wasn’t related to building a digital product around.
The Two Topics I Chose Were:
- Freelancing (I have been doing this for 5 years)
- ChatGPT (I’ve used this for multiple hours every day since Dec ’22 – Top 5%)
There are thousands of ChatGPT guides, and hundreds of thousands of resources about becoming a freelancer – not unique.
But by combining these two – I created a unique niche.
My Niche: Freelancers who use ChatGPT.
Next, I looked for pain points.
Identify Pain Points to Target
“If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses.” – Henry Ford
That’s why you do not ask your customers what they want. You ask a better question.
The question that Henry Ford asked was: “What is the problem with the horses and how do we fix it?”
In other words, what pain points does my niche have, and how do I solve it?
For Henry, the pain points was that traveling by horse was uncomfortable and slow.
For me, the pain points were that ChatGPT will steal Freelancers jobs, they also struggled to prompt it correctly, or make money using it. I knew that if freelancers don’t learn to use it correctly, they will take 5x as long to do their work, or be entirely replaced.
What Pain Points does your Unique Niche Face?
Now it’s your turn, write down 3 key Pain Points that your niche is facing:
Example
Let’s say you chose Youtube Growth and Video Editing as your two interests.
There are multiple pain points a potential customer in this niche faces, three of them might be:
- It takes too long to edit videos
- None of their videos go viral
- They do not know how to optimize their channel to get more traffic
Can you provide a simple solution to these problems?
Well, if you use the Rule of 5 I strongly believe you can.
Now that you have discovered their pain points, it’s time to create a product that solves these problems.
2. Create a PRODUCT that SELLS
Solve a Problem
Your product must be the morphine for your audience’s pain. It’s as simple as that.
Are they plagued by long hours editing videos? Offer them a streamlined solution to that problem.
Are they losing their minds over managing their social media? Hand them a guide that makes the process as easy as 1-2-3.
There are countless types of digital products you can create to solve their problems.
We’re talking eBooks, online courses, software, apps, Notion boards, hell even a well-crafted spreadsheet could do the trick.
Your mission is to pick the medium that best serves the solution you’re offering.
My solution to my audiences pain? A ChatGPT University Course for freelancers. This course helped them master ChatGPT and earn more money online.
Now, as I said, my rule for this was to spend less than 10 hours total making this product and for it to cost $0.
I wanted to fail fast, learn how to sell on Gumroad, and test. If it worked I would scale.
So how did I create a University Course in less than 10 hours? Well, that brings me to my next point.
My key piece of advice for this stage, especially if you are a beginner is…
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Hold on, don’t crucify me just yet. Hear me out.
There’s so much damn content out there, why not use it to your advantage?
As Austin Kleon says – “Steal like an artist.”
But here’s the kicker: you gotta make it your own. Nobody likes a cheap knock-off.
Add your own touch, your personal insights, your story of how you achieved something, and suddenly you’ve got something unique.
Before you even think of spending months building some magnum opus of a course or ebook, create something simpler.
Analyze what’s working, then build on that.
How I Created my Product
It’s no secret that people on Twitter were using ChatGPT for growth hacking. Free ChatGPT giveaways were as popular as STDs in a university town.
So I got every one I could get my hands on, filtered out the shit, and made something better. And instead of posting free giveaways, I put a price tag on it.
I chose Notion as the platform I would use to build it, and compiled each prompt into what I called the ultimate ChatGPT University Course.
Like I said – don’t reinvent the wheel…
Keep it Simple, Stupid. The MVP Approach
You remember the saying “Keep It Simple, Stupid?”
Well, KISS your big ideas goodbye and focus on creating the Minimal Viable Product (MVP).
There’s no point breaking your back for months building some revolutionary app or coding some snazzy tool if you haven’t tested the waters yet.
So, build the bare-bones version, throw it out there and see if it floats.
Ship. Quit. Learn.
Paul Millerd, the author of The Pathless Path, is a big believer in this.
His motto is Ship. Quit. Learn.
He says that if you want to start something new:
- Just try something for 30 days.
- Ship something as fast as you can (in this case – a product)
- Spend those 30 days learning everything possible, and test the hell out of it.
- Then quit.
We’re not trying to build the next Google or Facebook here; our aim to add $4000 to your account.
Zach Pogrob also has a term for this ‘SpeedRunning’ – I’ll let him explain:
“Shoutout to everyone speedrunning a six month project in six hours. ‘Normal’ pace is slow. Speedrun it.”
Remember: it’s not about building the most extravagant product. It’s about building a product that sells, one that your customers will love, and that will solve their problems. And doing it FAST.
Keep it simple, keep it useful, and you’ll be making your first $4000 on Gumroad in no time.
But, not without our final step… Marketing.
3. How to Actually Make Money with MARKETING
The Secret Sauce
Alright, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.
How do you actually make any fucking money on Gumroad?
Well, you’ve been so damn patient, it’s time I give you my secret sauce.
Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of marketing your product. This section is where we go from “hey, nice idea” to “shut up and take my money.”
You’ve got your product – your magic bullet to someone’s pain point. But what’s next?
Now you’ve got to sell it.
And I don’t mean upload it on Gumroad, sit back and hope for the best. Fuck no. That’s a quick way to kill a dream, and I’m not about that life.
So let’s talk about the big question: how do we actually turn this thing into cold hard cash?
Well, we do that in 3 easy steps:
- Where does your niche hang out?
- Copywriting
- Fear
This is how we make a buck. Or $4000 of them.
Where Does Your Niche Hang Out?
Nothing hurts more than spending months creating a product, putting it online, and not earning a single dollar.
I’m going to drop a truth bomb here: your niche won’t come find you, you’ve got to find them.
And finding them means getting to grips with where they like to hang out, digitally speaking.
Nothing drains your motivation more than spending months on a product, only to launch it to the sound of digital crickets, or the echoes of an empty bank account.
Before we dive into the tactics, let’s do a quick recap of how we got here. We’ve pinpointed our niche, figured out their pain points, and created a solution to soothe that pain.
The million-dollar question now is, “where are the people who will throw their hard-earned cash at us?”
Your job is to figure out where your potential customers are lurking. This involves a bit of digital detective work, but trust me, it’s worth it.
Here are a few places you might find your niche hanging out, and how to make your presence felt:
- Social Media: Depending on your niche, different platforms will be more effective. Instagram is great for visually oriented niches, while Twitter is where the conversations are happening. Linkedin, on the other hand, is a gold mine for anything business-related.
- Forums and Message Boards: These are a bit old school, but they’re still a gold mine of niche communities. Websites like Reddit or Quora host communities around just about every topic you can think of. If you’re selling a productivity app, you might find your niche hanging out in the r/productivity subreddit, or answering questions on Quora about time management.
- Online Marketplaces: If your product relates to a service, sites like Upwork, Fiverr or Freelancer.com are great places to find your niche.
- Blogs and YouTube Channels: These platforms are full of people looking for solutions. If your product is an eBook on vegan cooking, look for popular vegan cooking blogs and YouTube channels. Leave thoughtful comments, engage with the community, and subtly drop hints about your product.
- Online Courses and Webinars: Sites like Udemy, Coursera, and Skillshare are full of people looking to learn. If your product complements an existing course (like a tool for better note-taking), this could be a great place to find your niche.
- Paid Ads: If you would prefer to let the algorithms find your customers for you – you can always take advantage of paid advertising. Google, Twitter, Linkedin, Insta, Youtube, and Facebook all offer this. If you have cash to spend, this could be the best method for you. But I urge you to choose one platform first. Then test, test, test. Once you’ve perfected your hook, messaging, and offer, then you can look to expand to new platforms.
Now, many of these options are time consuming. You want a way to bring your target market to you, rather than you going out and finding them.
Ads are a great way to do this – but that would break my rule of spending money to get sales on Gumroad. So, for this challenge, I ruled paid ads out.
If you have a personal brand already – great. Leverage them.
If not, that’s okay too. You just have to be more creative.
And if you do get creative – you will receive emails like this, every Monday Morning:
- It’s pay day! $1,018.79 NZD has been deposited in your account for sales up until April 21, 2023.
- It’s pay day! $811.69 NZD has been deposited in your account for sales up until April 28, 2023.
- It’s pay day! $780.60 NZD has been deposited in your account for sales up until May 6, 2023.
- It’s pay day! $679.45 NZD has been deposited in your account for sales up until May 12, 2023.
How I Marketed my Product
I decided to do it without leveraging my brand – ie faceless.
I am still building my personal brand and my followers were not in my target market for this project.
But, I thought long and hard about where my target market hangs out. If you remember, my target market was freelancers looking to level up with ChatGPT.
So where do you think Freelancers hang out online?
They’re browsing jobs on LinkedIn and Upwork. And, they are waiting for buyer requests on Fiverr.
That’s where I set my traps, and that’s where I started to see the cash flow in.
I posted listings on these sites, all it said was they must have access to ChatGPT university. It took me 15 minutes per day to post on Upwork, Linkedin Job Recruiter, and Fiverr.
On average I earned $114 over the last 5 weeks. My best day paid me $241 USD.
Oh, and I would receive about 700 product views – EVERY DAY.
Sure, it’s not the most moral way of marketing. But how much of marketing is?
I may or may not have been breaching the terms and conditions of these sites.
But, it was a creative way for me to get in front of my audience.
Rules are made to broken.
Plus, I knew I was adding value to the lives of my customers, I just had to make them aware of the value I was adding. So I got creative and bent the rules a little.
Why?
Because, if you do exactly the same thing as everyone else, you will get the same results, and sadly for 80% of creators on Gumroad – that means $0 in your account.
Below are the different adverts I used to get eyeballs on my product.
Copywriting: Weaponizing Words
You’ve got to get the word out, and you’ve got to do it right. This is where copywriting steps in.
It’s no secret that copywriting is the most powerful weapon in the digital sales world. Everyone who learns copywriting does it for one reason – to sell products (or themselves) and make money.
To put it simply, you need to master the art of copywriting because it’s the key to opening wallets.
So, how do we do it?
Well, copywriting is all about playing on the 8 basic human needs/desires.
I will lay out the 8 desires you can target, and an example of an industry or brand that targets these to perfection.
Human beings are biologically programmed with the following eight desires:
- Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension. (Travel)
- Enjoyment of food and beverages. (McDonalds, etc)
- Freedom from fear, pain, and danger. (Guns – ‘Merica)
- Sexual companionship. (Tinder/OnlyFans)
- Comfortable living conditions. (Real Estate)
- To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses. (Nike, Gucci, Louis Vuitton)
- Care and protection of loved ones. (Insurance)
- Social approval. (Every Make-Up Brand)
If you want to make money online, target these desires. Highlight your audience’s pain, then give them the solution.
How I used Copywriting Hacks to Make $4000 on Gumroad
In my example of my marketing, I wanted to make people aware that there is demand for Freelancers who are experts in ChatGPT – see Desire 6.
To be superior, winning, and keeping up, they needed to have access to ChatGPT university. So, they search for my product online, find my product, and then they are struck by fear.
Wait… Fear? Why?
Because Fear is another powerful motivator in sales – in fact it might be the most powerful.
Which leads me to my final point…
Fear Sells
It motivates. It urges. It moves people to action. Fear drives people to spend money.
Whether it’s selling a loaf of bread, which hardly seems scary (until you show them studies reporting that refined white flour may cause cancer), or selling toothpaste (while painting a picture of doom and gloom about the insidious nature of gum disease and rotten teeth).
Properly constructed, fear can move people to spend.
But why does it work?
In a word: stress. Fear causes stress. And stress causes the desire to do something.
People are afraid of missing a big sale because it causes the stress of loss.
People are afraid of not getting the latest iPhone because they won’t be ‘cool’.
People are afraid of missing out on the new Supreme t-shirt because there are only a limited amount.
How did I play on Fear to earn $4000 on Gumroad?
By perfectly crafting my description. By playing on their fear of being an unpaid freelancer, providing the solution, then dropping a packaged offer.
Look:
ChatGPT University
“ChatGPT is going to steal your job and leave you broke if you do not learn to master it.” — FEAR
“This University will give you the Cheat Codes for Hacking ChatGPT and making it work for you.”
- 1000+ Tested Prompts
- Video Tutorials
- Advanced AI Techniques to BOOST Your Earnings
“Are you ready to Master ChatGPT? Introducing the ChatGPT University, the most comprehensive and effective ChatGPT course for freelancers on the market. With our expert guidance, you learn everything you need to know to succeed as a ChatGPT Expert:
- The Cheat Codes of ChatGPT
- Advanced AI Techniques to BOOST Your Earnings
- 1000+ of the Best ChatGPT Prompts
- Countless Hours of Expert Videos For All Industries
- Much, Much More”
All freelancers were afraid their job would be replaced by AI, especially freelancers who wrote content – hence why I targeted them in the initial marketing.
I emphasized this in the copywriting and made sure they could feel it. They would be able to picture themselves being replaced by ChatGPT in their minds eye. This was my goal.
Because once I did that, I offered them the solution – Mastering ChatGPT.
Then, I packaged together all of the benefits that come with this solution.
What other methods of Fear did I use?
- Scarcity – On Gumroad you can set limited numbers of downloads. This makes something instantly more valuable because people are afraid of missing out. So, I made it clear that there were only 500 spots available in my ChatGPT university. I limited sales to 500, and caused FOMO.
- Limited Time Offer – People are afraid of losing a good sale. So, you offer them an irresistible discount. Would someone pay $1099 for this product? No. But I can instill fear into my customers by highlighting that this sale is only available for 24 hours. This causes them to take action NOW. Rather than waiting to think about it.
4. Time to Take ACTION
It’s Your Turn
You now have all the necessary tools at your disposal to make your first $4000 on Gumroad.
It might seem daunting, but remember, the hardest part is getting started.
Everything I’ve laid out here – identifying your niche, creating a product that solves a problem, using a blend of copywriting and effective marketing strategies – these are all part of a tried and tested blueprint to your success.
And the best part? You can do all this without spending a dime.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to dive headfirst into building a digital product making extra cash.
Remember, this process doesn’t have to be overly complex or time-consuming.
The aim here is to fail fast and learn.
You’re not building the next Google or Facebook.
Your goal is to generate a solid income by solving the problems of a specific group of people.
The journey might be a bit intimidating at first, but you’re not alone.
Everyone starts from somewhere. The beauty of the digital product space is that it’s full of supportive communities, all willing to help you out.
But to get started, you must take the first step.
If you ever need a word of advice, or extra suggestions – hit me up on Twitter.
Now, before you go, close your eyes for a second.
Imagine how it will feel when you receive that first Gumroad notification, “You made a sale”.
Picture the validation and the confidence that will bring.
Visualize that moment, and then turn it into a reality.
Whether you’re a seasoned creator looking to diversify your income or a newcomer to the digital product world, there is enormous amount of opportunity ripe for the taking.
Get out there and start solving problems. Steal like an artist and don’t reinvent the wheel.
Be daring, be bold, and remember, it’s all about adding value.
You now hold the roadmap to making your first $4000 on Gumroad.
All that’s left is for you to take the plunge.
So, I’m handing over the reins. It’s your turn now.
Remember, the only thing standing between you and your first $4000 on Gumroad is…
