The Best Platforms for Selling Digital Products

There’s a few things you should care about as an online seller, and traffic is the number one factor. Let’s face it; you can have the best product ever created, but if no one knows it exists, then what's the point? You need to get eyes on that product.

There’s a few things to consider when choosing where to sell your products, and for most digital product creators, you’ll likely be listing on the following three sites

• Etsy

• Gumroad

• Lemonsqueezy

I’ll go over these three platforms and explain the best features and what you should consider when choosing them.

Comparison of Top Platforms

When comparing these three platforms, you should consider three things

1. Traffic

2. Fees

3. GMV (gross merchandise sales)

The third one just means how much money was spent on merchandise (aka products). If one person bought one template on Etsy for $5, then that's $5 dollars of GMV.

Fees are going to be important too because the higher the fee is, that means you're keeping less of your sales proceeds. You normally want to pay less in fees and keep more of the cash. I mean, it is YOUR product, and you already spent plenty of time building your product.

The last thing I’ll touch on is the platform features. This is where platforms really reel you in. If you're going to take their bait, it better be worth it.

Let’s start with my favorite.

Etsy

Etsy is the 4th largest website for E-commerce sales in the U.S.

Look at the competition Etsy has. It’s sitting right up there with the largest shopping platforms, Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. This really impressed me when I first saw it.

If you're curious, Etsy sits at number 8 in global rankings. Check SemRush to see the list.

Etsy has an unbelievable 450 million monthly visitors to its website. If you can’t generate traffic on your own, I highly suggest Etsy. They bring in tens of millions of buyers every month.

Etsy has reported that buyers spend roughly $900 Million every month!

This was their results for Q1 2023

Etsy does have tons of competition, and that’s one of the drawbacks to selling on Etsy. It’s hard to get noticed, but with the right branding, and eye-capturing images, you can take a fair share of this massive marketplace.

No matter which platform you choose to sell on, branding and marketing is what is most essential to capturing that traffic. If you don’t get them interested in the first 5 secs, then you lose that buyer.

A major positive about Etsy is the low fees. It only charges sellers 6.5% fees on all sales. It’s really low for someone that brings you all the traffic already.

Here’s a list of pros and cons

Features

• Third-party integrations

• Ads & Marketing

Pros

• Low fees (6.5%)

• Free to open a store.

• Impressive traffic with 450 million monthly visitors.

• Large potential customer base with 90 million active buyers.

• Offers advertisements to help sellers get noticed.

Cons

• Six million other sellers on the platform increase competition.

• High competition makes it difficult for sellers to stand out.

• Lacks email marketing and segmentation features.

• Bland seller dashboard

• Clunky analytics page

Gumroad

Gumroad is the go-to site for most digital creators. There’s a massive wealth of products on this site, and much of it is free.

Free is not something you can compete much against, but you still have opportunities to make money on Gumroad.

Gumroad, on average, sells $15 million every month. I know it doesn’t sound as exciting as Etsy’s numbers, but the competition is far lower here. There’s roughly 30k creators selling on Gumroad, and all of them are spread across tons of categories,

As a seller of Notion templates, I've noticed that the competition isn't too intense. While there are some amazing creators on the marketplace, many listings don't perform well due to lackluster marketing or unimpressive thumbnails. If you've delved into the world of marketing, you'll know that you only have a brief moment to capture the interest of potential buyers.

There are still opportunities available for you to take advantage of.

It is free to start, and they host your store on the website just like Etsy. I personally prefer the simplicity of Gumroad’s store. The listing experience is so much smoother.

A disadvantage of using this platform is the fees charged. Among the group, Gumroad has the highest fee at 10%. While some may not find it significant, it is considered quite high by many.

Gumroads features are what sets it apart from the group. They offer a multitude of tools and they are free to use.

Features

• Subscription Service (podcasts, newsletter, membership, course) - Free

• Email Marketing - Free

• Email Automation - Free

• Landing Pages - Free

• Creator Resources

• Custom Domain

• License Keys

Here’s the pros and cons

Pros

• Free Listings

• Free to open a store.

• Easy-to-use product page

• No need to set up a separate merchant account

• Sell both digital and physical products

Cons

• Limited payment options

• No built-in marketing tools

• Limited customer support

• Basic landing pages

• Limited analytics

• Highest Fees (10%)

Lemonsqueezy

Lemonsqueezy is the most interesting of the three. It is the newest app available to sellers, and their approach is different. Instead of acting as a platform for shoppers, it instead provides all the tools for the creator. You might be thinking this probably shouldn’t be considered since it has no shopping experience, but it actually does on an individual level.

The concept is to give the creator the tools to create your own store and provide you with all the tools needed to run and scale your business. It has advanced and powerful analytics, email marketing, segmentation, automation, lead magnets, sequencing, and more. It’s a creator's full sales kit rolled into one package.

The look is very professional, and the data is easy to read. The best part about this is the cost of it all. It’s FREE!

All of these are free-to-use platforms, but the value Lemonsqueezy provides is truly astounding. Not to mention the fees are the lowest of the group sitting at 5% + 50 cents per sale.

Despite its many useful features, there is one downside to the free email marketing - a limit on the number of subscribers. If you're searching for a free option, note that you'll be charged once you go over 500 subscribers. The cost will increase as your subscriber count reaches certain thresholds.

In my opinion, there’s plenty of other email service providers with better prices, and Gumroad is completely free, so this is one thing to consider.

Features

• API

• Third-party integration

• Custom Domains

• Email Marketing

• Email Automation

• Auto-Segmentation

• Free Store

Pros

• Lowest Fees (5% + 50 cents)

• Advanced segmentation

• Advanced analytics

• Lead magnets

• Email drip sequence

• Abandoned cart emails

• Link your store to your website

Cons

• Email Marketing costs after 500 subscribers or 5,000 emails sent per month

• 2-day approval wait time

• Lengthy store setup

• No Organic Traffic

Choosing the Right Platform

These are three of the best platforms for digital creators to sell on, but you should consider each platforms features, pros, and cons before choosing one.

If anything, start with one, and then try out the other two. Over time you can get a good feel of which one you like the best, and continue from there.

Conclusion

Here’s a highlight of each platforms features

Etsy → best for free traffic - low fees

Gumroad → best listing experience - highest fees

Lemonsqueezy → best seller features - expensive email marketing after 500 subs