How To Sell Digital Products Without A Website

You created a digital product. Maybe it is an ebook, a printable planner, a set of SVG files, or a short course. Now you want to sell it, but you do not have a website. Good news: there are five platforms that will let you list your product today without building anything from scratch. Bad news: Alston Godbolt, affiliate marketer and internet entrepreneur, argues that every one of those five platforms is actually a trap, and in this post you will see exactly why.

This post walks through all five no-website options Alston covers in the video above, Etsy, Redbubble, eBay, Gumroad, and Sellfy, and then breaks down the three structural problems they all share. More importantly, you will see the alternative he recommends: a simple sales funnel you can build in a weekend that lets you keep your customer data, set your own price floor, and sell additional products on the back end so that one buyer can be worth far more than their first purchase.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear picture of how Etsy handles digital product delivery and what it costs you
How Redbubble compares to Etsy and how fast you can get a storefront live
Why eBay is tricky for digital downloads and what trigger points to watch
What Gumroad offers for free and what it charges once you scale
What Sellfy’s pricing tiers ($29 to $129 per month) actually buy you
The three reasons Alston says marketplace platforms steal money from you
How to build a simple sales funnel with ClickFunnels, Kartra, Kajabi, or WordPress that keeps every customer’s name and email
How to find out which income model fits your existing skills at finder.platformproof.com

Platform 1: Etsy

Etsy is the first platform Alston mentions, and it is probably the most recognizable name on the list. You create a free seller account, open a store, and then add individual product listings inside that store. The process for digital products is straightforward: when you scroll about halfway down the product creation form, Etsy asks whether the item is a digital product. You say yes, upload your file, set a price, and publish. From that point forward, every buyer gets an automatic download link the moment they check out. You do not have to ship anything, email anything, or log in again unless you want to tweak your listing.

Etsy also acts like a built-in search engine for your products. The platform openly surfaces trending searches at the top of the page. When Alston recorded this video, categories like printable graduation templates, graduation quotes, and positive SVG designs were highlighted as popular. If your product fits one of those trending niches, you can show up in front of buyers who are already searching for exactly what you made. That is a meaningful advantage for a brand-new seller who has zero audience and zero traffic of their own.

The catch is competition. Because the barrier to entry is so low, thousands of sellers are listing nearly identical products. That competitive pressure pushes prices down fast. A digital planner that you spent 10 hours designing might end up listed at $1.99 just to stay visible. And on top of the price compression, Etsy takes a transaction fee on every sale, so the number in your bank account is always smaller than the price you posted. Alston pegs the example at selling something for $4.43 and walking away with closer to $3.99 after fees.

Platform 2: Redbubble

Redbubble operates on a very similar model to Etsy. You create a storefront inside the Redbubble marketplace, add your digital products or designs, and buyers can instantly download what they purchase. Alston describes the setup process as genuinely quick. His estimate: you can have an account open and your first product live within 30 minutes if you stay focused. If you let yourself get distracted exploring the platform, call it a couple of hours.

Redbubble does not require a credit card to start selling. The platform is free to join, and like Etsy it handles the delivery of digital files automatically on your behalf. For a first-time seller who wants to test whether there is demand for their product before investing in anything more complex, Redbubble is a very low-friction starting point. But it carries the same fundamental problems as Etsy: you are selling inside someone else’s marketplace, you are competing on price against many other sellers, and the platform does not hand over your buyers’ contact information when a sale completes.

Platform 3: eBay

eBay is the third option, and it is a little different in character from Etsy and Redbubble. Alston mentions that he personally sold ebooks through eBay, so this is not a theoretical option. It works. However, he describes the platform as finicky when it comes to digital goods. There are specific rules and trigger points that can get your listing rejected or your account flagged. If you hit those trigger points, eBay will not allow you to upload and sell the digital product until you sort out the issue. The platform’s rules around digital downloads have historically been tighter than those on Etsy or Gumroad.

Saturation is the other eBay problem. Just like Etsy, the search results for common digital product types on eBay are packed with competing listings. To get found, you need to understand eBay’s search algorithm, optimize your listing title, use the right category, and price competitively. For someone who is brand new to selling online, that is a real learning curve on top of the learning curve of creating the product itself. eBay can be done, but the combination of platform rules complexity plus heavy competition makes it the most difficult of the five platforms to get traction on quickly.

Platform 4: Gumroad

Gumroad is the platform Alston describes in the warmest terms of the five. It was built specifically for creators who want to sell digital products directly to buyers, and it handles all the payment processing on your behalf. You create an account, upload your product file, write a description, set a price, and Gumroad gives you a link you can share anywhere: social media, a YouTube description, a bio link, wherever your audience already finds you. The buyer pays through Gumroad’s checkout, and the file is delivered automatically.

One distinctive feature Gumroad offers is pay-what-you-want pricing. Sellers can set a minimum price and let buyers choose any amount above that floor. Alston shows examples in the video where ebooks are listed at $0.99, $9, and $14.99, and one listing appears to be a bundle at $14.99. The variety shows that Gumroad supports everything from ultra-low-price impulse buys to more premium offers. The platform has a free tier, but at larger sales volumes it charges a percentage of each transaction, so costs do go up as you grow.

Gumroad also has its own discovery page where buyers browse products by category, so there is some built-in traffic potential. Alston notes that searching for “ebook” on Gumroad surfaces a long list of products, many of them created using Canva. If your product is well-designed and competitively priced, you can pick up organic sales from Gumroad’s internal search in addition to any traffic you drive yourself.

Platform 5: Sellfy

Sellfy is the fifth platform, and it is structured a little differently from the others because it is primarily a subscription service rather than a free marketplace. Pricing starts at $29 per month and goes up to $129 per month for higher-tier plans. In exchange for that monthly fee, you get a more complete storefront experience with a wider set of features than the free-tier platforms offer. Sellfy handles payment processing, instant digital delivery, and integrations with a range of third-party tools.

The higher price point also means less competition within the platform. Fewer sellers are willing to pay $29 to $129 a month to list digital products, so Sellfy attracts a somewhat smaller, more serious seller base than Etsy or Redbubble. If you are already generating consistent sales and want more control over your storefront’s appearance and customer experience without building a fully custom website, Sellfy sits in an interesting middle ground. That said, Alston still categorizes it alongside the other four platforms when he explains why these methods are all a mistake in the long run.

Not sure which business model fits your skills?

Answer seven questions and get a personalized match at finder.platformproof.com.

Why All Five Platforms Are a Bad Idea

After walking through all five options, Alston flips the video and says he thinks using every one of them is a mistake. That is a strong position to take, especially after presenting them as legitimate options for a few minutes. His argument rests on three specific problems that apply to every marketplace platform, regardless of whether it is Etsy, Gumroad, or anything else.

Problem 1: Race to the Bottom on Price

When your product lives inside a marketplace, you are always competing against other sellers who are listing the same type of product. You put significant time and energy into creating something valuable, you price it at what you think it is worth, and then a competitor comes in and undercuts you. You drop your price to stay visible. They drop again. This continues until the product is selling for so little that the time you invested in making it is effectively worth nothing. Alston describes this as a race to the bottom, and he mentions the dynamic multiple times because it is the primary reason marketplace platforms hurt long-term profitability.

The race to the bottom is not just a pricing problem. It is also a positioning problem. When your $12 product is sitting next to a functionally similar product for $1.99, buyers anchor on price because they have no other information to differentiate the two. You cannot tell your story. You cannot explain your method. You cannot communicate what makes your version better. Price becomes the only signal, and you lose that battle to whoever is willing to go the lowest.

Problem 2: You Never Know Your Customer

This is the problem Alston describes as the biggest issue he has with marketplace platforms. When someone buys your digital planner on Etsy, Etsy processes the payment and delivers the file. The buyer’s name and email address stay with Etsy. You get the money, minus the platform’s fee, but you get zero information about who just bought from you.

Why does that matter? Alston walks through the logic clearly. Say someone buys a digital planner from you for $1.99. That tells you something important: this person is interested in organization and planning their life. That single interest opens a chain of higher-value offers you could make to them. A $500 course on planning and productivity. A physical planner shipped to their door. A special pen. A bundle with an e-reader. Affiliate commissions from organization-related products you recommend. None of those follow-up sales can happen because you do not have their contact information. The customer bought once and disappeared into Etsy’s database, not yours.

When you own the sales process, you collect that name and email at checkout. Alston says he has a database of people he knows are interested in digital products, and from that list he can sell coaching, courses, other people’s courses through affiliate marketing, and additional digital products. That back-end revenue is where the real money is, and marketplace platforms cut you off from it entirely.

Problem 3: The Platform Takes a Cut of Every Sale

Every marketplace charges a transaction fee. Etsy takes a percentage. Gumroad takes a percentage. Even Sellfy, which charges a monthly subscription, has transaction fees on lower-tier plans. The fees are not enormous in isolation, but when you are already pricing low to compete in a saturated marketplace, even a small cut changes whether the math works at all. Alston’s example: sell something for $4.43, walk away with $3.99. That gap compounds across every sale you make.

When you sell through your own website or sales funnel, the only payment processing fee you pay is Stripe’s standard rate, which is significantly lower than what marketplaces charge. Every dollar above that stays with you. And because you own the customer relationship, you do not need to win a price war to make the economics work. You can charge what your product is actually worth.

The Better Alternative: Your Own Sales Funnel

Alston’s recommendation is to take a weekend and build your own website or sales funnel. He is upfront that some people will push back and say a sales funnel is not technically a website, but his point is that it functions the same way for the buyer: they land on a page, they see your offer, they pay, they get the product. The difference is entirely in your favor as the seller.

The tools he mentions for building this are ClickFunnels, Kartra, Kajabi, and WordPress. These range from dedicated funnel builders with drag-and-drop simplicity to fully customizable content management systems. ClickFunnels is the one he personally uses and shows in the video. His own funnel at the time of recording was built around a $5 ebook. That low price point is not because the product was low value. It is because the front-end product is designed to convert a cold buyer into a customer, and then a series of upsells do the heavy lifting on revenue.

Behind that $5 ebook, Alston had an audiobook upsell so buyers could listen on the way to work, and a done-for-you sales funnel upsell that buyers could import directly into their own ClickFunnels account and get up and running faster. A buyer who takes both upsells is worth far more than $5. That same buyer is now in his email list, which means he can sell them affiliate products, coaching, new courses, and anything else that matches what he knows they care about. No marketplace gives you that.

He also points out that running your own funnel makes paid traffic viable in a way that marketplace listings are not. When you drive Facebook ads or YouTube ads to an Etsy listing, you are spending money to send buyers to a page where your competitors’ products are also visible. When you drive those same ads to your own funnel, the buyer sees only your offer. If the front-end product breaks even on ad spend, the back-end upsells and email follow-up are pure profit.

How to Set Up Your First Digital Product Funnel in a Weekend

If you decide to take Alston’s advice and build your own funnel instead of listing on a marketplace, here is a step-by-step order of operations that tracks with what he describes in the video:

Finalize your product. This should already exist before you think about the funnel. A completed ebook, a finished template pack, a recorded mini-course. Do not build the funnel before the product is done.
Choose your funnel builder. ClickFunnels, Kartra, and Kajabi all have free trials. WordPress with a plugin like WooCommerce is a lower monthly cost but requires more setup. Pick one and commit to it for this first product.
Build the offer page. One headline that names what the buyer gets. Three to five bullet points on what they will be able to do after they have it. A price. A buy button. That is the minimum. You can improve the page later once you have sales data.
Connect Stripe for payment processing. Stripe’s standard rate is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction. That is your only fee when you sell directly. No additional marketplace cut on top.
Set up at least one upsell. An audiobook version of your ebook, a deeper course, a done-for-you template, or a related product at a higher price point. Buyers who already said yes to your front-end offer are the most likely people to say yes to the next one.
Connect an email service provider. Every buyer should be added to an email list automatically at checkout. This is the database Alston references. It is what separates a one-time sale from an ongoing business relationship.
Drive traffic. Start with whatever you have. A YouTube channel, a social media account, an email list from a previous project. Once you know your funnel converts, add paid traffic from Facebook or YouTube ads to scale.

Honest Drawbacks of Running Your Own Funnel

Alston’s case for owning your funnel is strong, but it is worth being honest about what it costs you compared to just listing on Etsy or Gumroad.

First, you are responsible for your own traffic. Etsy has millions of buyers searching the platform every day. Gumroad has a discovery page. When you sell through your own funnel, none of those built-in buyers exist. You have to generate every visit yourself, whether through organic content, social media, or paid advertising. That is not impossible, but it takes more effort than clicking publish on a marketplace listing and waiting for search traffic to find you.

Second, there is a real setup cost. ClickFunnels starts at around $97 per month. Kajabi starts higher than that. WordPress is cheaper on software but requires more technical comfort. If you sell zero products in your first month, you are paying that subscription fee out of pocket. On Etsy or Gumroad, you can list for free and only pay fees when you make a sale. For someone with no audience and no traffic, that zero-upfront model feels safer.

Third, you have to handle your own customer support. When a buyer has a problem with a download on Etsy, Etsy’s support team is part of the picture. On your own funnel, you are the support team. For most digital products this is low volume, but it is not zero.

Alston’s position is that these drawbacks are worth accepting because the long-term upside of owning your customer data and controlling your pricing is far greater than the short-term convenience of a marketplace. That argument is stronger once you have some validation that your product sells. If you have never sold anything online before, starting on Gumroad or Etsy to test demand is not irrational. Just do not stay there once you know the product works.

Find Your X

Whether you decide to start on a marketplace or build your own funnel from day one, the first question to answer is what you should be selling and which business model fits your current skills and situation. Not everyone should start with digital products. Some people are better positioned for affiliate marketing, content creation, freelancing, or something else entirely.

The Platform Proof Finder tool asks you seven questions and matches you to the model most likely to work given where you are right now. It is free and takes about two minutes. Start at finder.platformproof.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you really sell digital products on eBay?

Yes, Alston says he has done it and sold ebooks through eBay. However, eBay has specific rules around digital downloads and certain trigger points that can get a listing rejected or flagged. It requires more careful setup than Etsy or Gumroad, and the competition on eBay for common digital product categories is significant.

Is Gumroad actually free to use?

Gumroad has a free tier that lets you start selling without paying a monthly subscription. However, it charges a percentage of each transaction, and that percentage is higher on the free tier than on paid plans. As your sales volume grows, it can make sense to pay for a lower transaction fee rate or to move to your own platform entirely.

How much does Sellfy cost?

Based on what Alston shows in the video, Sellfy pricing at the time of recording started at $29 per month and went up to $129 per month for higher-feature plans. Those prices may have changed since the video was published. Check Sellfy’s current pricing page directly for the most accurate numbers.

Why does not getting your customer’s email address matter so much?

A buyer who purchased once is the most likely person to buy again, as long as you can reach them. Without their email address, you cannot follow up with new products, promotions, or content. The first sale covers your ad spend or your time creating the product. The follow-up sales are where a business becomes profitable. Marketplace platforms capture that contact information for themselves, not for you.

What is a sales funnel and how is it different from a website?

A sales funnel is a series of pages designed to move a visitor through a specific sequence: see the offer, buy the product, see an upsell, accept or decline. A traditional website gives visitors many choices and paths to take. A funnel removes those choices and guides everyone through one path. Funnel builders like ClickFunnels are optimized for this experience. Alston points out that his own funnel is technically a website, but the focused structure is what makes it work better for selling than a general-purpose site.

Do you need to run ads to sell digital products through your own funnel?

No, but ads make scaling faster. Alston mentions Facebook ads and YouTube ads as traffic sources that can drive buyers to your funnel. If your funnel breaks even on ad spend on the front-end product, the upsells and email follow-up generate profit. Before paying for ads, it makes sense to test your funnel with whatever free traffic you have access to: your YouTube channel, social media followers, or email contacts.

What tools can you use to build a sales funnel without coding?

Alston mentions ClickFunnels, Kartra, Kajabi, and WordPress as options. ClickFunnels and Kartra are dedicated funnel builders with drag-and-drop page editors and built-in payment processing and email integrations. Kajabi is stronger for course creators who want membership site features alongside their funnel. WordPress with plugins like WooCommerce and Elementor requires more configuration but has lower recurring costs and more flexibility.

Should a complete beginner start on a marketplace or build their own funnel first?

Alston’s recommendation is to build your own funnel, but he acknowledges the tradeoffs. A marketplace like Etsy or Gumroad has zero upfront cost and built-in traffic, which makes it lower risk for someone who is not sure yet whether their product will sell. If you want to validate demand before paying for funnel software, starting on a marketplace to get your first few sales is a reasonable approach. Once you have confirmed people will pay for your product, moving to your own funnel protects your margin and your customer relationships going forward.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “How To Sell Digital Products Without A Website 2021,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/XB5FWi8M_Lk
Etsy Seller Handbook: https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook
Gumroad Help Center: https://help.gumroad.com
Sellfy Pricing: https://sellfy.com/pricing
Stripe Pricing: https://stripe.com/pricing