Struggling with strategy
Hi all,
I'm currently running a no-code page builder (https://www.wrappinggum.com) where you can take any of your Gumroad products and instead of the default sales page that Gumroad offers, create an awesome-looking page that automatically integrates the Gumroad checkout, email subscriber list, etc.
Why should people choose my platform over other no-code builders out there:
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The reason for the product is to allow non-technical folks, who might not know how to integrate Gumroad into a generic no-code page builder to abstract all the technical details and allow them to link their gumroad product with a nice-looking page within a few clicks.
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If you have multiple products, even if you know how to integrate your other builders like Wix, this helps to streamline your process and simply make it a more dedicated process for your Gumroad products to create nice looking page
Current stats
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Launched the product on the first of November 2022
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I've gotten 2-lifetime membership purchases. One for 50$ when the product was just a landing page and one for 90$ when we went live on Product Hunt
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The current conversion rate for creating an account is about 4-5%
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Haven't had a single subscriber yet, except for those two-lifetime purchases
The problem
My ultimate plan is to ultimately offer my own all-in-one solution for selling your products without Gumroad. Instead of heading there straight in, I wanted to learn a bit about what people are looking for and acquire an audience of digital sellers.
That's why I went with a Gumroad solution first. It is easier to target this specific niche of users, learn about their problems and slowly offer a better solution while simultaneously building a user base of digital sellers.
However, right now I'm at a crossroads.
I'm not exactly sure how to play out my positioning, marketing and product development.
Right now my landing page and feature development is all about Gumroad and integrating with it.
But once I will want to start offering my own payment solutions, I fear that I might have gone too deep into the Gumroad niche and it will be harder to go in the direction that I want to go.
Also, the current stats aren't too great to instil confidence that the current Gumroad approach is going to work and I'm sort of tempted to try out the "all in one" solution just to see if users respond to that one better.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter and how would you approach this.
Thank you!
Hey Markuss! I work as a marketer and here's an idea:
Use your platform (https://www.wrappinggum.com/) as bait.
I've done this plenty, for example, setting up a free self-diagnostic tool where users can evaluate simpler health issues such as "Do I have Sciatica?". I did this with a Physio Therapist and the results were quite amazing. Got A LOT of good leads.
In your case, it would mean offering WrappingGum for free as part of your marketing strategy (a.k.a. Content Marketing). You'll get an audience (if people like it), you'll learn, and from there you can build your all-in-one-Gumroad-Competitor and market it to the people who are using WrappingGum.
Judging from the likes you have for this post, one might assume the work you've done, the ideas you have and the effort you've put into the post are appreciated.
That in mind, as I've been following your progress a little, i found myself wanting to help, but not sure how. I mention this, just in case you you don't get a lot of response, this might be a factor.
Anyway for what it's worth (maybe not much) I would say this...
"I wanted to learn a bit about what people are looking for"
Seems like a very good strategy.
This...
"I'm sort of tempted to try out the "all in one" solution just to see if users respond to that one better".
... sounds like a risker proposition, certainly if you're talking about building something first.
So, if it was me, i'd be asking myself (or maybe even this community)...
"How can I learn more about what the target audience's problems & issues are without building something first".
Thanks for the reply!
I get that the answer to my question is most likely an "it depends" and no one will be able to tell me the correct way to do it.
Ultimately I decided to keep going the Gumroad route and continue iterating the page builder to learn more about the needs of online sellers and continue learning how to get those users to my product.
In the meantime, a more level-headed strategy for the "all-in-one" shop question seems to be to validate it like a completely new project, get some feedback and go from there.
Decided not to worry about the product positioning being too niche.
If there seems to be some traction for the "all-in-one" approach I'll think about it when I cross that bridge. As they say, that would be a "good problem to have"
I totally agree with sticking with the Gumroad niche.
Spending your time building the "all in one" solution before having many more paying customers for the current product doesn't seem efficient.
Curious how you're driving traffic to your landing page? 4 -5% is actually quite good, perhaps you just need more scale.
great
Hey Markuss.. as digital marketer I can help you out a little in this, Btw it is a cool product.
Bring in your product to the marketplace, launched in Product hunt is good choice though. Still there are marketplace who takes your product to the level and get it known to many entrepreneurs. Who are with B2B community.
You can go in with platform like
Personally, I've never heard of Gumroad. Even though, I'm sure it's a big thing to some people.
I think you perhaps need to be a bit more broad, to appeal to folks like myself who don't know anything about Gumroad. Sell me the end result. What's the point of Gumroad? To sell stuff online I presume? But isn't that ClickBank, isn't that Amazon, isn't that Fiverr etc. There's loads of online selling platforms. So sell me on how you'll help me sell more stuff. Whether it's on Gumroad or on Craigslist or Ebay for all I care. Don't be dogmatic. Be pragmatic. Selling isn't about this or that platform. It's a way of life. It's an ethos. There's no one channel. Telephone sales are still a massive thing. Social media. PPC ads. Influencers. In person door to door sales has made, many many, millionaires believe it or not! And continues to this very day. Sell me in more ways, on more channels, on a bigger dream, for a bigger result.
Sorry if that wasn't the most cohesive thoughts you've heard on this, but hopefully it helped! Cool project by the way, you're clearly very creative and smart to put something like this together.
Go on gumroad search, reach out as many top performing products/accounts as you can (You can also just use twitter search to find people selling gumroad products)
In your outreach message, create a personalized landing page for them (a simple demo with your tool) and show it to them.
Give them a simple path to start using the product. If you design a good enough site with a good enough message then you can definitely convert a decent amount of people.
You can also try a recurring affiliate program, get someone with a good following in your niche to promote your product for a % of revenue of a paid subscriber. Since your pricing is on the low end you may have to be creative to incentivize people to join the program.
Your main product is no-code platform. you just target "Gumroad" users as your niche target customer.
So I think you are right as you shouldn't limit payment solution as your potential users since you ARE selling a no-code platform.
You probably should focus on your no-code platform. and specifically build some integration/migration tool for Gumroad users to adopt your platform. This would be categorized as business development and not your main product
They way I'd go about it to get users flowing in would be by making videos on Youtube on "How to make $X,XX Xper day on Gumroad" (must be legit)
In the video tutorial instruct people to use your software to get the perfect landing page that will convert like crazy.
You can do it yourself or maybe pay an online money making youtuber to try this method out and make a video about it.
Nevertheless, keep on milking the "gumroad" niche until you have enough clients to go your own separate path.
Another way is to create an affiliate program, pay good commission and find affiliates that will promote your software, this way it doesn't matter which way you go.
Good luck!
You just started 2 weeks ago and you are building without an audience, so it is not that bad to not to have any customer yet. As you have experienced this is a hard game, so I would not leave the the gumroad niche, because gumroad has too many features to copy. I would rather add more platform integrations later.
Sounds like you should get a few opinions and probably share your screen with others.
Here is an indie hacker video call room for that https://vibehut.io/rooms/6304c25f8ac27200164bd65f
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