Why is there always a comparison between Nigeria’s Jollof and Ghana’s Jollof?

Because both countries enjoy the banter? Or that people just have their preferences and would readily suggest it if asked?

Likewise in the creator economy, there are lots of platforms promising creators ease of managing an online business. However, this comes down to one thing; choosing the right platform that helps you to achieve business goals.

For creators, Selar and Gumroad serve as good options for selling digital products online. But each platform has different features that serve different purposes.

In this Selar vs Gumroad review, we review these platforms and highlight key features that set them apart.

What is Selar?

Selar is an e-commerce platform designed for African creators to help them turn their knowledge into income by selling digital products or services anywhere in the world.

Selar was created for the African creator to provide a sustainable plan through which they can create endless streams of income for themselves and be rewarded for their knowledge and skills.

Today, over 70K African creators and 400k users trust Selar to help them sell their digital products across borders and thrive in the creator economy.

At Selar, we believe in equipping the African creator with all the resources needed to compete on a global stage and get paid for it.

How does Selar work?

Selar is an easy platform to use such that you can sign up, create a store, and start selling your product in 5 minutes or less.

You can get started on Selar in just four steps

• Sign up @ Selar.co
• Enter your bank information to enable payout when you make sales.
• Upload products
• Share store link with your customers.

Selar’s goal is to help you sell your digital products seamlessly across borders as an African. So you don’t need to travel around the world, have professional sales experience, or be an influencer to sell on Selar.

Selar functions as a free e-commerce store builder with payment integration. This means that when you create an online store with Selar, you automatically get an online payment integration that supports local and international payments, making it the ideal choice for the African creator.

What is Gumroad?

Gumroad is an e-commerce platform simplified for digital creators to sell all kinds of digital products and services. Gumroad is both a platform and a marketplace for creators to sell their products and services.

Since its launch in 2011, Gumroad has helped independent creators, authors, artists, educationists, etc to easily sell their downloadable content.

The platform’s features make it easily accessible for creators at different stages of their creator journey.

How does Gumroad work

Gumroad is easy to start with. However, registration is longer compared to Selar because you are required to enter accurate information to recommend your product on Gumroad Discover which is a marketplace where you can see available products from other creators.

You can sign up on Gumroad in a few steps;

• Set up a profile. Upload your photo, write your bio, and choose a username.
• Fill out the “Local” and “Gumroad Discover” settings.
• Enter payment information

Gumroad’s slogan is “Go from $0 to $1.” This means the platform is designed to help you make your first dollar online even without prior sales and marketing experience.

Selar vs Gumroad: Who Should You Use?

Lots of creators who use both Selar and Gumroad admit that they are ideal solutions for digital creators. However, while Selar focuses on helping the African creator, Gumroad generally focuses on helping creators sell their products.

Here’s a comparison of the operation models of the two platforms.

1. Selar vs Gumroad: Pricing

The pricing structures of both platforms are different. Gumroad charges a 10% flat fee on every sale. This means for every time you make a sale, Gumroad takes 10% off it. There are no hidden charges or monthly subscriptions.

Selar, on the other hand, has three different price tiers. There is the free plan, the pro plan which costs ₦8,000 / $20 per month, and the Turbo plan which costs ₦15,000 / $35 per month, and an overall 20% discount on annual plans. Learn more about what you can get from each plan here.

2. Selar vs Gumroad: Withdrawal/Payouts

When you use either of these platforms to sell a product, you receive a digital wallet where your earnings are stored till you request a withdrawal into your local bank account.

Upon registration on Selar, you are required to enter your local bank information where you’ll like to receive your earnings. When you request a withdrawal, your funds are sent to your bank account within 24hrs (for NGN currency).

For other currencies, you will receive your funds in your digital wallet within 4 days, after which you can withdraw to your local bank account anytime. You can see a list of supported countries here.

On Gumroad, you receive your payouts in two ways. Firstly, through direct bank payouts which take 2-7 business days depending on your country. You can see a list of supported countries here. Alternatively, you can receive your payout in your PayPal account. This is always processed in USD and takes around 1-3 business days.

3. Selar vs Gumroad: Processing fees

Selar charges a transaction fee for every successful sale which varies by the currency of the sale. Processing fees start as low as 4% for NGN transactions to as high as 10% for USD and GHS transactions. You can find a list of processing fees here.

Gumroad, on the other hand, charges a flat fee of 10% on every sale. This doesn’t include credit card processing or Paypal fees. You can learn more about Gumroad’s transaction fees here.

4. Selar vs Gumroad: Payment options

Selar supports multiple payment options such as debit, credit, Amex cards, USSD, M-Pesa, Ghana mobile money, local bank account transfers, Klarna pay, Google pay, Apple pay, Paypal, and Stripe payments.

Gumroad, on the other hand, supports credit card payments, Apple pay, or Google pay. Learn more about how your customers can pay you on Gumroad here.

5. Selar vs Gumroad: Supporting currencies

Gumroad processes all transactions in United States Dollars. Hence, if you live in a country outside the United States, your earnings will be converted and paid to you in your local currency.

Supported currencies on Gumroad are; $(US dollars), € (Euro), £ (GBP), ¥‎ (Yen), ₹ (Rupees), A$ (Australian Dollars), CAD$ (Canadian Dollars), HK$ (Hong Kong Dollars), SGD$ (Singapore Dollars), NT$ (Taiwanese Dollars), NZ$ (New Zealand Dollars), R$ (Brazillian Real), ZAR (South African Rand), CHF (Swiss Franc), ₪ (Israeli Shekel), ₱ (Philippine Peso), ₩ (Korean Won), zł (Polish Zloty), and Kč (Czech koruna).

Selar, on the other hand, allows you to switch the currency of your products, allowing you to be paid in any currency, but receive payouts in your local currency. This means you can receive payments in USD, GBP, NGN, GHS, KES, UGX, TZS, XOF, RWF, XAF & ZAR using Selar and what’s great is, it’s enabled for you by default so you don’t have to do anything extra.

Selar vs Gumroad: Features

Both Selar and Gumroad appeal to various audiences due to their individual features. These features form the functionality of the platforms and help each creator decide which platform caters to their needs.

Here’s a comparison of key features you need to make a decision.

1. Analytics

Both Selar and Gumroad provide analytics. On Gumroad, you can track your conversion rate, see your sales number, and have a complete overview of what your “sales” look like.

Gumroad also provides historic data. So you can track product performance over a long period of time, say 6 months, a year, or all time. You can also convert this data into a sales chart that makes it easier to view at a glance.

Selar, on the other hand, provides a robust analytics system that goes beyond marketing and sales data. It helps you monitor your income and provides other details like;

• Revenue over a period of time
• No. of purchases
• Product progress
• Affiliate commissions
• All time revenue

This information helps you track your performance and how you’re attracting and retaining customers as a creator.

2. Customer management

Gumroad offers many options to help you manage your relationship with your customers. You can import your mailing lists into Gumroad and send them emails to build your relationship.

You can also use this method to inform your customers about updates to your products and new product releases.

Selar, on the other hand, takes customer management a step higher by introducing the “abandoned cart email” feature. With this feature, when customers add your product to their cart and forget to complete a transaction, they receive an email reminding them to complete their purchase, while you get their contact details to reach them manually.

Additionally, Selar makes it easy for you to offer discounts in form of coupon codes, or price slash to lure customers to buy your products. With its email integration system, you can actively market to customers who buy your products.

3. Integrations

On Gumroad you can integrate your store on a website using the “overlay” and “embed” options. However, you’ll need to edit your website’s HTML to make it work.

Also, Gumroad allows users to integrate with Circle and Discord to auto-add new customers to their private lists.

Selar provides a robust suite of integration. You can integrate all the favorite tools you need as a creator to ensure the smooth operation of your business. You can embed your Selar store into a website, and integrate with other tools such as Facebook Pixel, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Sendpulse, LearnDash, Zapier, and more.

With these integrations, you can manage all the affairs of your business from one robust dashboard – your Selar dashboard.

4. Email marketing

When comparing email marketing between Selar and Gumroad, Selar gives you more functionality that saves you the cost of paying for a separate email marketing tool.

Gumroad has a tool called Workflows that allows for sending automated emails to customers after they purchase from you. With this tool, you can only have one Workflow per member, email sequence, or audience. This means you cannot send multiple email campaigns to various audience segments or it’ll cancel the other workflow.

However, on Selar, our email marketing tool is very robust and gives you everything you need to succeed at email marketing to your audience. You can send multiple emails, segment your audience, and market to your customers.

The best part about Selar’s email marketing structure is that it keeps you in front of your customers regardless of their buying process. So whether they fail to complete checkout, or have purchased a product, you can send automatic emails to them.

5. Page builder

As a creator, owning a Selar store isn’t the only way to promote your products. You need high-performing landing and sales pages to boost the promotion of your products and increase sales.

Both Gumroad and Selar provide a drag-and-drop page builder feature that makes it easy to create a landing page in minutes without the need for a developer.

But, here’s the difference.

On Gumroad, you can only build landing pages for your products. However, on Selar, you can not only build landing pages for your products, but you can also build other pages such as a sales page, policy page, terms, and condition page, and more.

Plus you have the freedom to customize these pages to give them the unique look and feel of your brand. Use your logo and brand colors on the page to make them look exactly how you want them to look.

Selar vs Gumroad: Pros & Cons

While Selar and Gumroad have proven to be reliable platforms for creators to sell their knowledge, they still have individual pros and cons.

Pros

Selar	Gumroad
Upsell and cross-sell features	Offers a free plan
Easy to use page builder with thousands of templates to use without the need for a developer.	Supports subscriptions and payment plans
Course certificates on completion of online courses.	Can easily embed store on any website or blog without extra coding
Can easily embed store on any website or blog without extra coding	Charges 10% per sale, no monthly subscriptions.
A straightforward affiliate marketing system	Ability to generate license keys for software products
Built for the African creator	Membership, video hosting, and gated content in-built
Easy-to-use interface	Easy-to-use interface

Cons

Selar	Gumroad
Doesn’t support cryptocurrency payment.	No free or paid trial offers
Doesn’t support Apple pay or Google pay.	Doesn’t support Apple pay or cryptocurrency payment
No license key for software products.	No upsell or cross-sell features
	Poor knowledge base

Selar vs Gumroad: What’s your choice?

At first, Selar vs Gumroad may seem incomparable because of the different target audiences. But both platforms market to the creator economy and are focused on helping creators succeed with their knowledge.

Gumroad has its strengths. It helps you to sell both physical and digital products, and earn your first dollar online by selling anything. However, if you want to build a strong presence in the creator economy as an African, Selar was built specifically for you.

No more struggling with payment methods or difficulties in reaching your customers, paying for lots of tools, or looking for the ideal plug-in. Selar gives you a seamless, fully-integrated suite of resources vital for growing your business.

So whether you’re just starting out, or looking for a solution that takes out the stress part of managing an online business, Selar is the one for you.

Start today by creating a free account and see how easy it can be to manage a business and make money online.