About 5 months ago I hacked together something really simple with Mailchimp and Stripe. I didn't bother with optimising it at that point; it was more of a proof-of-concept that I wanted to try. I want to teach you to do the same.

Customer experience flow

It was basically:

1. Customer reads a blog post.
2. There is a link in the post to free resources if email is inputted
3. Automatic response, with free resources links + link to landing page
4. Customer buys from the landing page.

Tools used

For 1: I used a post on Wordpress, which talked about passing insurance exams quickly. It got really popular and people started requesting for my study resources, so I was manually sending out the notes. I then decided to automate the sending.

For 2: I used Mailchimp's Signup Form function, example here.

For 3: I used the Final Welcome Email function in Mailchimp to send the free resources out.

For 4: I used Mailchimp's Product Content Block function to create the product I wanted to sell, and hosted it on a Mailchimp landing page, with Stripe integrations.

Drawbacks

One drawback is automating the order fulfillment. I had to manually check Stripe when someone paid me and email them the item. To fix this, I could have linked my account to Gumroad instead, or coded up some simple order fulfillment with Stripe's existing APIs. BigCartel is also an option, though they seem to be focused more on physical products rather than online ones (and is missing order fulfillment too).

I could probably also have optimised the landing page more - it was a quickly written landing page with the benefits for customers clearly written out, but it wasn't opitimised at all. Alternatively, you can create a landing page within Stripe, too (see here for example).