Becoming an affiliate on Gumroad

In this article:

• Getting started
• Sticky affiliate links
• Reasons you might not be credited for a sale
• Can the affiliate links be shortened/personalized?
• How to verify that your affiliate link works
• Integrating affiliate links into your website
• Getting paid for your affiliate sales
• Membership products
• Refunds

Getting started

As an affiliate on Gumroad, you can promote other creators' work and get paid. 

First, create an account and fill out your payout settings. After that, reach out to the creator you wish to sell for. They will need to know the email address attached to your Gumroad account, which you can double-check from the settings page. We cannot give out the contact information of our creators. 

You can also choose to promote any Gumroad creator's product through Gumroad Affiliates.

After a creator adds you as an affiliate, you'll get an email with your affiliate links and how much you'll be credited for each sale.

You can also go to your affiliated products dashboard to see all the products you're affiliated with, how much money you've made on those products, and quickly copy your links: 

Sticky affiliate links

You can also create a "sticky" affiliate URL with your affiliate ID as a URL parameter. 

Why? The standard affiliate URLs (with the "/a/" in them) depend on browser cookies to credit you. However, sometimes customers use browsers that block cookies. In such cases, the affiliate does not get credit for the sale, but sticky affiliate links will help you get credited regardless!

Your sticky affiliate URL will look like this: https://gumroad.com/l/:product_permalink?affiliate_id= <affiliate_id>. 

For example, if your affiliate URL for a given product is https://gumroad.com/a/1234567 and it redirects the customers to https://gumroad.com/l/abcxyz, then your sticky affiliate URL will be https://gumroad.com/l/abcxyz?affiliate_id=1234567. 

Please note - the only way you can be credited for your affiliate sales is if you share your affiliate links, found in the email we send you and on your affiliated products dashboard. 

We can't credit you for the sale if you accidentally share a product link. 

Other reasons you might not be credited for a sale

1. The customer's web browser does not accept cookies. 
2. The customer did not buy the product within 30 days of clicking your link. Our cookies expire after 30 days. 
3. The customer clicked a different affiliate's link after they clicked yours and bought the product.

Can the affiliate links be shortened/personalized?

Yes, affiliates can use link shorteners like bit.ly and they will get credited for the sales as expected as long as the customized link points to the affiliate URL. 

How to verify that your affiliate link works

If you've got all the above steps right, your link is ready to earn you some $$$. But for those who always like to double-check: there's a handy way to ensure that the link works fine! 

1. Click on your affiliate link — this will take you to the product/profile page of which you're an affiliate
2. Open your browser's dev tools. If you're on Chrome, the shortcut is Command+Option+C (Mac) or Control+Shift+C (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS)
3. Follow the steps on this page to reach the "Cookies" panel
4. Click on gumroad.com (of course) from the various cookie origins, and look for the cookie name starting with _gumroad_affiliate_id_You can even check when your cookie will expire in the "Expires/Max-Age" column.

Integrating affiliate links into your website

You can grab the affiliated product's widget code from the Widgets page while logged in to your account:

Also note that you can provide URL parameters (for example, &wanted=true&offer_code=thanksgiving) to our overlay as well.

If you need more help with setting up these widgets on your website, please refer to this article. 

As a Gumroad affiliate, you will not be able to see any sales on the iOS Gumroad Dashboard app. That means there is no place for you to track your sales or see analytics on how your links are being shared. If you wish to get detailed insights into how your links are performing, you can use a service like bit.ly and utilize the analytics tools they offer.  

Getting paid for your affiliate sales

We pay affiliates the same way we pay creators. You can read in detail about that process in this article. 

Membership products 

Membership products charge customers on a recurring basis, and if you help make a sale of a membership, you will get a portion of every charge.

Refunds

When a customer is refunded, 100% of the sale price is refunded to them. That, unfortunately, means you would also lose your share of the sale. 

If you have already been paid out for that sale, the refunded money will come out of your balance, which could make your balance go negative. To be paid out again, you would have to make enough sales to get your balance over $10.