The success of Gumroad is in part due to the stores-beget-stores snowball effect: if someone is successful selling online, those that want to emulate the succes

The success of Gumroad is in part due to the stores-beget-stores snowball effect: if someone is successful selling online, those that want to emulate the success -- of which there are many -- will gravitate towards the platforms their eyeballs are on. I suggest setting aside paid advertising, and instead invest in paying creators[1] to switch platforms. For example, pick some medium successful Gumroad creators (maybe they do $1k/sales per month) and offer them a 20% bonus on each sale they make through your platform. A single creator using your platform to make sales will deliver far more value than thousands in paid adverts -- and you can directly link spend to revenue, which is nice for attribution of spend. [1] I'd pick creators who operate in the creator niche, e.g: people who make content about running an online business, because they're most likely to convert into platform users.