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Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

easyful.com

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Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#71

Post by lockhouse »

jhartist wrote: post #68
d--b wrote: post #47

Why not take 1-2% instead of 30? Just what you need to cover the hosting costs. Taking 0% tells users you’ll end up screwing them one way or another in the future.

Good question: because we’re not handling payment processing or anything, just emailing users your content, we think Easyful can be default-free forever. If we get a bunch of usage, we might build some more advanced pro features and sell those features as a paid tier. We’ve had success with that model before.

How do you actually make any money though? It costs you money to provide this service. Where is that coming from?

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#72

Post by andrelaszlo »

rogerclark wrote: post #32
andrelaszlo wrote: post #20

What's up with the design? It's really nice, but also very similar to Gumroad's visual language. Not really criticism, just curious about the idea behind it.

Gumroad's design is itself a reuse of several design trends from 2021-2023. Wondermind is one example of another site using the same aesthetic. https://www.wondermind.com/

Hmm, I get your point but I think it's much closer than Wondermind.

- Layout that uses the full width of the page. - The page is primarily made up of blocks that occupy a single column or two columns. - Large blocks of a primary color - The font used for the logos are quite similar. Not sure what it's called, but they're both some sort of chunky and playful sans with some oversized and/or geometric elements. - Decorative coins featured prominently (G) ($) - Cartoony graphics with a hand-drawn feeling to them. - Graphics poke out of the grid in many places. - Similar navbars

Each point by itself is hardly surprising, most landing pages have some of them, but taken together it seemed like a lot to me :)

Either way, great work and I'd love to try it on my next project <3

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#73

Post by specialist »

d--b wrote: post #47

Why not take 1-2% instead of 30? Just what you need to cover the hosting costs. Taking 0% tells users you’ll end up screwing them one way or another in the future.

Ya.

I have zero intuition why online stores charge 30%. Is that fair?

Should the store's cut go down with more volume?

Or should smaller, younger, lower volume vendors get a better deal?

I have no idea.

So I keep landing on the notion that online market places should be not-for-profit orgs (consortiums?) that are run at cost plus some margin. And then figure out the hosts' cut from there.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#74

Post by lolinder »

numpad0 wrote: post #65
lolinder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who called out "Don't Use Stripe" [0] tied a very legitimate account to their accusation. jacquesm is a very prominent user, and called out another one for being too vague, with no reply [1]. The third was clearly selling an NSFW AI service [2] and admitted it. The other three I'm willing to believe, I'm just cautioning against believing every submission you see. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34…

While my heuristics says a lot of those deserves bans, where in that process are local law enforcement and court systems involved? It sounds wrong that a Stripe account, AdSense account, these quasi bank accounts used by small businesses and individuals(and criminals) as quasi public utility can be opened and closed by decisions of "the team", by unqualified software engineers and ex-engineer managers, completely unm…

This is a problem, but it's not a problem with Stripe, it's a problem with banks in general. Banks use heuristics that are "good enough" to detect fraud and money laundering, and if they do then they'll block you just as surely as Stripe will.

Stripe's processes may very well need improvement, but private fraud teams making important calls is how finance is run everywhere.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#75

Post by lolinder »

bravura wrote: post #61
lolinder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who called out "Don't Use Stripe" [0] tied a very legitimate account to their accusation. jacquesm is a very prominent user, and called out another one for being too vague, with no reply [1]. The third was clearly selling an NSFW AI service [2] and admitted it. The other three I'm willing to believe, I'm just cautioning against believing every submission you see. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34…

Than you for the parent post clarification, but your GP post did NOT have an agnostic tone or focus on the spirit of sober inquiry. Instead, it came across as an admonition. I just wanted to share. "Not that there aren't legitimate problems with Stripe, but the extent of those problems is blown out of proportion if you take all of these complaints at face value." That conclusion feels a bit like legerdemain, consider…

> Instead, it came across as an admonition.

That's because it was intended to. OP hijacked a Show HN to share a bunch of links with complaints about Stripe. They were so quick to do so that they didn't notice that half their links were dubious. Then this hijacking post becomes pinned to the top with upvotes just like the dubious Stripe posts did before clearer heads prevailed.

HN needs to get out of this habit of accepting people's inflammatory claims at face value, or we're going to rapidly lose credibility and become just another internet outage farm.

---

As far as your specific complaint goes: HN's sense that Stripe can't be trusted comes from the subjective experience of seeing many complaints about Stripe on HN. There are no stats to help us understand the extent of the problem. If a full half of these complaints were dishonest, do you not see how that would skew our collective sense of how likely getting screwed over by Stripe is?

As I said, I'm not trying to discount the experiences of the three stories that OP shared that seem to have been legitimate. What I'm challenging is the idea that everyone should steer clear of Stripe on the basis of a clearly flawed heuristic, as well as the idea that it's okay to hijack a Show HN to push that heuristic on people.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#76

Post by anagri »

snvzz wrote: post #33

Related: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528 Stripe is holding over $400k of mine with no explanation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34233011 Tell HN: Stripe killed my music locker service, so I'm open sourcing it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36403607 Don't Use Stripe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34035581 Stripe is about to refund €147k wor…

agree

you cannot run gumroad like financial transaction business without licence and agreement with stripe. it is bound to be closed down on short notice, and all the earnings will be clawed back.

so don't use this app. period.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#77

Post by jhartist »

lockhouse wrote: post #71
jhartist wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question: because we’re not handling payment processing or anything, just emailing users your content, we think Easyful can be default-free forever. If we get a bunch of usage, we might build some more advanced pro features and sell those features as a paid tier. We’ve had success with that model before.

How do you actually make any money though? It costs you money to provide this service. Where is that coming from?

Two answers:

• The operating costs are very low, since all Easyful does is email your customers your content when they buy it.

• Our team at nicer.io is primarily a product agency, so when we make our own apps like Easyful, SimplePerks and Smallchat, they don't have the pressure to be highly-profitable. We often end up getting good connections, agency customers and referrals from these apps, and keeping them running and supported is pretty low-cost for us.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#78

Post by bravura »

lolinder wrote: post #75
bravura wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Than you for the parent post clarification, but your GP post did NOT have an agnostic tone or focus on the spirit of sober inquiry. Instead, it came across as an admonition. I just wanted to share. "Not that there aren't legitimate problems with Stripe, but the extent of those problems is blown out of proportion if you take all of these complaints at face value." That conclusion feels a bit like legerdemain, consider…

> Instead, it came across as an admonition. That's because it was intended to. OP hijacked a Show HN to share a bunch of links with complaints about Stripe. They were so quick to do so that they didn't notice that half their links were dubious. Then this hijacking post becomes pinned to the top with upvotes just like the dubious Stripe posts did before clearer heads prevailed. HN needs to get out of this habit of acc…

Fair enough and well argued.

I guess I’m just expressing a bit of anxiety towards picking of payment processor, and also wish there were concrete stats on the issue.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#79

Post by janosdebugs »

jhartist wrote: post #77
lockhouse wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you actually make any money though? It costs you money to provide this service. Where is that coming from?

Two answers: • The operating costs are very low, since all Easyful does is email your customers your content when they buy it. • Our team at nicer.io is primarily a product agency, so when we make our own apps like Easyful, SimplePerks and Smallchat, they don't have the pressure to be highly-profitable. We often end up getting good connections, agency customers and referrals from these apps, and keeping them running…

How do you mail files that are several hundred megabytes in size? Also, you need to store these somewhere, which costs money. I might be wrong, but it seems you missed a few critical parts of why people use Gumroad. You should take a closer look at their audience, there is a sizable segment of people that sell 3D models, textures, etc.

Re: Show HN: Easyful – A Free Gumroad Alternative

#80

Post by janosdebugs »

specialist wrote: post #73
d--b wrote: post #47

Why not take 1-2% instead of 30? Just what you need to cover the hosting costs. Taking 0% tells users you’ll end up screwing them one way or another in the future.

Ya. I have zero intuition why online stores charge 30%. Is that fair? Should the store's cut go down with more volume? Or should smaller, younger, lower volume vendors get a better deal? I have no idea . So I keep landing on the notion that online market places should be not-for-profit orgs (consortiums?) that are run at cost plus some margin. And then figure out the hosts' cut from there.

You produce the content and provide the marketing. They provide almost everything else for you: the storefront, the billing, the invoicing, charging sales tax/VAT, etc. If you wanted to do it yourself, you'd be in for quite a lot of work, even if you happened to host your own software.
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