Suspended from Gumroad and looking for platforms to sell an ebook

I’ve made an ebook and sold it on Gumroad, until Monday happened. I’ve made some profit already, but ignored the first disputed sell that Gumroad told me about sometime in November. On Sunday I got another dispute and that time I emailed the customer, no response so probably it was fraudulent, in hindsight.

That meant I did go over the “no more than 1% of revenue in chargebacks” allowed rule, which immediately suspends your account, without any reinstate possible. It’s not immediately Gumroad’s fault (though some fraud detection warnings and tools wouldn’t hurt, similar to Stripe’s).

I want to continue selling my book. I already have a verified Stripe account and I prefer to use it on my new platform. Additionally my business is already registered for a VAT-ID here in Austria. So VAT-MOSS isn’t more work than making one more VAT return additionally, I’m not doing that many sells per month.

I also prefer selling on my own site instead of building a new “shop” site.

My two main contenders for a solution going forward:

  • Sendowl: Specifically for ebooks and digital products. Delivers reports which are already tailored for the VAT-MOSS process in the EU. 15$/m
  • Shopify Lite: 9$/m for selling on my own site. Setup for EU VAT rates looks easy, reporting also looks sufficient for doing the necessary paperwork. I can also continue to sell on my own site. Shopify would allow me to sell all kinds of further products, if I want to later on.

What are your thoughts?

Edit: Updated the topic to better describe what I’m asking.

Maybe https://paddle.com ? They do VAT for you (and cost a bit more than Gumroad i think). It’s pricing per sale, not per month.

1 Like

Maybe https://paddle.com ? They do VAT for you (and cost a bit more than Gumroad i think). It’s pricing per sale, not per month.

What do they offer in terms of fraud prevention? Bringing my own Stripe account also gives me Stripe’s very comprehensive fraud prevention tools.

With stripe you sell yourself. With paddle (like gumroad), they sell for you. Fraud protection is their business.
Stripe fraud prevention works on credit card scams etc, but not on fraudulent returns. That’s you own problem with stripe, as you are the seller and you are responsible for customers wanting their money back.

1 Like

SOLVED: I went with https://paddle.com. They are great. They have fraud detection and they directly wire the money to my bank account.

Check it out here:

https://www.christophh.net/php-socket-programming-handbook/

1 Like