A Practical Guide To

Launching
Digital Products

A comprehensive guide to
getting your first online sale
Table of Contents

1. Hello! I’m Kevin 👋🏻

2. Create Your Digital Product

3. Create Your Gumroad Store

4. Prepare For Your Product Listing

5. List Your Product On Gumroad

6. Create Your Landing Page

7. Promote On Social Media

8. Ending Thoughts
Hello! I’m Kevin

I created my Twitter account in January 2023 and made my first sale ($19)
even before my Twitter account had crossed 100 followers.
First things first : Everything contained in this guide can be found on the
internet if you go looking for them. But if you prefer to get all the curated
content given to you on a silver platter that you can easily consume in 10
minutes, keep reading! Maximum value in minimum time.

This guide is going to address your pain points and questions as a novice
Gumroad seller (I’m sure you have come across plenty of other creators
and wondered how they did this or made that) and guide you through the
complete process of listing your first product the right way to completing
your first sale.

This eBook is meant to be really straight-forward, which means I’ll cut

through all the fluff and go straight to the point.

Sometimes, I’d skip past the really obvious stuff and leave you to try them
out. If there is something totally new to you, perform a quick Google search
to get up to speed before continuing.

For a start, I am going to assume that you want to sell digital products on
Gumroad and this is your first time doing so.

In the following chapters, I will detail exactly what I did to list my first
digital product and eventually clinch my first sale.

There is no magic bullet or secret growth hack in here. However,

completing the tasks mentioned will greatly increase your chances of
landing a sale just like how it did for myself.
Create Your Digital Product

People sell all kinds of digital products online. If you can digitise it, you can
sell it.

Every second, thousands of transactions happen for various products

including music, courses, eBooks (such as the one you are currently
reading) and Notion templates.

I won’t elaborate on this because generating ideas for digital products

would be its very own eBook, but the very first step is to create your digital
product and make sure to test it so that it is ready for launch.

In my case, I sell both eBooks and Notion templates in my online store.

Create Your Gumroad Store

Gumroad is an online platform that allows creators to sell digital products

directly to their audience.

Start first by creating your Gumroad account.

It is a good idea to create your Gumroad online store early because it gives
you the opportunity to test out the platform before it starts getting any
significant traffic.

Mistakes made have negligible consequences at this point.

Prepare For Your Product Listing

Much of the value of this guide is going to be inside this chapter, because
the preparation of a product listing requires so many different tools that I
will cover in this section - and this is what you are interested in.

I will touch on all the important steps required, but you’re going to need to
play around with the tools to get familiarised with them.

Our goal is to create the following items for our product listing :

● Full page screenshot that showcases our digital product

● Gumroad thumbnail (square)
● Gumroad cover (wide)
How To Take A Full Page Screenshot Of Your
Digital Product
Tool Used : GoFullPage

Advantage : Fast and simple. Just one click to capture a full webpage.

A full page screenshot is an excellent way of showcasing your product by

providing a bird’s eye view of the product features at one glance. This is
especially important when your core features e.g. dashboard is lengthy by
nature.

Here’s an example. Ever wondered how influencers such as Easlo create

professional looking full page screenshots of his digital product like the
one you see in his tweet below? You can easily do the same and start
sharing on your social media too.
Simply install the GoFullPage browser extension and click on it (the first
icon on the left that you see below) when you’re ready to perform the
screenshot capture.
After the capture is done, click on the Download Image (PNG) button on
the menu bar at the top.

I will be using the sample screenshot below of my Finance Navigator

template as the teaching material.

It already looks decent for a start, but it could do with a little bit of clean up
with image editing which I would show you how to do next.
How To Perform Simple Image Editing To Clean
Up Your Screenshot
Tool Used : Photopea

Advantage : Free and powerful.

The screenshot looks OK but I would really like to remove all the mess at
the sides e.g. Notion menu button, the ‘New’ button, the ‘Question Mark’
and the scrollbars etc.

The background colour is white so that’s easy for me. You can always use
the Eyedropper icon to pick the exact colour to use for the brush specific to
your product.

The Eyedropper helps you to select any colour that exists in your image.

Next, I’d use the Brush tool to paint over and erase all the distractions to
keep the screenshot clean. Adjust the Brush size (default 15px) bigger to
help you erase faster.
Pro-tip : Lock your page (the ‘New’ button would disappear) before
performing the screenshot to reduce the amount of cleaning up that you
need to do.

Next, use Crop to remove the excess white space at the sides.
When we’re satisfied with our final screenshot, save a high-quality version
of it.

File > Export As > PNG

Make sure to select the highest image quality 100% to avoid blurry images.
How To Create Drop Shadow Effect
Plus Rounded Corners With Figma
Tool Used : Figma

Advantage : Free and powerful.

Notice how Easlo’s screenshot has sort of like a drop shadow effect that
makes it pop when you look at it? In addition, pay attention to the rounded
corners that make the screenshot look better unlike ours.

When both effects are combined, it makes the screenshot look a lot more
professional than a simple copy-and-paste : I’m sure you have done that
before.

To get this effect, go to Figma (sign up for an account if you haven’t) and
select ‘New Design File’.

Basic navigation :

● Hold Shift + Scroll Wheel - Scroll Left/Right

● Hold Ctrl : Scroll Wheel - Zoom In/Out

Then, click on ‘Frame’ and to keep it easy, let’s select ‘Desktop’ on the right
side. Think of it as the canvas that we work on, and we can always adjust
the size whenever we want.

Paste the previous screenshot PNG file that we have created with
Photopea into Figma.
In my case, I adjusted the ‘Desktop’ frame size to be width 1500px (see
Frame: W) and height 2500px (see Frame: H) to be slightly bigger than my
full page screenshot.

You don’t need to do this but I’ve changed the frame background colour
(see Fill) to yellow so that you can see better in this guide.

Feel free to drag the images on top of one another. When they line up
perfectly centred, the red lines would appear to indicate that to you. That’s
how we get perfect alignment all the time!

Now, click on the screenshot image that we have and click on the + beside
Effects.

Select Drop shadow and within the settings, you can input or follow
something like what you see below.
I like to think of X and Y kind of where the drop shadow originates from in
terms of x (left/right)and y (up/down) coordinates.

Tweak the Blur, Spread Opacity to get your desired effects. Optimal
settings would depend on your image size as well.

Let’s not forget the rounded corners that we wanted too.

In the image above, you see the ‘50’ beside the L-shape icon which looks
like a rounded corner. That’s exactly what it is : the degree of rounding that
we wish to have. Adjust to your liking.

Finally, I’m going to change the background colour back to white and
export it so that you can see the final output below.

Make sure that :

● Make sure your Desktop frame is selected (blue outline).

● Your screenshot is nested inside the Desktop frame (refer to below
screenshot). Simply click-hold-drag-drop it into the Desktop frame.
Notice it looks different now from the earlier?
● Click on the + beside Export.
If you are exporting for a white background, having the desktop frame
background as the same colour (white) would make it look clean and
seamless. However, if you’re exporting for use in Gumroad Thumbnail or
Cover, consider using a slightly greyish Fill e.g. #FCFCFC to create a little
contrast versus the white background of your template.
Now we have a high quality full page screenshot that resembles what
Easlo made :

● Clean (we removed all the unused buttons etc)

● Rounded corners
● Drop shadow effect
How To Make A Gumroad Thumbnail
Tool Used : Figma

Advantage : Free and powerful.

Gumroad Thumbnail Dimension : 1280px by 1280px (1:1 ratio)

Before we start, know that Gumroad has recommended dimensions for

their thumbnails and covers so that the ones we upload would look perfect
when uploaded.

Want to make Gumroad Thumbnails or Covers that look like the ones Easlo
uses?
In the example earlier, we learned a few tricks which we’re gonna re-use
here.

In this tutorial, I’m going to make my digital product appear inside of an

iPad (which has a 4:3 aspect ratio).

Let’s make a rectangle that’s 1000px in width and 750px in height to

represent the iPad device. Use Fill that we learned earlier to make it black.

Next, we want to make a small rectangle to represent the iPad screen. We

can copy/paste or hit Ctrl-D to duplicate it. I’ll use W:950 and H:700 to
adjust to the size we want. Use Fill to make it grey.

Now, let’s throw on the effects :

● Rounded corners (maybe 60 for big rectangle and 50 for smaller

rectangle)
● Drop shadow on the bigger (black) rectangle.

You can refer to the screenshot below for the values that I used.
Notice that on the left sidebar, we have to make sure that the ‘iPad Screen’
is on top of the ‘iPad Device. ‘

Now, right-click on the grey rectangle > Use as mask.

You will notice that the grey rectangle immediately disappears.

Remember how we inserted our screenshot into Figma earlier? Let’s do it.
Can’t seem to copy and paste images into Figma? Use this instead.

Then, simply drag the image into the mask that we just created.
Take special note of how the left sidebar looks. See the arrow? The iPad
Screen (grey rectangle) is acting as a mask for the screenshot that we
dragged into it.
Now that we’re done with the thumbnail, we’re gonna export it like how
we did previously.

Here’s our finished product versus Easlo’s thumbnail.

How To Make A Gumroad Cover
Gumroad Cover Dimension : 1280px by 720px (16:9 ratio)

There isn’t anything special to add in this section.

A Gumroad Cover simply has a different dimension.

We’ll re-use the techniques that we have learnt earlier to create the
Gumroad Cover - so that’s your homework for today 🙂
Before you know it, you will be creating incredible mockups for Gumroad
Cover that look like this. Same steps but just different sizes for the
rectangle shapes.
Free Figma Template
To save you the trouble, I have prepared a handy Figma template file for
your quick reference. Download it below. It is embedded in the Notion
template version of the eBook.

https://turtleinvestor.gumroad.com/l/launch

These Figma how-to tips I have shared today are only the tip of the
iceberg! And there is so much more that it can do for us. Keep learning and
keep experimenting!
Bonus Tips To Up Your Gumroad
Game
This is a little beyond the scope of this simple guide (maybe part 2 if it ever
gets written) but let’s say you’re thinking of improving your Gumroad
game, consider creating video guides as complementary materials to help
your potential customers learn more about your product like what I have
done below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUcMccpSRpk

Included below are suggestions of some free tools which you can use.

Screen Recording Tools

● Loom
● OBS Studio
● FastStone Capture

Video Editing Tools

 ● CapCut
● VEED

Hosting For Videos

● YouTube
● Vimeo

Don’t forget to explore the various marketplaces that you can use to list
your digital products and Product Hunt when you feel you’re ready for it!
List Your Product On Gumroad

The process of listing a product in Gumroad is really simple so once again,

there isn’t really any point in me covering it in detail.

I will, however, highlight a few important things that could make the
difference in you getting your first sale (you know, because most people
don’t read the help files).
Sell In US Dollars
Selling in US dollars is a good idea if you intend to serve the global market.

There is a high chance our potential audience may not recognize the
currency we use (e.g. Korean Won) and therefore, find it difficult to
determine how much our digital products actually cost at one glance.

More importantly, because we can’t change the currency our product is

listed in once we publish it - we need to get it right from the start.

You might simply be making digital products for free download initially
and neglect to make any changes to this setting. If so, don’t delay the
change and do it now.

Enable Purchasing Power Parity

Purchasing power parity (PPP) lets Gumroad creators set up dynamic
discounts based on where the customer lives, ensuring a price that is
proportional to their local currency and cost of living.

Prices are dynamically adjusted based on where our audience is, so our
product would cost less in Singapore, for example.
Enable Gumroad Discover (Once Available)
Gumroad Discover recommends our products to prospective customers,
helping us grow beyond our existing audience and find even more people
who might be interested in our work.

When publishing our new product, the 4th tab is Share and it is where
Gumroad Discover is located.

There is, however, a criteria for Gumroad Discover that states that we
need to make enough genuine sales to actual customers to get a balance
of at least $10 USD first.

In my case, I created 7 personal finance templates and a starter pack

available for free downloads (donations optional) before making paid
products - which helped me tremendously in becoming eligible for
Gumroad Discover.

These products also helped my customers become familiar with the type
of products that I create and their quality.
Gumroad Discover is essentially a marketplace that people can use to
search for, and buy digital products (such as Etsy). Free traffic, basically.

Don’t forget to set the relevant Category and Tags for your digital product
for maximum reach.
In particular, we can even choose to boost our product visibility by setting a
very high fee (basically Gumroad’s cut) in order to get as much traffic and
downloads, and hopefully snag a few 5-star product ratings in the process.
Create Your Landing Page

The editing options available on Gumroad are fairly, but there are plenty of
options if we wish to make our product pages look a little more fanciful
and professional.

● Typedream
● ConvertKit
● Webflow

In my case, I used Typedream to build my landing page and found it to

be a great and easy option for beginners, or simply folks like me who didn’t
want to spend too much time making one.

A landing page is an excellent platform to highlight features and benefits

of our digital product and make it as attractive as possible to potential
buyers.
Promote On Social Media

Interestingly, the first digital product that I sold didn’t even go through an
official launch at all.

Although it is fully functional, Finance Navigator is in the Early Access

phase with limited users because I didn’t go with the route of a typical
launch.

I have been slowly building over time and gradually adding features along
the way into it. Finance Navigator is a project that I’m not exactly rushing
into, so I was pleasantly surprised that people are already showing interest
at this stage.

What I did launch successfully was a complementary Health Assistant

Notion template when I had less than 90 followers. Because Health is
Wealth → all my templates have a personal finance theme to it ❤️
I suppose it turned out to be pretty successful considering my account size.
(25 replies, 17 Retweets, 38 Likes, 2400 views)

Simply tweet something like this and you’re set.

Notice how I’ve used the same strategy to create the Gumroad Covers with
the same design to embed in my tweet?
Promoting on social media is obviously one way to get views to our
products and there’s no way around it.

If you have been genuinely engaging and getting to know fellow creators
👋🏻 on Twitter, they would be more than happy to help support your launch
with a Like or a Retweet without even you having to ask for it!

Twitter growth guides are plenty in this space and many are available for
free. Check them out and put them into practice - but nothing beats
consistency and showing up day after day.
Ending Thoughts

And finally, congratulations for making it this far into my guide!

It has been my pleasure sharing my experience over the past month or two
as I tried out so many various tools in my journey to create and launch my
first digital products.

Hopefully, this will help you to eliminate hours of fruitless efforts and
instead, focus on spending those valuable time on creating.

I was confident that I have a valuable product that is the result of tens or
even hundreds of hours of research and hard work, and market demand
shows that this category of tools have hundreds of millions of paying
customers on a recurring basis.

Although I cannot control the number of followers I have right now and
how fast my account is growing, what I did was to attempt everything
within my control to convince my audience that my product is worth
paying for and increase the chances of a successful sale.

This includes:

● Creating professional looking Gumroad product listing

● Drafting detailed product descriptions on Gumroad
● Raising awareness for my product via Gumroad Discover
● Publishing landing page to highlight product benefits and features
● Creating video guides for product functionality to build authority
● Gaining initial traction for a product launch via social media
● Building authority from potential customers by providing free
templates in same niche

I guess my strategy worked, and I got my first sale with less than 100
followers.

You can get yours too.

Thank you for reading 🙏🏻

Connect with me on Twitter and chat someday!
P.S.

I would truly appreciate it if you could leave a 5-star rating on Gumroad if

you found value in what I have shared with you.

You can help more people access my free eBook resource by supporting
me with an upvote on Product Hunt!

Last but not least, retweets would be amazing! 🙏🏻🙌🏻