Is moving from Gumroad a smart idea?
We've probably all seen lots of people complain about price increase that Gumroad is doing.
First off, I don't really have a dog in this fight. I just give stuff away on Gumroad so this doesn't affect me at all.
Many of the big creators are saying going from 2.9% to 10% is too much. But really, does that affect you? For the big creators, yea it's a pain. But if you look at what they're saying they're moving to, it's not to a competitor it's to a completely different setup where they take more control over everything. Why? They're outgrowing Gumroad. Worrying about people who are going to leave anyways doesn't make sense.
But for many the price increase is minor and basically 10s or 100s of dollars a month.
The cost of moving is low, right? You just copy and paste and set up a new page on one of the competitors who are competing on costs. (I'm sure we've all heard how that goes.) But is that really what the cost is? I don't think it is.
All your marketing was linked to the gumroad page. That means you need to update all those links. But do you honestly know and control where those links are? I don't think you will. There will be people mentioning it in Reddit comments, reddit posts, IH comments, Hacker News comments, slack messages where it was recommended, discord, etc. where people will go through their logs or whatever to find that recommended product. Changing to a competitor is probably going to result in lost sales if you've got any decent traction in social media.
I think people will lose sales all in attempt to save a few bucks and in the process cost themselves more in lost sales.
Say you go to Shopify or something else where you have to pay the taxes. Can you afford to do that? Are you going to be able to handle chargebacks? Are you going to be able to handle all the legal stuff? Are you prepared for the mega-fines if you don't do them correctly?
I think people will spend more time and money on this stuff than they will realise.
I get it, price raises suck. But as they come this isn't the worse one ever.
But it does not have to be full on lift and shift. Create a new setup on a competing product, start using it as your main. Leave gumroad alive for those trailing sales, and long lost links. When those stop having traction, only then close down your gumroad account
Also maybe just wait a few weeks... there's a lot of push back, and if Gumroad change their mind you might have done a lot of work for nothing.
From what has came out about their finances they can't afford to not up their rates. They're taking 20% paycuts. While their revenue numbers were all up. Because most of their revenue went to Stripe. There is an extremely big chance that Gumroad was losing money on its big earners.
Stripe's unproportioned fees are the real story here. Never ceases to amaze me how a payment infrastructure company -- arguably akin to a utility company -- gets away with skimming that much margin atop half the transactions of the internet.
I'm pretty sure Stripe is losing money too. They're priced lower than most Payment Providers to snatch up market share. They is a lot of talk about when will Stripe increase their prices.
If you're looking for alternatives, you don't need to stick around e.g. Shopify and handle taxes, chargebacks, and compliance all by yourself.
Consider PayPro Global, Merchant of Record.
Honestly, I understand why you and others are trying to snap up customers from this mess. But really these customers are showing they'll leave the second you up your prices which Gumroad has shown with their finances is actually required.