my honest take after 90 days using MadeThis to build an online business

I want to write this the way I wish someone had written it for me when I was deciding whether to try MadeThis.

Not a marketing write-up. Not a feature checklist. A real account of what the first 90 days looked like — the wins, the frustrations, the revenue numbers, and my honest read on whether it was worth it.

Fair warning: I do have an affiliate relationship with MadeThis. If you sign up through links on this page, I earn a commission. I'm telling you this upfront because I think it's the right thing to do, and because I think what I'm about to share is honest regardless.

The Setup: What I Started With

I came to MadeThis from Gumroad. I'd been selling digital products for about 14 months — mainly PDF guides and a couple of Notion templates — and was making around $900/month. Not bad, but not growing.

My complaints with Gumroad: the 10% fee on the free plan was eating margin, and the platform didn't help me think about strategy at all. I had a store. I didn't have a business partner.

I set up MadeThis on a Thursday evening. I had all five of my existing products migrated and live by the following Sunday.

Month 1: $847

First month on MadeThis, I made $847. That's slightly lower than my last month on Gumroad ($933). I expected this — any platform switch involves some disruption, and my existing SEO traffic pointed to old product links I had to redirect.

What I noticed that was different from Gumroad: the MadeThis outbound marketing tools started generating clicks in the first week. Not massive traffic — maybe 40–50 visitors — but they were warm, targeted visitors interested in my niche specifically. I made three sales from outbound traffic in that first month. On Gumroad I made zero from platform-provided traffic.

I also had my first conversation with the AI co-founder. I described my product lineup and asked for its read on what was underperforming and why. Its response was specific and, upon reflection, accurate: one product had a description that was listing features (what it contains) rather than outcomes (what it does for you). I rewrote it. That product's conversion rate increased noticeably in month two.

Month 2: $1,340

Month two was a meaningful jump. Three things drove it:

1. The redirected SEO traffic stabilized. My old product pages had properly redirected to the new ones, and organic search traffic was back to normal levels.

2. One new product. I created a new guide in my second month — a detailed system for a specific professional situation. The AI co-founder helped me position it. I priced it at $37. It made 22 sales in month two, which was $814 from a product that didn't exist in month one.

3. Better conversion on existing products. The description rewrite from month one was working. Combined with some other positioning tweaks the AI suggested, my average conversion rate on product page views went up noticeably.

Month 3: $2,100

By month three I had a rhythm. I was creating one new product per month, improving one existing product's positioning, and writing one SEO article per week. The outbound marketing was running in the background.

Month three felt like the first time I understood what "compound growth" means in practice. The traffic I'd been generating for months was accumulating. The products I'd built were still selling without ongoing promotion. Adding a new product dropped into an existing traffic stream — it started converting almost immediately.

I hit $2,100 in month three. More than double my last month on Gumroad.

The Things I Genuinely Like

The AI co-founder is real and useful. I say this because I was skeptical before I tried it. I've been using it almost weekly now. It doesn't give generic advice. It gives specific, business-aware advice that reflects what's actually happening in my store.

The customer support automation saves real time. I check my customer queue daily. Most days: nothing. Some days: one or two things that need me. Without this, I estimate I'd be spending 30–45 minutes per day on standard customer questions.

The economics are better. Fewer fees, more tools included. At my volume, MadeThis is meaningfully cheaper than Gumroad was even before accounting for the additional revenue the platform drove.

Everything is in one place. I'm not maintaining five different tools. MadeThis is the whole stack.

The Things That Frustrated Me

Smaller ecosystem. Gumroad has been around for a decade. There are tutorials for everything, third-party tools that integrate, and a large creator community. MadeThis is newer. When I hit an edge case, I sometimes had to figure it out myself.

Some advanced features are still developing. I wanted a specific kind of upsell flow that wasn't quite supported yet. It's been added since, but at the time it was a gap.

The onboarding learning curve. The platform is intuitive overall, but the AI co-founder specifically has a learning curve. Getting the most out of it requires learning how to prompt it well — what context to give, what questions to ask. It took me a few weeks to feel fluent with it.

90-Day Revenue Summary

• Month 1: $847
• Month 2: $1,340
• Month 3: $2,100

Total 90-day revenue: $4,287

For comparison, my last three months on Gumroad averaged $920/month. The MadeThis average was $1,429/month over the same number of months, even accounting for the slow first month.

I'm not attributing all of that to the platform. I got better at creating and positioning products over this period. But the platform gave me tools that genuinely contributed to the improvement.

Would I Recommend It?

Yes, clearly. If you're a solo creator selling digital products, MadeThis is the strongest platform I've found.

The free plan is a no-brainer starting point. You can build a store, list products, and generate real revenue before spending a dollar. If it works, upgrade. If it doesn't, you haven't lost anything.

After 90 days, I'm not looking for a replacement. I'm focused on continuing to build what's working.

Read my full detailed MadeThis review here or compare MadeThis to Gumroad side-by-side if you're making a platform decision.