19 year old designer of Pinterest, Sahil Lavingia, is launching his latest online creation Gumroad.

Gumroad is an eCommerce site tipped to take online shopping to a whole new level of social. Set to rival the closed network of iTunes, Gumroad allows digital creations to be uploaded and sold. Think apps, music, blog posts, any content creation that you can share and sell, can be uploaded. Creators can sell to their Twitter followers, Facebook friends. Gumroad makes money by taking a 5% cut of every purchase, compared to the 30% retained by Apple across from app store.

Like iTunes, Gumroad competes with the philosophy that creativity and content can/should be shared for free. However, Lavingia notes that the biggest problem won’t be getting people to buy content on Gumroad, it will be counteracting the fear that creators have when it comes to putting a price “on the stuff they create”.

Gumroad’s major selling point is that it offers a service for amateur creators to share their products and potentially make a buck unlike any other platform. Lavingia hopes that the service will grow to attract professional creators and artists who are looking for alternate distribution models.

Rebecca Haly

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1835159/gumroad-pinterest-sahil-lavingia