Going global: get paid and pick your platforms first
This site is for indie developers, cross-border sellers and freelancers in China. No news aggregation — only four things we have actually done ourselves: how money gets back to you, which platforms to use, which tools, and how to launch properly.
Three routes. Pick one and finish it.
Win overseas clients on Freelancer
For skilled people who need first cash. Milestone escrow means the client funds first, you deliver, then payment releases. The hard part is not signup — it is the cold-start reviews.
Open a store on Gumroad / Payhip
For people with templates, ebooks or toolkits. Low signup barrier, no overseas company needed — but fees and payout thresholds differ a lot, and the wrong choice costs points on every sale.
Launch on Product Hunt / Indie Hackers
For people with a working product. Launching is free; what decides the outcome is two weeks of community participation before launch day.
Order matters: payments before work
The most common failure is not traffic — it is selling something and being unable to get the money home. Walk the full payment chain first: can PayPal pay you, what is the platform payout threshold, what does one wire home cost. Every number is in the payments map, each with a source.
Payments map: PayPal / Gumroad / Payhip compared →
A realistic first 30 days
| Week | Payments & infrastructure | Route work |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Register PayPal, verify email, bind your bank; walk one small transaction end to end. Set up a stable network (see the NordVPN guide) and keep it consistent from day one. | Pick ONE route (A, B or C). Finishing one beats starting three. |
| Week 2 | Complete your platform profile in full — skills, samples, pricing. Half-filled profiles are invisible. | A: send focused bids on small, well-specified jobs. B: create the store and the first product page. C: start posting and replying on Indie Hackers. |
| Week 3 | Run the launch checklist on anything public: links, checkout, mobile layout. | A: deliver the first jobs and ask for reviews. B: bring your own traffic — posts, communities, email. C: build the Product Hunt Upcoming page and prepare assets. |
| Week 4 | Withdraw your first accumulated balance once it is worth the fixed $35 wire fee — not before. | Review the numbers: replies, conversion, net received after fees. Adjust price or platform using the worked examples on this site, not gut feeling. |
Learn by field: 12 niches, and how each one makes money
Payments and network are the shared foundation, but money is made inside a field. One playbook per field: how the money flows, zero-to-first-payment steps, worked math, a week-one checklist and the common ways people fail.
Selling things
Cross-border e-commerce · Print on demand · Digital products · Design assets
Selling time & skills
Freelancing · Remote services / VA · Language services · Data services · Teaching & consulting
Two things nobody going global can skip
Network & account safety
Signing up, logging in and operating overseas platforms needs a stable, consistent network environment — account risk controls notice exactly this. Our setup, the real commission terms and the pitfalls are on the dedicated page.
Your own server + a static site
One annual VPS plus Cloudflare Pages can carry your landing pages, services and automation. What to buy, how to deploy, how DNS works — written step by step.
Rather buy the outcome? Our services
This site is run by SweetAI. We sell three services for people going global: tracking repair (TagAudit), data collection delivery (Web Data Runs), and English listing copywriting for cross-border sellers. All prices are public on the services page.
Reference: our live Gumroad product Life Admin OS ($29) went through exactly this payment and listing flow.
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