Happy Sunday, creators!

On Gumroad, this week alone:

12,527 creators earned something this week

3,560 creators earned more than $100

630 creators earned more than $1,000

39 creators earned more than $10,000

2 creators earned more than $100,000

Educator Turned Creator

Teaching is in Kristina Garner’s DNA. Kristina has been teaching since she was in high school. Yes, high school. She taught Pre-K starting at 16 years old; she taught pre-school throughout college, and she taught kindergarten after college. From the beginning, she’s always had a deep love for education.

After college, she flipped between teaching full-time and part-time. When she taught part-time, the entrepreneur in her came out. She started a garden design business. But then, a few years later, she stepped away and went back to full-time teaching.

It started with a problem.

Kristina and her family moved from Colorado to Hawaii. During that time, they were on the prowl to find an affordable pre-school with the wow factor. The problem was, they never found it.

Instead, she decided to educate her own children.

Kristina said, “I have a lot of background in it, and it’s something I love. I love teaching. I love writing curriculum. I love children. I love education. It comes naturally to me, and I get excited about it.”

So, she built her own curriculum.

Not only did she build her own curriculum for her kids, but she started blogging and creating content around homeschooling. She knew if she faced the problem, then other parents also faced it.

In 2015, Kristina started writing her Early Years Curriculum and finished in the Summer of 2016. During that time, she also started creating a kindergarten curriculum for her eldest daughter.

And Then She Built A Business

In 2017, she launched Blossom and Root as a side project. Blossom and Root is a creative, nature-based, secular homeschooling curriculum for kids. Turns out, many other parents faced the same problem and wanted a homeschool curriculum that they could trust.

And in 2019, she went all in. All of her focus and time was devoted to building Blossom and Root. What started out as a few sales and emails from customers evolved to hundreds of sales and emails a day.

And with COVID, things only accelerated.

Now, Kristina has created four different curriculums that remain grounded in her ethos: flexibility, adaptability, and creativity.

You can read Kristina’s full story here.

You can purchase her homeschooling curriculums here.

What We Shipped For Gumroad Creators

Gumroad is now a Stripe verified partner. You can get started here.

We’ve brought back our outstanding balance for payouts.

We added a highly requested option: You can now add an option in Posts to email all affiliates, with an optional filter to choose the products affiliated for.

In case you missed it: All your Gumroad links now start with your name and your favicon.

What’s Happening In The Creator Economy

Inspiring Gumroad Creators

Abushady aligns the mind, body, and spirit through breathwork
Vegalia helps your art come to life with her procreate brushes
Aadit Sheth provides you with the frameworks to use Twitter as a tool to thrive as a creator
Cynthia Lin can teach you how to play the ukulele in just 5 minutes a day
Michael Filipiuk created a UX/UI workbook to help you build beautiful products from scratch

Collaborate > Compete

As creators, it’s very easy to naturally want to compete against other creators -- especially creators who are also building within your domain.

But instead, you should be collaborating with them.

Why?

Because a creator within your domain means they’ve built an audience similar to the one you’re trying to develop.

And collaborating puts you and your work in front of that audience.

It’s a perfect way to cross-promote and expand your audience as a creator.

View our Instagram to see how we’re going to make this a possibility using Gumroad.

Create A Direct Line Of Communication With Your Audience

As a creator, building an email list is a vital part of your business.

Unlike social media platforms where algorithms determine your reach, with an email list, it never changes.

You tap one button and you can reach your entire audience.

Plus, email is one of the greatest tools to:

Drive traffic
Generate leads
Build relationships
Increase sales

In a few weeks, we’ll be launching a course that will teach you exactly how to build an email list from scratch.

Until then, here’s the best way for creators to start building an email list.

We hope you have a great rest of your Sunday,

The Gumroad Team

Commissions: Custom Work, Custom Pay

One-on-One Calls: A New Way to Earn on Gumroad

Gumroad's Q3 2024 Public Board Meeting

Tipping is live!

Split fees with collaborators!

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