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Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

gumroad.com

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Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#151

Post by caffeine »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #136
phoboslab wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, at the moment only nerds use Bitcoins, but this _could_ become as universal as PayPal is today. But yes, it probably doesn't make much (commercial) sense right now.

> Bitcoins [...] _could_ become as universal as PayPal is today Putting aside numerous other issues, bitcoin.org states "The total eventual circulation will be 21 million bitcoins". [EDIT: DanI-S pointed out that bitcoins can already be subdivided. So this was switched from "there are too few bitcoins to support even American e-commerce" to "bitcoins are not valuable enough to support even American e-commerce". The n…

The obvious hole in your chain of reasoning is that "$0.70/bitcoin" would obviously change when every American attempted to fill his wallet with bitcoins.

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#153

Post by rexreed »

louismg wrote: post #99
sahillavingia wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome! I'm doing Net 60 as that's what Stripe does. The CC data is safe, but of course there's no reinforcement on-site. I'll add something.

Posted on it as well. http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/04/gumroad-launches-to-sell-d...

Wow - that's fast feedback! On a separate side-note would you be interested in early access to apps for similar sort of reviews / blog postings, or is that inappropriate to ask?

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#154

Post by caffeine »

sahillavingia wrote: post #2

Over 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…

Suggestion: you should now build a second app which generates a stream of single-use urls that are invalidated as soon as they are accessed, and which proxy through to an original base url. Then hook the two apps together and profit.

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#155

Post by Natsu »

jasonlotito wrote: post #140
sahillavingia wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they're aware. Fees are already capped. I'm not collecting CC data.

That's cool. Far too many people ignore what a solid relationship with the upstream payment provider can give you. Glad the fees are capped. I saw a $100 link, so not sure about what the cap is. As for collecting CC data, if it's passing through your code, even if you don't store it, you are accountable for it. I've seen the silliest things with people claiming they aren't storing CC data. And yet, you can browse fil…

> I've been doing this for 10 years now, and as soon as someone opens up a payment system like this, money laundering and other schemes will review how to abuse it. So when I see something like this, I get nervous. I ask: how would I exploit it.

Maybe you should write a guide of all the ways you've seen people go wrong and the best ways to do things (and why). That could be useful to a lot of people on HN.

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#156

Post by jasongullickson »

suking wrote: post #31

Nice - how about this as a feature: # of downloads allowed. This would allow people to sell just 1 copy or set up something like a groupon-esque clone. First 50 people get 50% off. Then after 50 people say you're too late. Just an idea.

I really like this idea, especially for art. It solves the "what if someone just passes the final link around" problem because if you're getting 1 of 25 copies of something you're less likely to go out of your way to reduce the rarity of the item you bought.

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#157

Post by jacquesgt »

fizx wrote: post #74
phoboslab wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

I disagree. Take a bare minimum of 15%. That seems to be about what's competitive for non-merchant-account payment systems. You'll need to keep margins up.

Exactly. And keep in mind, you're competing against someone setting up their own web store. If I didn't use your service, I probably wouldn't go through all of the trouble of setting something up. In that scenario, I make $0. If you charge 30%, and I price my stuff at $10.00, I make $7 per transaction, which is $7 more than I would have made without your service.

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#158

Post by thorax »

sahillavingia wrote: post #2

Over 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…

Love the idea! I'd also love a thumbnail/pic for each link, though. Something that might give them a little more evidence of what they're getting into.

Re: Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad

#160

Post by sahillavingia »

DrOkter wrote: post #131

Why wouldn't stripe just implement this themselves? Since their payment processing service (and API?) is 99% of the project, seems like they'd make their own and cut you off if this gained any traction.

It's not 99% of the project, it's one line of code (among over 2,000).
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