DEV Community: Isla Davis

Building a $3k/Month Side Hustle as a UGC Creator (No Followers Required)

Isla Davis — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:54:50 +0000

The "you need 100k followers to make money as a creator" myth needs to die.

I'm a 27-year-old account manager with 2,300 TikTok followers. I started promoting SaaS products on Peddlum in May. By month 6, I was clearing $3,000/month in commissions.

This isn't a flex post. The numbers are small. But the model is teachable, and you can start this weekend.

What UGC actually is

UGC (User-Generated Content) creators don't need a huge following. We're hired by brands to make content for them — content that lives on the brand's accounts, ads, or landing pages, not ours.

The skills required:

Talk to a phone camera without freezing
Edit a 30-second video in CapCut
Hit a deadline

That's it. The market pays well because most marketers can't or won't do this themselves.

Why Peddlum specifically

Most UGC platforms (Billo, Insense, JoinBrands) take 30–50% of your earnings and gate-keep the brands. Peddlum works differently:

Brands list products with a commission rate
You apply to ones you want
You get paid per sale, not per video
Peddlum's cut comes from the seller, not you

It's a marketplace, not a middleman.

Month 1 — Setting up

Created a Peddlum creator profile in 20 minutes. Linked my TikTok, IG, and a 60-second portfolio video I made specifically for the application.

Applied to 14 products in week 1. Got accepted to 3.

First commissions: $47.

Month 2 — Finding what works

Tested two formats:

Talking head reviews (boring, 1.2% conversion)
"Day in my life" with the product woven in (4.8% conversion)

Killed the talking heads. Doubled down on the lifestyle format.

Month 2 commissions: $312.

Month 3 — Compounding

Three things compounded:

Reputation. Sellers see your past performance on Peddlum (sales driven, content quality). Better stats = better products approve you.
Rejected fewer products. I learned which sellers were serious vs which would ghost. Stopped applying to the latter.
Reusable assets. A "morning routine" template I wrote got reused for 4 different products with 5 minutes of edits each.

Month 3: $890.

Month 6 — The math

I now juggle 6 active products. About 4 hours of filming per week, 2 hours of editing.

Last month:

11 videos posted across products
187 sales attributed via UTM
Average commission: $16
Total: $2,992

That's ~$50/hour of actual work. Better than a lot of "real" jobs.

What you'd need to start this weekend

Phone with a decent camera. iPhone 11 or newer is fine.
Ring light. $25 on Amazon.
CapCut. Free.
A profile. Sign up at peddlum.com as a creator.
A portfolio video. Pick a product you actually use — anything — and make a 45-second review of it. That's your sample.

The real talk

Three things kill most people who try this:

Inconsistency. Sellers want creators who deliver weekly, not in spurts.
Generic content. "Hey guys check out this product" gets 0.3% conversion. Specific stories about specific moments get 5%.
Picking the wrong products. If you don't believe in it, the camera knows.

But if you can show up consistently, write a decent hook, and pick products you'd actually use — this works at any follower count.

I'd start at peddlum.com. The application takes 20 minutes. The worst case is you get rejected. The best case is a side hustle that pays your rent.

The 90% Revenue Share Math: Why Gumroad's 12% Cut Costs You More Than You Think

Isla Davis — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:44:54 +0000

Every digital product seller has done some version of this calculation:

"10% fee isn't bad. That's just the cost of doing business."

Then you actually do the math for a year. And you realize 10% of $20,000 is $2,000 — and you could have kept most of that.
Here's the breakdown nobody on Gumroad's marketing page wants to show you.
The actual cut
Gumroad advertises 10%. But you also pay:

Stripe fees (~2.9% + $0.30)
Paypal fees on PayPal sales
VAT handling fees (in some regions)

Effective cut on a $20 product: ~12.5%.
Peddlum charges 10% flat, and absorbs payment processing into that. Effective cut: 10%.
That 2.5% difference sounds tiny. Let me show you what it actually is.
A year of sales
My 2024 numbers, month by month:
January — Revenue: $1,200. Gumroad would take $150 (12.5%). Peddlum takes $120 (10%). Difference: $30.
February — Revenue: $980. Gumroad cut: $123. Peddlum cut: $98. Difference: $25.
March — Revenue: $1,450. Gumroad cut: $181. Peddlum cut: $145. Difference: $36.
April — Revenue: $2,100. Gumroad cut: $263. Peddlum cut: $210. Difference: $53.
May — Revenue: $1,800. Gumroad cut: $225. Peddlum cut: $180. Difference: $45.
June — Revenue: $2,400. Gumroad cut: $300. Peddlum cut: $240. Difference: $60.
July — Revenue: $1,900. Gumroad cut: $238. Peddlum cut: $190. Difference: $48.
August — Revenue: $2,200. Gumroad cut: $275. Peddlum cut: $220. Difference: $55.
September — Revenue: $1,700. Gumroad cut: $213. Peddlum cut: $170. Difference: $43.
October — Revenue: $2,500. Gumroad cut: $313. Peddlum cut: $250. Difference: $63.
November — Revenue: $2,800. Gumroad cut: $350. Peddlum cut: $280. Difference: $70.
December — Revenue: $3,400. Gumroad cut: $425. Peddlum cut: $340. Difference: $85.
Year total: Revenue $24,430. Gumroad would have taken $3,054. Peddlum took $2,443. Total saved: $611.
So that's $611 over a year. Not life-changing.
But wait.
The hidden cost — creator marketing
Gumroad has no built-in creator marketplace. So if I want UGC creators promoting my product, I either:

Hire a UGC agency ($500–$2,000/month)
Use a platform like Aspire or Tribe ($300+/month)
Cold DM creators (free, but eats my weekends)

Peddlum bundles the creator marketplace into the same 10% fee. I tested this in 2024 — running a parallel "agency" track for 4 months cost me $1,200 in agency fees on top of the 12.5% Gumroad was already taking.
Adjusted total cost saved by switching:

$611 in fees
$1,200 in agency fees I would have paid for what Peddlum gives me free
= $1,811 / year

For one product line. I have three.
When the math changes
This isn't true for everyone. Switching makes sense if:

You sell digital products or SaaS
You'd benefit from creator promotion (most do)
You're under $250k/year in revenue (custom enterprise deals change the math)

It's probably not worth switching if:

You sell exclusively to a list you already own (the marketplace traffic doesn't help you)
You have a custom checkout integrated into your site (migration cost > savings)
You're locked into a Gumroad subscription tier with grandfathered pricing

How to switch without losing momentum

Open the Peddlum account: peddlum.com
List the product (~15 min)
Don't delete the Gumroad listing yet — run both for 30 days
Compare conversion rates and creator-driven sales
If Peddlum wins (it did for me), redirect Gumroad checkout to Peddlum

Total switching effort: under 2 hours.
That's it. Run your own numbers. The 90% vs 87.5% framing is too small to motivate change — but layer on the creator marketing piece and it's a different conversation.

I Switched From Gumroad to Peddlum — Here's What Actually Changed

Isla Davis — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:37:28 +0000

For the last three years I've sold digital templates on Gumroad. It worked — but two problems kept eating at me:

The cut they take after Stripe fees crept above 12%
Finding creators to promote my products meant cold-DMing strangers on Instagram for hours

Last month I moved everything to Peddlum (peddlum.com). Here's what actually changed.

What Peddlum is

Peddlum calls itself "the marketplace that pays you to sell, promote, and buy." That sounds like marketing fluff until you realize it's literally three connected products:

A storefront for digital products and SaaS tools (sellers keep 90%)
A creator marketplace where UGC creators apply to promote your product
A discovery layer where buyers find quality-reviewed tools

Most platforms do one of these. Peddlum connects all three.

What changed for me

More revenue. I was netting around 87% on Gumroad after Stripe fees. On Peddlum I net about 90%. On a $5,000 month, that's $150 extra in my pocket.

Creators come to me. This is the big one. I list my product, and within days I had 4 UGC creators apply to promote it. I pick who I want, set the commission, and they make the content. No more cold outreach.

Affiliate program included. Gumroad makes you set this up separately. Peddlum has it built in.

Quality control. Buyers trust the platform more because products are reviewed before they go live. My conversion rate went up about 1.2%.

Who should consider Peddlum

Indie makers selling templates, ebooks, courses, Notion docs
SaaS founders who want creator marketing without an agency
UGC creators looking for products to promote (no huge following needed)
Buyers who want vetted digital products

Who probably shouldn't

People with a massive following and a direct sales engine already
Sellers of physical products (Peddlum is digital-only)
Anyone who only ever sells one $9 ebook

How to get started

Go to peddlum.com and sign up. Seller onboarding takes about 15 minutes. Listing your first product takes another 10. If you want creators to promote it, you set the commission and they apply.

Eight products in, revenue is up 14% month over month. Not life-changing, but the time I'm not spending on creator outreach? That's the real win.

If you sell digital products and you're stuck on Gumroad or Sellfy out of habit, give Peddlum a try. Worst case you waste 30 minutes. Best case you find what I found.

Link again: peddlum.com