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Need Help: How do you send product updates to your customers on Gumroad

Hi makers,

For those who are selling eBooks, files, courses etc on Gumroad, how do you manage updates. Gumroad doesn't force the buyer to login, so many of them are using fake emails even for purchasing a product, how do you deal with that.

Is there a good solution for this? auth system + file management for the buyers?

  1. 5

    I made over 9,000 sales on Gumroad and released updates several times. I haven’t found this to be a problem. I simply update the files, and send everyone an email. The vast majority of my customers have Gumroad accounts, and the rest tend to have valid emails. When occasionally someone mistypes their email, they tend to let me know, and I fix it for them.

  2. 2

    If you are selling software products on Gumroad, you might be interested in ninkik (https://ninkik.com/). We are currently building ninkik as it solves our very own problem: continuosly distributing updates of our software products.

    ninkik connects marketplaces like Gumroad and WooCommerce with your CI/CD pipeline. File management is done through AWS S3, authentication is handled through the email Gumroad sends after a purchase (see https://docs.ninkik.com/selling-software/using-gumroad).

    As ninkik is primarily focused for software developers, there are a few unique features:

    • Sophisticated release management (incl. management of release trains or release channels)
    • Customers can be assigned to release channels, e.g. higher paid tiers can access Beta versions
    • Integration of your AWS environment
    • Support for selling Docker images via Gumroad or WooCommerce
    • Support for subscription handling, e.g. access only updates when a valid Gumroad subscription is available (see https://docs.ninkik.com/downloading-software/subscription-policies)
    • Automatically notify your Gumroad/WooCommerce customers after a new release has been built

    Let me know if you have questions or want to talk about!

  3. 2

    I am doing update in 2 ways for different projects respectively. @hamza__nouali

    I use Instagram for one of my projects and I usually put up stories and new post there. That's how I convert followers to customers.

    The other project: VenturesList - I've connected Gumroad and EmailOctopus, hence updates will be distributed via EmailOctopus, customers only.

  4. 2

    I personally use the posts feature (https://help.gumroad.com/article/169-how-to-send-an-update) and send a post to everyone who has bought the product. For example, when I added an audiobook version for free for everyone who had bought my book, I wrote a post which got emailed to everyone who had purchased the book.

    If someone uses a fake email, I assume that means they don't want to hear from me and have some alternate method of checking to make sure they are using an up-to-date version of the product. Fortunately, posts stick around on a timeline on Gumroad, and I also tweet every update to the book, so if someone is paying attention anywhere they will know, and if they aren't, then they must be okay with whatever version they are currently using.

  5. 2

    When it comes to this sort of thing, I think you primarily have 2 options.

    The first option, like others have mentioned, is simply take your customer email list and send the update out that way. I typically follow this method as it's the easiest one. One consideration here is GDPR. I believe technically you can follow up with an email if the sole purpose is to provide them with an updated version (and not try to upsell or anything like that). I typically use Paddle to sell digital products and they actually have a separate email list that contains only the emails of those who have consented to receiving updates / email communcations.

    The second option, and probably the most effect (but most work as well), is to use the webhooks built into the platform (or licensing features). This method requires you to build out a bit of a dashboard, but the way it works typically is when a sale completes on Gumroad, you get sent (via a webhook) the details of the sale such as the generated license. Based on this, you can send them info to create an account and sign into your dashboard where they can always download the most up-to-date version. This method is used among some of the bigger Gumroad sellers from what I can tell, such as Steve Schoger and Adam Wathan with their Refactoring UI and TailwindUI.

    Hope that helps a bit!

  6. 2

    I had the same issue Hamza. I wasn't able, but I sent the update through my personal email.

  7. 2

    a) Can you somehow incentive people to enter their email, like mentioning they'll receive lifetime updates of the book to their email address.

    b) Use a pre-landing page where you'll validate that email (using a tool like NeverBounce) before sending them to the Gumroad page

    These are 2 things that come to mind, not sure how do you integrate them with Gumroad.

  8. 2

    I have an ebook on Gumroad but haven't sold any so far.

    I do plan to update the book. In fact, I explicitly mention it's a work in-progress and I'm publishing it with a work-in progress process.

    The only thing I can do for such customers is to make more clear they can get updates, and provide contact info to get in touch with me in case the lose access to the content.

    1. 1

      This is exactly what we are doing, but it's not a good practice and you can't handle it once the customer base starts growing.

      1. 1

        I've checked and it looks like Gumroad won't let you make a purchase unless you provide an email address. If so, it should be possible to email from Gumroad all customers who purchased a specific product whenever a new version is available.

        1. 1

          That's true and it works for 50% of our customers, the other 50% have used fake email.
          Gumroad requires email but doesn't require confirmation.

          1. 1

            Well, I guess there's not much else we or Gumroad can do.

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