Loving the simplicity of the idea. The simplicity is worth a higher cut (though maybe not 30% ;-)) and makes it a lot more attractive to use in small situations. One thing you need to beware of, though, is the filing requirements.. you might have to start issuing tons of 1099s and that process will cost you.
Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
41–50 of 215 posts
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine you have a Fireworks iPhone mockup template. Instead of setting up a store somewhere to list your ONE item, you put the template up on your website and link to it through gumroad. Then, you give out the Gumroad link on Twitter: "Need a sweet Fireworks iPhone UI template? Buy it for a buck: gumroad.url" Your twatting friends click it, give you a dollar, get redirected to your website. They download the templat…
And 2 minutes later the "secret" link is shared on Twitter.
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand that part either.
If this really is possible, you'd have to create a user who is somehow whitelisted to get the linked item in question.
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine you have a Fireworks iPhone mockup template. Instead of setting up a store somewhere to list your ONE item, you put the template up on your website and link to it through gumroad. Then, you give out the Gumroad link on Twitter: "Need a sweet Fireworks iPhone UI template? Buy it for a buck: gumroad.url" Your twatting friends click it, give you a dollar, get redirected to your website. They download the templat…
And 2 minutes later the "secret" link is shared on Twitter.
I think people who use Gumroad won't really have that as a concern - but if enough people bring it up, I'll see what I can do about it!
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#44What do you plan on doing about fraud? Seems like it would be way too easy to move money around with stolen credit cards.
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#45Interesting idea, but I see two main issues with this. First, anyone who pays and gets to the resulting link can trivially share that link; of course, you can always ask them nicely not to do so, and in some contexts that will work, but in general the security model just doesn't work unless you authenticate each paid user at the destination. You need to come up with an answer to this. Second, if you market this as a…
That second formulation is how I thought of it in the first place.
You could get around the link-sharing problem for those that wanted to avoid it by offering single-use URLs, and provide Gumroad either with a way of generating a new single-use URL for your resource, or a way to pull a new URL from your site. Both of these methods would require some degree of control over the resource, however (you wouldn't be able to do this for content hosted by third parties).
For those who aren't fussed about security, you could offer it as a really easy way to optionally pay for content - eg a rapid "Donate" method.
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#46Over this past weekend I had the idea to build a sort of link shortener but with a payment system built-in. There have been many times in the past where I wanted to share a link - on Twitter or just through IM with a few friends - but did not want to go through the overhead of setting up a whole store. So I built Gumroad. I coded/designed from 12PM -> 11PM on Saturday and 8AM -> 11PM on Sunday. There are still tons o…
What does Stripe's fee structure look like?
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#47Over this past weekend I had the idea to build a sort of link shortener but with a payment system built-in. There have been many times in the past where I wanted to share a link - on Twitter or just through IM with a few friends - but did not want to go through the overhead of setting up a whole store. So I built Gumroad. I coded/designed from 12PM -> 11PM on Saturday and 8AM -> 11PM on Sunday. There are still tons o…
I love the idea! This makes it really easy to sell scripts (e.g. your own jQuery plugins or whatever) for $5 where it would normally be too much work to set up some payment processing.
The 30% cut is way too high though. Especially for higher priced links - I wouldn't want to sell my $99 game engine[1] through your service. I think something like "5%, but at least $0.30" would make more sense. But maybe having such "highly" priced links wasn't your intention in the first place?
[1] http://impactjs.com/ (Can't mention it often enough :))
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#48This looks like a really expensive way to get Rick Roll'd :)
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#49You can tell clients to check the http referrer for your domain. That would (mostly) stop people from posting now-useless destination URLs online.
http referrers are easily spoofed, of course, but it'll be enough to prevent most people from sharing secret urls on twitter. You could also pivot and allow people to upload files to your own server, but that's a different story.
Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad
#50[deleted]