This was around 2015, I landed on a JavaScript image cropper and uploader. I built my own and have been working on it ever since.
- Why Gumroad instead of Stripe/Paddle?
- How do you enforce licenses? Once they have the JS they can just stop paying?
- Back when I started I didn’t have a backend for customer accounts so it was useful that Gumroad handled that. Can upload a file and then allow access to active subscribers. Paddle didn’t, Stripe doesn’t handle EU VAT nonsense.
- I don’t. Pirates gonna Pirate. Customers have access to the last version released within their subscription period, license is perpetual.
Moved to sell the product on my own website under my own terms and by now I’m at $20K+ per month revenue, which is pretty crazy.
I try to write a lot of articles on web dev topics on my blog.
Additionally I built an open source file upload library (FilePond) which kind of acts as a stepping stone to the image editing solution. Easier to attract developers with a good free product. :)
Finally I’ve moved into offering free services that utilize the editor I built, I try to launch these on easy to remember domain names. They act as a demo of what the editor can do and they feature i tiny “powered by” link at the top.