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My $.02 FWIW: - Your 2% on top of Stripe's fees is off the charts IMO. Stripe charges $.30 + 2.9% and they're taking care of the actual payment. You're merely

My $.02 FWIW: - Your 2% on top of Stripe's fees is off the charts IMO. Stripe charges $.30 + 2.9% and they're taking care of the actual payment. You're merely making it simpler to insert a button. - The difficulty in practice isn't creating a button to make the payment; it is what happens before and after the payment. Offer to host and automate the delivery of the access-restricted deliverable when it's digital (ebook, software, etc.). Work with Zapier and similar to offer integrations on their end. Provide your users with a way to run their own affiliate program. (Charge extra for that.)

rorygibson 8y ago
Hi Thanks for the feedback. Inserting a button is part of what Trolley does. But really what it's doing is stopping you having to build / host the back end server and code that handles the tokenised payment exchange for Stripe (Stripe - and all other similar payment processors require there to be some non-front end code to handle secure token exchange) So I'm hoping that 2% works out better than managing a server and potentially hiring a developer to build you some code if you can't write it yourself :) I'm still feeling out prices... 2% was the starting point because it's in line with services that sort-of compete (Celery, SnipCart and so on) Totally take your points about digital asset delivery - it's on the backlog. Thanks again!
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Having done this a few times, integrating a payment processor you're unfamiliar with to a site takes a few hours when they don't provide a library and you're doing it for the first time. I might have misunderstood what you're offering, but to me it sounded like you were basically providing that as a hosted service. Stripe's API is reputably simple, and Stripe provides ready-made libraries to make your job even simpler. I can't imagine for a moment that using the ready-made library Stripe provides on Github takes more than an hour or two. So you're basically talking about a $10-50 job depending on how generous you feel when hiring an online code monkey or an adolescent down the street to do it for you. Free + 2% might work for some non-technical user who wants to experiment with selling a product right now without investing a penny. It won't the moment the idea takes off. You'll immediately look for something with a monthly recurring fee. The reason breaks down to psychology. When you sell a lot of stuff online, you only see the monthly recurring charge once. The transaction fees, by contrast, will be all over your statement. Sooner rather than later, you look at each and every single one, thinking: "Sigh, so much money being spent on this... Why am I paying for this again? Can't I use something else?" As an anecdote to illustrate the point further: where I live, banks charge a tax on transactions, and what essentially amounts to a tax on paying that tax to boot. It's tiny - under .1%. But cash transactions are, as you'd expect, commonplace - including for things like buying houses. At any rate, what I'm trying to get at here is that unless you're delivering something on top that is valuable enough to retain your users, you'll only be attracting users who are looking for a temporary solution to experiment with an idea. I'd expect them to churn the moment they see enough transactions that your extra fee associated with each one will prompt survey cheaper alternatives. One such value, by the way, is having most if not all of the things you want to use in one place, or good APIs and integrations to be able to use the 3rd party tools you want. This matters a lot too in practice. Maintaining and integrating several different poorly written self-hosted apps to run the cart, billing, delivery, affiliates, accounting, a few types of analytics, etc. is grueling. Integrating multiple hosted tools to do the same is also grueling - but less so, and it doesn't involve much maintenance. Being able to use new apps and services Zapier-or Segment-style is, by contrast, not grueling and extremely valuable. Anyway, good luck with your project!
  - rorygibson 8y ago
    Thanks - that's good and well-reasoned advice. I'm iterating rapidly on the idea - and in particular I'm happy to talk to customers about pricing plans that aren't currently listed on the landing page (if that means fixed fee and no transaction cost then that's doable) tbh I'm not sure that Stripe appeals to the most cost-conscious entrepreneurs, and right now I am targeting those who want to test ideas rapidly, and who are likely to then find time / money to build out their own integration (which will mean I have a high degree of churn if I don't adapt. That's fine, it's all learning! Again - thanks for all the time you've spent replying. Good luck with your project(s) too :)
laurentl 8y ago
I can see the value for non-tech-savvy users. Simple (to understand) product, clear description and instructions. For non-price sensitive products (i.e. the type of products you'd expect to be developed and sold on line by small / indie producers), the 5% cost of payment (Stripe + Trolley) can be factored in the price without too much pain. My main question is how many potential customers are there, who aren't already selling through a complete platform such as Etsy.
- rorygibson 8y ago
  Hi laurentl That is an excellent question - in fact it's exactly the one I'm trying to answer with this MVP of Trolley :) Right now I've "launched" on HN and IndieHackers only, and I'm focussing on software, lean-startup folks to gather feedback. Next up will be questions around digital downloads ("information products" and other things), so I'll need to engage more with those communities. I don't believe they're well served by Etsy, though they do have alternatives. Right now it's all about learning where our product and markets best align - and the feedback I'm getting here today is enormously valuable. Thanks!
caleblloyd 8y ago
It's a competitive market. PayPal offers payment buttons and loads of integrations for no additional cost besides their processing fee.
- rorygibson 8y ago
  Absolutely. PayPal's user experience is usually (though not exclusively) offsite though. Trolley gives you a Stripe Checkout-powered on-site checkout. Right now, Trolley seems to appeal to people who want to do business with Stripe instead of PayPal. In the future we may well add PayPal as a payment backend in between rolling out our added value like digital downloads, subscriptions and the other cool stuff we're planning :)
ksahin 8y ago
This ! I use Gumroad exactly for this reason. Hosting / distribution of my files, coupons, affiliates, analytics ! The only thing that bothers me with Gumroad is that the checkout experience is slow. The form can take several seconds to load.
- rorygibson 8y ago
  Thanks for the feedback ksahin We'll be looking at digital downloads soon!
galaxyLogic 8y ago
Right, how does the user download my app and then get a license-key which allows them it to install it on one PC? Alt if the app is server-based how does the payment give them a login and password they can use to login to my app online?
- rorygibson 8y ago
  Hi galaxyLogic Right now we don't have download purchases, but for this use case (for a small startup or a bootstrapped company) I'd do it by taking payment and then emailing someone a license key. For low volumes it's totally achievable. Drop me a line on rg@trolley.link if you'd like to talk further, I'm interested to see what your project is, and how I can help.
hjek 8y ago
> - Your 2% on top of Stripe's fees is off the charts IMO. I'd be fine with that if there wasn't any non-free JavaScript involved. (But there is.)
- rorygibson 8y ago
  Hi hjek I haven't put much active thought into the licensing of the Trolley widget JavaScript code... I'm keen to understand what you're looking for, and why the tag being Free Software is important in this case. Happy to chat - maybe drop me a line at rg@trolley.link ?

rorygibson 8y ago

Hi Thanks for the feedback. Inserting a button is part of what Trolley does. But really what it's doing is stopping you having to build / host the back end server and code that handles the tokenised payment exchange for Stripe (Stripe - and all other similar payment processors require there to be some non-front end code to handle secure token exchange) So I'm hoping that 2% works out better than managing a server and potentially hiring a developer to build you some code if you can't write it yourself :) I'm still feeling out prices... 2% was the starting point because it's in line with services that sort-of compete (Celery, SnipCart and so on) Totally take your points about digital asset delivery - it's on the backlog. Thanks again!

ddebernardy 8y ago
Having done this a few times, integrating a payment processor you're unfamiliar with to a site takes a few hours when they don't provide a library and you're doing it for the first time. I might have misunderstood what you're offering, but to me it sounded like you were basically providing that as a hosted service. Stripe's API is reputably simple, and Stripe provides ready-made libraries to make your job even simpler. I can't imagine for a moment that using the ready-made library Stripe provides on Github takes more than an hour or two. So you're basically talking about a $10-50 job depending on how generous you feel when hiring an online code monkey or an adolescent down the street to do it for you. Free + 2% might work for some non-technical user who wants to experiment with selling a product right now without investing a penny. It won't the moment the idea takes off. You'll immediately look for something with a monthly recurring fee. The reason breaks down to psychology. When you sell a lot of stuff online, you only see the monthly recurring charge once. The transaction fees, by contrast, will be all over your statement. Sooner rather than later, you look at each and every single one, thinking: "Sigh, so much money being spent on this... Why am I paying for this again? Can't I use something else?" As an anecdote to illustrate the point further: where I live, banks charge a tax on transactions, and what essentially amounts to a tax on paying that tax to boot. It's tiny - under .1%. But cash transactions are, as you'd expect, commonplace - including for things like buying houses. At any rate, what I'm trying to get at here is that unless you're delivering something on top that is valuable enough to retain your users, you'll only be attracting users who are looking for a temporary solution to experiment with an idea. I'd expect them to churn the moment they see enough transactions that your extra fee associated with each one will prompt survey cheaper alternatives. One such value, by the way, is having most if not all of the things you want to use in one place, or good APIs and integrations to be able to use the 3rd party tools you want. This matters a lot too in practice. Maintaining and integrating several different poorly written self-hosted apps to run the cart, billing, delivery, affiliates, accounting, a few types of analytics, etc. is grueling. Integrating multiple hosted tools to do the same is also grueling - but less so, and it doesn't involve much maintenance. Being able to use new apps and services Zapier-or Segment-style is, by contrast, not grueling and extremely valuable. Anyway, good luck with your project!
- rorygibson 8y ago
  Thanks - that's good and well-reasoned advice. I'm iterating rapidly on the idea - and in particular I'm happy to talk to customers about pricing plans that aren't currently listed on the landing page (if that means fixed fee and no transaction cost then that's doable) tbh I'm not sure that Stripe appeals to the most cost-conscious entrepreneurs, and right now I am targeting those who want to test ideas rapidly, and who are likely to then find time / money to build out their own integration (which will mean I have a high degree of churn if I don't adapt. That's fine, it's all learning! Again - thanks for all the time you've spent replying. Good luck with your project(s) too :)

laurentl 8y ago

I can see the value for non-tech-savvy users. Simple (to understand) product, clear description and instructions. For non-price sensitive products (i.e. the type of products you'd expect to be developed and sold on line by small / indie producers), the 5% cost of payment (Stripe + Trolley) can be factored in the price without too much pain. My main question is how many potential customers are there, who aren't already selling through a complete platform such as Etsy.

rorygibson 8y ago
Hi laurentl That is an excellent question - in fact it's exactly the one I'm trying to answer with this MVP of Trolley :) Right now I've "launched" on HN and IndieHackers only, and I'm focussing on software, lean-startup folks to gather feedback. Next up will be questions around digital downloads ("information products" and other things), so I'll need to engage more with those communities. I don't believe they're well served by Etsy, though they do have alternatives. Right now it's all about learning where our product and markets best align - and the feedback I'm getting here today is enormously valuable. Thanks!

caleblloyd 8y ago

It's a competitive market. PayPal offers payment buttons and loads of integrations for no additional cost besides their processing fee.

rorygibson 8y ago
Absolutely. PayPal's user experience is usually (though not exclusively) offsite though. Trolley gives you a Stripe Checkout-powered on-site checkout. Right now, Trolley seems to appeal to people who want to do business with Stripe instead of PayPal. In the future we may well add PayPal as a payment backend in between rolling out our added value like digital downloads, subscriptions and the other cool stuff we're planning :)

ksahin 8y ago

This ! I use Gumroad exactly for this reason. Hosting / distribution of my files, coupons, affiliates, analytics ! The only thing that bothers me with Gumroad is that the checkout experience is slow. The form can take several seconds to load.

rorygibson 8y ago
Thanks for the feedback ksahin We'll be looking at digital downloads soon!

galaxyLogic 8y ago

Right, how does the user download my app and then get a license-key which allows them it to install it on one PC? Alt if the app is server-based how does the payment give them a login and password they can use to login to my app online?

rorygibson 8y ago
Hi galaxyLogic Right now we don't have download purchases, but for this use case (for a small startup or a bootstrapped company) I'd do it by taking payment and then emailing someone a license key. For low volumes it's totally achievable. Drop me a line on rg@trolley.link if you'd like to talk further, I'm interested to see what your project is, and how I can help.

hjek 8y ago

> - Your 2% on top of Stripe's fees is off the charts IMO. I'd be fine with that if there wasn't any non-free JavaScript involved. (But there is.)

rorygibson 8y ago
Hi hjek I haven't put much active thought into the licensing of the Trolley widget JavaScript code... I'm keen to understand what you're looking for, and why the tag being Free Software is important in this case. Happy to chat - maybe drop me a line at rg@trolley.link ?