I love how Sahil learnt all the stuff he built into Gumroad along the way, through other projects. Beautiful design: Dayta, Pinterest and turntable.fm. Short links & payments: Crate. He started small, kept on learning and now the product looks amazing. Congratulations and all the best!
Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#52As an European, I seem to have a different stance on the morality of customers.
So your first user buys the link. Say to a mp3 or a pdf. Now has the link in plain text.
What's stopping the user from posting that very link all over twitter, facebook, etc? "omg check out kanye's new single!1!!"
Seriously at a loss on how this will work in real life, with real customers.
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#535% cut? No way. Dwolla https://www.dwolla.com/ takes $0.25 per transaction and NOTHING for amounts less than $10.00
Dwolla doesn't let you take credit cards. People buy things online with credit cards. It's also inappropriate for the flow this app wants. You click a link, enter your CC#, get your content. Takes 5 seconds. With Dwolla: click a link, sent to Dwolla, create a username, password and PIN, add an address, wait to receive a phone call or SMS, click a link in a verification mail, add your bank account, wait 2-3 days to ve…
You only need to that the first time. Once you have it set up it's just as fast and way cheaper for both merchants and buyers. There are plenty of payment services that take a percentage cut, Dwolla is the only one that doesn't.
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dwolla doesn't let you take credit cards. People buy things online with credit cards. It's also inappropriate for the flow this app wants. You click a link, enter your CC#, get your content. Takes 5 seconds. With Dwolla: click a link, sent to Dwolla, create a username, password and PIN, add an address, wait to receive a phone call or SMS, click a link in a verification mail, add your bank account, wait 2-3 days to ve…
You only need to that the first time. Once you have it set up it's just as fast and way cheaper for both merchants and buyers. There are plenty of payment services that take a percentage cut, Dwolla is the only one that doesn't.
That's not true. There are lots of flat rate ACH payment processing companies, just like Dwolla. Your utility companies probably use them, for example. Almost any company that lets you pay your bill by providing your bank account details is using one.
Being paid by ACH through PayPal is free and has been free for the past 13 years. PayPal only charges once you upgrade to a Premiere or Businesss account, which is what allows an account to accept credit card payments. It also lets you pay someone having to deposit money in advance like Dwolla -- PayPal calls these payments eChecks. The merchant is notified immediately about the payment then again when the transfer clears.
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#55I am happy for sahillavingia that he get the investment, however isn't it little bit funny that in the techcrunch article most of the time they tell how good his designer skills are :) ? (no doubt, they are)
I see this not for the first time, that a really simple and straight forward project get much attention just because of nice design. Such kind of projects is easly copycated, don't they? So, that means that whenever you have a nice idea but your design skills sucks, then don't publish it before you haven't polished it, otherwise it will be copycated with much nicer look'n'feel and you sucked. Is this is not a contradiction on its own (that we were told to publish as eary as possible) ?
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. http://jungleblaze.com
FYI your Facebook login doesn't work, displays Facebook error message when clicking it and also Twitter login redirects back to homepage, on the second click it logs me in.
FB Fixed - thanks for bringing it to my attention. Looking into Twitter now
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#57As an European, I seem to have a different stance on the morality of customers. So your first user buys the link. Say to a mp3 or a pdf. Now has the link in plain text. What's stopping the user from posting that very link all over twitter, facebook, etc? "omg check out kanye's new single!1!!" Seriously at a loss on how this will work in real life, with real customers.
There is nothing stopping user from posting the file on megaupload (oops) another file sharing service as well.
Any protection, including DRM, link obfuscation or IP filtering, makes user's life harder. If they want to post it, they will post it. But once you started the war with a customer by putting those little obstacles in their way, you can't stop it.
Imagine a different scenario, where it's easy not to pay but you only have to deal with your conscience.
Imagine _why posting a new chapter of the Poignant Guide. Randall Munroe releasing a charity comic. Stephey Fry kickstarting a funny ebook (http://unbound.co.uk/books/how-to-have-an-almost-perfect-mar...). Radiohead releasing a new album.
There are million cases when you can pirate easily but it's more fun to pay. Because you respect the artist or want to support the cause. I guess this is exactly the use case for Gumroad that I see.
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#58As an European, I seem to have a different stance on the morality of customers. So your first user buys the link. Say to a mp3 or a pdf. Now has the link in plain text. What's stopping the user from posting that very link all over twitter, facebook, etc? "omg check out kanye's new single!1!!" Seriously at a loss on how this will work in real life, with real customers.
There is nothing stopping user from posting the file on megaupload (oops) another file sharing service as well. Any protection, including DRM, link obfuscation or IP filtering, makes user's life harder. If they want to post it, they will post it. But once you started the war with a customer by putting those little obstacles in their way, you can't stop it. Imagine a different scenario, where it's easy not to pay but…
i understand your ethical argument, but i still fail to see the practical usefulness.
easy beats free. piracy/copyright infringement means free.
you want to get people pay for something - you can't do this by optimizing the payment method. who really gives a crap about that outside of the techies who build that stuff?
example: first one to make tv episodes globally simultaneously available, with local ads embedded or whatever will win over piracy. just look at the most popular torrents on pirate bay, etc - how i met your mother, etc.
itunes (as an example, same goes for netflix, hulu, amazon,...) is broken in that regards. non-us credit card and/or IP address? you're fucked. welcome to being a third-rate customer. well, fuck you then, pirate bay it is. movies, series, even apps are being restricted. even though the fucking majority of people (consumer!!) live outside the US.
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#59Why won't existing URL-shortener companies now add an option for a toll? They already have name exposure.
Re: Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System
#60I'll be honest here. I worked on the same exact idea and ended up abandoning it when i discovered your app on techcrunch a few months back. Couldn't have done it better! Great job! I'm glad it's moving forward! My only question is how do you plan to deal with potential copyright infringements. This almost seems inevitable to me.
I emailed that question and a few others (ie- handling disconnections). Shall update when I get a reply (if not already). :)
The reply. Not exactly the answers I expected...
[Q: How do you stop a download link from being shared?] A: We don't. We bet on the god will of mankind.
[Q: Are links screened for copyrights, fakes, etc?] A: No. Gumroad isn't a marketplace so we don't need to do this as much as others do.
[Q: How are disconnected downloads handled?] A: Working on improving this. We do OK.