We released a ton of new features for Gumroad affiliates this year.

Why?

To continue to help affiliates generate a consistent income online.

And today we're going to cover:

How to generate an income as a Gumroad affiliate
The three parts for effective affiliate marketing
Benefits of affiliate marketing
How to get started with affiliate marketing on Gumroad
Best practices from Gumroad creators

Let's dive in.

How to Generate an Income as a Gumroad Affiliate

Gumroad Affiliates Earned Over $4,300,000 in The Past 18 Months

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission every time you promote a creator’s product and generate a sale via your exclusive affiliate link. You only receive your affiliate commission after you generate a sale.

So let’s say you get a 30% commission on a $100 course, that means after a confirmed sale, you’d earn $30.

On the other hand, as the creator, affiliate marketing is the process of you putting together a group of people with similar audiences who promote your products for you and receive a commission when they generate a sale for your product.

Collectively, affiliate marketing is a performance-based way of scaling your business/products without high startup costs.

In this article, we’re going to walk you through the fundamentals of affiliate marketing and how to get started earning an income as a Gumroad affiliate.

Effective Affiliate Marketing In Three Parts:

For affiliate marketing to work, three parties must exist and work together:

1. The Creator - This is the party that creates the product. Technically, the creator does not need to be active for affiliate marketing to be effective. They just need to deliver the product.

2. The Affiliate - Affiliates are the individuals who promote the creator’s product on behalf of the creator in exchange for a commission for driving sales. This is where the marketing comes into this mix. These affiliates work as marketers for the creator.

3. The Consumers - The consumers are the party that makes this work. Without consumers, affiliate marketing wouldn’t exist. They are the ones within the creator’s target audience who purchase their product through their affiliates.

Together, these three parties work to scale your business to reach new audiences and drive new customers.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

1. Low-Startup Costs

This is one of the most significant benefits of affiliate marketing for creators. Because it’s performance-based, affiliates only make money after generating sales. For you, this means there are no upfront costs to get started.

2. Scale

As a creator, you’re a walking business. And affiliate marketing is an effective way of scaling your business. By building an affiliate program, you’re opening the door to awareness, leads, and customers who you may not have reached otherwise.

3. Reach New Audiences

Through your affiliates, you reach new audiences. Usually, your affiliates are individuals who have an audience similar to yours who would get value from your products. Because of this, anytime your product is promoted via an affiliate, your brand is reaching new people who exist within your target audience.

4. Targeted Traffic

Organically, through the promotion of your product via affiliates, targeted traffic is sent to your Gumroad page. And with the targeted traffic, you can set up retargeting ads via social channels to convert potential customers to paying customers.

5. Create An Acquisition Loop

By creating an affiliate program for your product, you naturally build an acquisition loop that continues to feed itself. You create a product, your affiliate promotes the product, and you continue to generate new customers. The more effective the affiliate program, the more you will organically acquire new customers.

How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing On Gumroad

Affiliates can be added in three ways.

Method 1: Adding Affiliates Manually

From the affiliate dashboard, click Add affiliate.
Enter the email address associated with your affiliate’s Gumroad account.
Affiliates must have Gumroad accounts to become an affiliate.
Send them this link to make it easy.
Select the products they can become affiliates for via the dropdown menu.
After selecting the product, enter the affiliate fee they will make after generating a purchase.
Optional, but you can create a destination URL.
Click Add affiliate and we’ll send the affiliate a confirmation email.

Method 2: Let Affiliates Apply

Affiliates can now apply using our new self-service affiliate signup form.
You either approve or reject the affiliate.
Choose the products they can promote.
Send them your profile URL /affiliates, like: https://dvassallo.gumroad.com/affiliates

Method 3: Let Affiliates Sign Up Themselves

To allow people to request to be your affiliate, first go to your Affiliate Signup Form.
You can share this form via social, website, SMS, or email.
After an affiliate applies, you can either accept or reject them.
After you approve an affiliate, you can select the products they can promote.
After the confirmation, everything is ready to go.

The best part?

Gumroad handles all payouts to affiliates automatically, so you don’t have to spend time manually paying each affiliate.

Most Recent Gumroad Features To Optimize Your Affiliate Efforts

We recently just launched an immense amount of features to help you optimize your affiliate efforts.

We’re going to go through each one below:

1. We created a self-service affiliate signup form.

2. We also launched a self-service affiliate form.

3. You can now send posts to affiliates only.

4. You can now export affiliates to a CSV.

5. You can now filter via sortable columns.

6. Affiliates can now see their affiliate products.

Gumroad Creators Who Are Running Effective Affiliate Programs

Here are two thriving creators on Gumroad:

Vegalia

Daniel Fazio aka Cold Email Wizard

Both Vegalia and Daniel run effective affiliate programs.

Alex asked them both a series of questions to help you get started, find affiliates, and optimize your affiliate program.

Here are their three tips to help you get started and succeed:

1. Find Affiliates Who Have a Similar but Different Audience

Vegalia makes sure that the affiliates that promote her products have similar audiences, yet different. Vegalia says, “The most successful ones have audiences that are just located in a different area but would like my work as well. Having someone radically different from me, I believe, would undermine my brand integrity.”

Daniel looks for affiliates who have similarly sized audiences as him on Twitter. He does this because if they built up an audience themselves, they’ve successfully promoted themselves. And if this is the case, then they can promote your product successfully.

On the other hand, in many instances, an affiliate who hasn’t built up an audience will spam social channels to drive sales. Over time this would devalue your product.

2. Give Them a Blueprint To Succeed

Vegalia sends out an affiliate email using the post feature on Gumroad. She highlights the top affiliate and says how to successfully promote her brushes with examples.

For example, Vegalia says, “I tell them to show how my product works in the first 3 seconds of a video and display how they integrate my product into their own work.”

Vegalia’s approach gives her affiliates a blueprint to succeed and promote her products in an organic way, leading to long-term growth.

3. Find Affiliates Who Are Successful On Your Main Social Platform Choice

Both Vegalia and Daniel work with most of their affiliates on the same platform that they’ve built an audience on. And this is done strategically. Your social media accounts are your modern-day resume. It’s walking social proof.

Watch How to Get Started as a Gumroad Affiliate

Get started as a Gumroad affiliate here.

Until Sunday,

The Gumroad Team