Adult content on Gumroad
While we invite you to read the entirety of this article, because we've found that it does answer many questions we receive, here's
The TLDR:
1) We do allow adult content on Gumroad, but not porn.
2) Porn = images or video of actual human beings engaged in sexual activities. Anything else is merely "adult content"
3) If you sell adult content, it takes us longer to review your account, so you need to make at least 6-10 sales to multiple customers before we can pay you.
Gumroad hosts a wide variety of products, and we do (since 2016) allow certain types of adult content. However, we do not allow pornography.
We define pornography as photos or videos depicting one (or more) real human adults engaging in sexual activities. Sexual activities include genital stimulation, oral sex, or insertion of any kind. If your product contains images or video files of real human adults engaging in these sexual activities, then it can't be sold on Gumroad.
Animations, illustrations, audiobooks, and audio products do not always count as pornography. If your product does not fall under the preceding definition, you can sell it on Gumroad. However, any content that could be perceived as sexual must be marked as "NSFW." This will remove your products from the overall Discover homepage, making sure that folks browsing casually for other kinds of content do not run into adult content without explicitly opting into it. Thanks for understanding!
Content of any format, including those listed above, that features characters who are minors, are depicted as minors, or are suggested to be minors in any sexual or sensual or fetishized context is strictly prohibited and cannot be sold on Gumroad.
Why we don't allow pornography
In order to exist, we need to work with banking partners in the USA. These partners process our payments and help us handle chargebacks and issues that may arise with credit cards and the banks that we interact with on behalf of our creators.
They associate pornography and graphic adult content with high levels of risk. That translates most commonly into fraudulent purchases of NSFW products and high rates of chargebacks in the form of awkward "mistaken" purchases that appear on family or business credit card statements.
All that said, adult-themed, adult-oriented, and NSFW products are objectively riskier to sell than other digital products because Gumroad and our banking partners incur higher rates of loss on these sales than on other digital products.
If you are selling NSFW products on Gumroad and your account has a chargeback rate higher than 1% per volume, or we see signs of fraud on your sales, we are still required by our banking agreements to suspend your account. This has nothing to do with the content of your products - if your account is suspended for these reasons, we are simply following the directives of our banking partners.
Risk Reviews and Adult Content
Our banking partners are very strict about who we support sales for, and they especially do not trust NSFW accounts, for the reasons stated above.
As a result, we have to make sure that accounts selling such content are extremely trustworthy before we can tell our banking partners, "Yep, this person is safe to work with." That means that if you are selling adult content on Gumroad, and you've only made a couple of sales, or you only have one unique customer, we probably won't be able to give your account the "thumbs up."
Adult content creators should expect to have made between 6-10 sales to a handful of customers (in other words, not 10 sales to the same superfan) before their account can be properly reviewed and paid out.
We know that this is annoying, but once you've crossed over this hurdle, you won't incur any further payout delays.
PayPal and Stripe
Our two major banking partners have their own Terms of Service regarding adult material. They have, on very very rare occasions, discovered Gumroad creators whose work they disapproved of, and have either forced us to suspend those accounts or have held up their sales. For example, if you are being paid out through PayPal for your sales of NSFW products, they may freeze your PayPal account or prohibit customers from buying your products using PayPal. This is not something that we have control over, unfortunately.
Selling NSFW Work
To help us filter search results on Gumroad, you need to mark your products as NSFW. Go to your product's edit page, click the Share tab, and scroll down to the Discover settings section where you add your tags. Here you can toggle the tab indicating that your product is only meant for adults. This allows us to only show these products to customers who opt in to see adult content. Please make sure to tag your products responsibly.
FAQ:
Unfortunately, due to the wonderfully infinite varieties of adult products, as funny as it might be, we can't provide an exhaustive list of what is or what is not allowed on Gumroad. But the vast majority of emails that we receive can be answered by this formulation:
Does your product contain images of one or more real human beings engaging in sexual activities?
If the answer is "yes," then it can't be sold on Gumroad.
But to be precise:
1) What about written content/erotica or audiobooks or audio content?
As per the definition above, we define pornography as photos or videos depicting one (or more) real human adults engaging in sexual activities. Written or audio content would not fall under that definition.
2) What about 3D characters or illustrations?
As per the definition above, we define pornography as photos or videos depicting one (or more) real human adults engaging in sexual activities. If the people in your product are not real or are illustrated, it's fine.
3) What about boudoir or nude photography?
As per the definition above, we define pornography as photos or videos depicting one (or more) real human adults engaging in sexual activities. If the models in your photos are not engaging in sexual activities, then it's fine.
4) What is "sexual activity"?
I feel like this is something you learn about in high school, but sure - it's something that one would do to physically gratify oneself or others. Masturbation, insertion - you get it.
Just to be completely sure - we don't see it that often but content that features actual human adults urinating and defecating is not allowed on Gumroad.