by Robert van Alstyne
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- Thanks to innovative direct-sales Web platform Gumroad, content creators and consumers can now engage in online purchasing transactions at light speed.
- Doing away with the drudgery of digital storefronts, Gumroad provides a dead-simple sales platform for anyone with digital content that they want to monetize — e-books, albums, apps, whatever. Users who sign up for the service simply provide Gumroad with a brief description of their product and its price point and Gumroad transforms that information into a short and ready-to-share link.
- Any interested potential purchasers clicking on the link are taken directly to a minimalist Gumroad sales page, where they can complete their transaction in seconds using a credit card (no buyer profile account creation necessary).
- Gumroad takes a small percentage of each sale on a sliding scale based on the total number of monthly transactions completed by the seller, plus $0.30 per transaction to cover merchant costs.
WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS
- Gumroad opens up the door to truly frictionless purchasing in the social media sphere. It’s easy to envision the service setting off an explosion in instantaneous micro-transactions between digital content creators and consumers.
- The right pitch can easily turn passive social media “followers” into active content buyers. Just ask comedians Louis CK and Aziz Ansari.
RESOURCES
