Make $100/day Selling Digital Products: Best Platforms Ranked

You put in the work. You built the digital product. Now someone tells you to post it on Etsy, someone else says Gumroad, a third person swears by their own website. Every answer sounds confident and none of them match. That confusion costs people real money because the platform you choose determines whether you keep your customer data, whether your competitors show up next to your product, and whether a terms-of-service update can wipe out your income without warning.

Alston has sold digital products across Etsy, Udemy, Gumroad, Teachable, Kajabi, and his own platform. He walks through the full ranking in this video, from worst to best, based on what actually happened when he used each one. Here is the breakdown, the real fee and control issues at each platform, and the step-by-step path to selling on your own without drowning in tech setup.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Why Etsy is a race to the bottom and what the fees actually cost you per sale
The email restriction that silently limits Udemy sellers to two promotional messages a month
What Teachable and Kajabi do well and where they fall short
The honest case for Gumroad as a product validation tool, not a long-term home
The exact step-by-step system to sell digital products on your own platform
A real niche idea (sports training equipment) with the affiliate commission numbers from the video
What a $17/month tool gives you that a free Etsy listing cannot
How to find the right digital product starting point for your specific situation at finder.platformproof.com

The One Thing Every Platform Is Judged On

Control. That is the only real ranking criterion in this list. Every platform gets rated based on how much control you keep over your customer data, your pricing, your ability to communicate with buyers, and the security of your income. The more control you give to someone else’s platform, the lower it ranks. The more you own, the higher it sits.

This is not about which platform has the best interface or the biggest built-in audience. A platform with 50 million shoppers means nothing if they own the customer relationships and you get a sliver of the revenue. Control is what separates a business you build from a business you borrow.

Etsy, Creative Market, and Udemy: The Bottom of the List

Alston is direct: Etsy is his least favorite place to sell digital products, and he has sold there. The problem is structural. Etsy is a race to the bottom. You end up competing on price, competing on volume, and needing to create tens of variations of a single product just to generate enough visibility to make consistent sales.

The fees pile on at every stage. Etsy charges a listing fee when you post a product. They charge a renewal fee when that listing expires. They charge a transaction processing fee on every sale. You are paying to be there at every step. Meanwhile, you are still doing your own marketing. Etsy tells you to drive traffic through YouTube and social media. So you do the work to get people to the platform, they buy, and Etsy keeps a meaningful cut plus puts your competitors’ products directly next to yours.

The biggest cost, though, is the one that does not show up in the fee schedule. You do not get your customer’s data. Etsy owns that relationship. The person who bought your template or guide is Etsy’s customer, not yours. You cannot email them. You cannot offer them your next product. You cannot ask them what they need. Every sale ends the moment the transaction closes, and you start from zero the next time.

Creative Market runs the same way. Same fee model, same data wall, same setup where your buyers are living inside someone else’s walled garden with your competitors one scroll away.

Udemy adds a different layer of friction. Alston has five or six courses on Udemy, one of the first platforms he used when starting out online. Udemy caps you at two promotional emails per month to your own students. The other messages you send have to be educational in nature. They scan your emails to make sure you are not being too promotional and to make sure you are not trying to pull people off the platform. Alston used to get flagged. You create all the content. Udemy handles some platform-level marketing. They give you a percentage of revenue, and in return they restrict how you communicate with the people who paid to learn from you.

One workaround Alston used on Udemy: he offered a free gift inside the course as a lead magnet. Students had to enter their name and email to claim it, which moved them off the Udemy relationship and onto his own list. It worked, but it came with risk. Walk that line too obviously and your course can get flagged or pulled. That is a fragile foundation for income you are trying to build.

Facebook: The Terms-of-Service Problem

Facebook has not historically been friendly territory for selling digital products directly on the platform. Their terms of service have created problems for sellers, and even setting that aside, you have no meaningful control over your storefront or your reach. Organic reach is limited. Paid reach works until it does not. And Facebook can change what is allowed on any morning they choose.

The deeper issue is the same as Etsy. You are building on someone else’s land. Facebook has taken down content, restricted accounts, and changed monetization rules with no warning and no recourse for creators who built their income there. Alston does not recommend Facebook as a home base for selling digital products.

Teachable and Kajabi: Better Control, Narrower Scope

Move up the list and you get to platforms like Teachable and Kajabi. Alston has used both, along with Kartra. These are a step up. You set your own prices. You own the course content. You get more direct access to your students than anything Udemy or Etsy offers.

But both platforms were built to do one thing well: sell and host online courses. Over the years, Kajabi has added memberships, podcasts, and email marketing features. In Alston’s experience, those additions do not work reliably. They exist, but they are not tight. Kajabi’s email tools have issues. The membership functionality is limited. The podcast hosting is adequate at best.

If all you will ever sell is a single course format, Teachable or Kajabi might be enough. But if you want to sell ebooks, templates, consulting packages, workshops, and courses all from one place with full customer data and flexible pricing, these platforms create a ceiling you will eventually hit. They are better than the marketplace options below them, but they are still not the answer Alston recommends for building a real digital product business.

Gumroad: An Honest C Plus

Gumroad gets a C plus from Alston, maybe a B minus. That grade actually means something compared to what sits below it. Gumroad lets you start for free. You create a product, write a basic sales page, set a price, and you are selling within hours. That speed has real value when you are testing whether anyone will pay for an idea before you invest weeks building a full funnel around it.

The familiar problems come back, though. Gumroad takes a cut of every sale because you are using their payment processing and hosting. And when someone buys your product on Gumroad, they land on a page that shows them other sellers’ products. You drove the traffic. You created the product. And then you send your buyer into a grid of your competitors’ work.

Alston’s take: use Gumroad to validate. If you have an idea and you want proof people will pay for it, launch it on Gumroad in a day and find out. If it sells, you have confirmed demand. Then move it to your own platform where you keep the customer data, the full margin, and the relationship. Gumroad as a permanent home is the same mistake as Etsy, just with a slightly better experience.

The Winner: Your Own Platform

The clear answer, after everything above, is to sell on your own. Own your landing page. Own your sales page. Own your payment processing. Own your customer list. This is where Alston has landed after years of selling across every platform on this list.

The tools to do this are cheaper than most people think. Alston started with ClickFunnels, paying $97 a month for the base plan and up to $297 a month for more funnels and features. He now runs GBolt Systems, a white-labeled version of GoHighLevel that starts at $17 a month. GoHighLevel on its own runs $97 a month at minimum. GBolt Systems gives you the same core functionality at a fraction of that cost. Other options include Kartra, GetResponse (which has added funnel features), and WordPress if you prefer a self-hosted setup.

The setup takes longer than posting a listing on Etsy. That is a real tradeoff and Alston does not pretend otherwise. But what you get is the full buyer relationship. Someone buys from your own page and their name and email go directly into your list. You email them tomorrow. You offer them a second product next month. You ask them what else they need, and they tell you. That feedback loop compounds over time in a way that Etsy and Gumroad structurally prevent.

The most reliable way to grow revenue is to sell more to people who have already bought from you. Existing buyers trust you. They know your quality. They are the easiest people to sell to again. You cannot access that dynamic if every sale runs through a marketplace that owns the customer relationship. Building your own platform is building that asset.

Not sure which digital product fits your skills and schedule?

The Finder matches your starting point to the right product category and income path at finder.platformproof.com.

How to Build Your Own Digital Product Sales System Step by Step

Alston breaks this into individual pieces specifically so the whole thing does not feel like one giant obstacle. Learn each piece as you reach it. Do not try to map out every step before you start. Treat each part like a separate hurdle and run at the next one only after you clear the current one.

Build a landing page designed to collect names and emails. This is your first move.
Create a lead magnet to give people a reason to hand over their email. A 30-minute workshop recorded on Zoom or Loom works. A one-page cheat sheet built in Canva works. It does not need to be complicated.
Build an autoresponder email sequence. When someone joins your list, the autoresponder follows up automatically so you do not have to remember to email each new subscriber manually.
Create a sales page for your first digital product. You will need to learn some basics of sales page copywriting. This is a different skill from product creation, but it is learnable and you will only need to go through this once to get the foundation.
Build the digital product itself. The product comes after the infrastructure, not before. That order matters.
Create content on YouTube or other platforms to drive traffic to your landing page. The content does the lead generation work. The landing page captures it. The autoresponder nurtures it. The sales page converts it.

The reason the landing page and lead magnet come before the product is that most people will not buy from you the first time they see your work. A free resource builds trust and gets them onto your list. The autoresponder does the follow-up. By the time they see your paid offer, they have already gotten value from you and they know what to expect. That sequence converts far better than sending cold traffic directly to a sales page.

You do not need to understand email marketing before you have a landing page. You do not need a finished product before you start collecting emails. You do not need to know how to write a sales page before you have an email list to send it to. Learn each piece as you arrive at it. The overwhelm comes from trying to understand the whole staircase before you step on the first stair.

Why Platform Risk Is Real, Not Theoretical

Alston makes this point from personal experience. A few months before filming this video, YouTube took down some of his content. YouTube has demonetized creators with no explanation. People have left comments on his channel saying they were demonetized for no discernible reason. Etsy has removed products and shops. Facebook has changed what is allowed on the platform with no warning. These are not horror stories about someone else. They are the normal operating behavior of platforms that do not owe you continuity.

Alston draws out the absurd version of this to make the point stick. YouTube could theoretically wake up tomorrow and say all content creators must be located in a specific state, or all content must be filmed indoors. He notes they already vary monetization payments by creator location. The platform sets whatever rules it wants. When your income depends entirely on a platform you do not control, a policy change is not a risk you manage. It is a risk you absorb completely. Owning your customer list and your sales infrastructure means a platform change can affect your traffic source but cannot end your ability to sell.

A Niche Worth Looking At: Sports Training Equipment

Before getting into platforms in the video, Alston laid out a specific niche as a real-world example: sports training equipment. His kids play football and baseball. He has bought training gear for both, including a football throwing net with three targets and a baseball batting tee with a net for practicing contact and hand-eye coordination. These are real products he purchased for real reasons.

The niche works for affiliate income because it is genuinely evergreen. Football training is relevant from age three through college because there will always be parents who want their kids to improve and players who want to develop their skills. The content angle is to build videos around specific drills using specific equipment. Five drills to become a better passer, for example, where each drill is demonstrated with the same football throwing net. At the end of the video, you link to that net with an affiliate link. The net costs around $40 to $50. At a 10% commission, that is roughly $4 per sale. To hit $100 a day from that one product, you need about 25 to 30 sales. That number requires content volume and search traffic, but the math is real and the demand is consistent.

The model also stacks. You can create drill content for baseball equipment, soccer equipment, basketball training gear. Each video adds to the library and each library entry keeps driving traffic long after you post it. Evergreen niches compound because the content does not expire with a news cycle or a trend. Parents will always want their kids to get better at sports. That demand does not go away.

Find Your X

Platform choice matters a lot less if you have not yet figured out what you are selling or who you are selling it to. The Finder at finder.platformproof.com was built specifically to solve that first problem. It takes your existing skills, schedule, and interests and matches you to the right digital product type and starting path. Take five minutes, answer the questions, and walk out with a real starting point instead of a list of options that all look equally possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Etsy worth using at all for digital products?

Etsy can work as a research tool. You can look at what your target audience is already buying, what price points are moving, and what formats are selling well. Using Etsy to research your market is different from using it to build your income. For actual revenue, the fees and the lack of customer data make it a weak foundation. You are funding someone else’s platform while building nothing you own.

How long does it realistically take to set up your own platform?

Plan for a weekend if you are learning the tools for the first time, not an afternoon. Building a landing page, creating a lead magnet, and setting up a basic autoresponder is a few hours each if the platform is new to you. Using something like GBolt Systems at $17 a month puts landing pages, sales pages, and email tools in one place, which cuts down on the learning curve of stitching multiple tools together. ClickFunnels at $97 a month is another option with more built-in templates and training resources for beginners.

What is a lead magnet and why does it come before the product?

A lead magnet is something you give away free in exchange for a name and email address. A 30-minute workshop recorded on Zoom or Loom is a lead magnet. A one-page cheat sheet built in Canva is a lead magnet. It comes before the product because most people will not buy from you the first time they encounter your work. The free resource builds trust, earns the email address, and lets your autoresponder follow up. By the time they see your paid offer, they already know what you deliver.

What is Gumroad actually useful for?

Gumroad is a fast validation tool. If you have a product idea and want to know whether anyone will pay for it before you build a full funnel and write a proper sales page, Gumroad lets you test in a day. Create a page, set a price, and share the link with your audience. If it sells, you have confirmed real demand. Then you build out your own infrastructure and move the product there. Using Gumroad as a permanent platform is the same mistake as Etsy, just with a slightly smoother experience along the way.

How do Kajabi and Teachable compare to owning your own platform?

Both give you more control than Etsy or Udemy. You own your prices, your content, and you get more direct communication with students. But they were built specifically for courses. Kajabi has tried to expand into memberships, podcasts, and email marketing, but in Alston’s experience those additions are not reliable. If you will only ever sell courses and nothing else, either platform may be enough. If you want to grow into a broader digital product business with ebooks, templates, workshops, and consulting, you will hit their limits sooner than you expect.

Why does owning an email list matter so much for digital product sellers?

The easiest sale you will make is to someone who has already bought from you. They trust you. They know your quality. They are already in the habit of paying for what you create. If every sale runs through a third-party marketplace, you do not have those buyer relationships. You cannot reach them with a new launch. You cannot ask them what they want next. An email list turns a one-time transaction into a long-term relationship with a buyer who will keep buying as long as you keep delivering value. That compounding is what separates a real business from a series of individual sales.

What actually happens when a platform changes its rules?

It happens more often than people expect, and it hits hard. Etsy has removed products and shops with no advance notice. Udemy has changed payment structures. Facebook has updated its terms in ways that directly affected digital sellers. YouTube has demonetized channels with explanations that did not satisfy the people affected. Alston had videos removed. None of these platforms owe you continuity. If your income lives inside a platform you do not control, a policy change can cut your revenue on the same day the announcement goes out. Your own customer list and your own sales pages cannot be deleted by someone else’s policy update.

What is the cheapest way to start selling digital products on your own platform?

GBolt Systems starts at $17 a month and includes landing pages, sales pages, and email marketing in one place. It is a white-labeled version of GoHighLevel, which runs $97 a month on its own. WordPress is a self-hosted option if you already have hosting and prefer to control your own server. GetResponse has entered this space with a free tier for small lists. Any of these cost less per month than the cumulative fees you would pay Etsy over the same period, and they give you something Etsy never will: ownership of the customer relationship you build.

Sources

Etsy seller fees: listing fee, renewal fee, and transaction processing fee at point of sale
Udemy instructor email policy: two promotional emails per month maximum to enrolled students
GBolt Systems pricing: $17/month starting plan (white-labeled GoHighLevel)
GoHighLevel pricing: $97/month base plan
ClickFunnels pricing at time of filming: $97/month base, $297/month for more funnels and features
Amazon affiliate commission structure: approximately 10% on sports and outdoor equipment
Gumroad fee model: percentage of each sale plus payment processing