Getly
Here is an uncomfortable number from our own catalogue, measured 30 August 2026. Getly has 4,390 live products. 16 of them have a review. Thirty reviews exist in total, averaging 4.73 stars, and 25 of those thirty are five stars.
Two things follow from that, and they point in opposite directions.
The good news first, because it is real
People who review digital products on this marketplace are overwhelmingly happy: 83% of all reviews are five stars, and the average sits at 4.73. That is not a platform full of disappointed buyers. Whatever the catalogue's problems are, "the files are not what people expected" is not showing up as one.
It also means the risk of asking for a review is lower than it feels. The fear that a review request will surface a complaint is not supported by anything in this data.
The bad news, which is bigger
99.6% of live products carry no social proof at all. A buyer landing on one of them sees a price, a description, some images, and an empty space where other people's opinions would be.
For a physical product that is survivable — you can see the thing. For a digital one, the file is the entire product and it cannot be inspected before purchase. The review section is doing more work here than it would anywhere else, and on almost every listing it is doing none.
We are not going to claim a number for what that costs, because we cannot measure it: with 16 reviewed products there is no honest comparison to run. What we can say is that the sellers who have sold something have 5.7 live products on average against 2.6 for those who have not, so whatever is separating them, it is not review count either.
Why the first review is so hard to get
A digital purchase has no unboxing moment. The buyer clicks, downloads, uses the file, and the transaction is over. Nothing in that sequence naturally produces the pause where a person thinks about writing something.
There is also a numbers problem. Only 59 stores on the whole marketplace have made a paid sale, and the median one of those made $20.00 across an average of 7.3 sales. Seven buyers is not a pool from which reviews arrive by themselves.
The one thing that works
Ask. Directly, once, and at the right moment.
The right moment is not immediately after purchase — the buyer has not used the file yet and has nothing to say. It is a few days later, after they have had a chance to open it. Getly sends a receipt at purchase and a download link; a short personal message through the platform's messaging a week later, asking whether the file worked for them, is the closest thing to a reliable review generator that exists for digital goods.
Two things to avoid, because both backfire:
- Do not offer anything in exchange. A review bought with a discount is worth less than no review, and reviews on Getly carry a verified-purchase flag precisely so buyers can trust them.
- Do not ask twice. One message that goes unanswered is a message. Two is a nag, and the second one is what gets a seller blocked.
What to do while you have none
An empty review section is not a reason to wait. It is a reason to make the rest of the listing carry the weight the reviews are not carrying yet:
Say exactly what is inside — page counts, file formats, dimensions, what software is needed. Getly reads these facts from your file and shows them automatically, and they are the only claims on the page a buyer can verify before paying. Show real output rather than a mock-up. And say what the file is not, which is the sentence most listings skip and the one that prevents the refund.
Across the platform's whole history there have been 23 refund requests against 693 completed orders. The buyers are not difficult. They just need to know what they are getting.
