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Show HN: Flurly – sell any digital file online
- flurly 6y agoHi everyone, I've been working on a platform to enable anyone to affordably sell digital products online. In particular, Flurly charges no monthly fee & only takes 1% of each transaction, which is 5x cheaper than competitors like Gumroad. I hope this can be useful to online sellers in the hacker news community. I believe more money directly to creators is net good for the world. Some may wonder how I plan to make money on this. It's a fair question. My current plan boils down to two key factors: 1) Cost efficiency. By utilizing technology platforms like Stripe/Firebase/Vercel/Algolia/Sendgrid, I can amortize the cost. Or in other words my costs grow with revenue/usage. This way, I don't need to buy physical hardware servers, or negotiate deals with banks or write my own database, or spend time on SRE. Also since it's just me, I don't need to pay for employee health insurance, benefits, etc. 2) Volume. Hopefully by lowering the cost of doing commerce, more people will buy and sell, increasing the overall volume of commerce. Since the commission is on the overall volume, hopefully I can recoup some revenue/profits that way. Please let me know if you run into any issues and I'll look into it right away Thanks!
- imwillofficial 6y agoLooks great! I’ll be trying it out!
- flurly 6y agoThank you!
- strombofulous 6y agoHow do you deal with chargebacks/requests from customers who claim that what they paid for wasn't what they got? Will you attempt to mediate this? Do sellers receive a refund of the fee for things that are charged back on? I'm assuming that at a minimum you will not return the stripe fee since you don't get that back either
- gnrl 6y agoDoes stripe not charge more than 1% itself? How does the math work out?
- uneekname 6y agoI think those charges are applied along with the 1% cut to Flurly.
- anonytrary 6y agoThe math doesn't work out: https://flurly.com/pricing https://flurly.com/pricing. The real cost is 3.9% + $0.30 (which takes into account Stripe's fees). If you are a seller and price your item at $100, the platform charges $103.20 to the customer, gives $99 to you, takes $1.00, and gives $3.20 to Stripe. The additional cost is covered by the customer, so they're not lying about only taking 1% from the seller... still a bit misleading, though.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoOP, please fix this! It looks like you've made a cool product; there's no need to be misleading about how much it costs. Just give the real "after-fees" percentage straight out.
- flurly 6y agoThis isn't correct. Re-pasting a previous answer to add clarity: So if you sell a $10 item: 1%, or 10c goes to Flurly 2.9% + 30c or 59c goes to Stripe $10 - 10c - 59c = $9.31 goes to the seller There is no additional charge to the customer above $10.
- anonytrary 6y agoWait a second -- that means your claim that 99% goes to the seller is false, which is even worse in my opinion because you explicitly state that they get 99%. You can't have it both ways -- someone is paying for the Stripe fees, dude. You should change your wording immediately to make it clear that the seller does NOT get 99%, they get 99% LESS Stripe fees, which is a huge difference, since your entire marketing strategy seems to rely on them getting 99% (which is not the case).
- pwdisswordfish4 6y agoThere's a typo on the Shopify page: "Flurly is a Shopify alternative attemps"
- flurly 6y agoThanks pushing a fix now!
- pwdisswordfish4 6y agoThere's still a missing word or something else going on: "Flurly is a Shopify alternative attempts"
- asicsp 6y ago>which is 5x cheaper than competitors like Gumroad. Highly misleading comparison since Gumroad doesn't add extra charges on price of the product (other than cases like VAT)
- flurly 6y agoSorry for the late response. This thing took off without me realizing it. Flurly doesn't add extra charges, it does basically the same charging scheme as gumroad but cheaper. So if you sell a $10 item: 1%, or 10c goes to Flurly 2.9% + 30c or 59c goes to Stripe $10 - 10c - 59c = $9.31 goes to the seller There is no additional charge to the customer above $10.
- peacetreefrog 6y agoSo the only misleading thing is "keep 99% of what you make", it's really "96.1% of what you make - 30 cents" or "keep 99% of what you make after payment processor fees". Still cool, though obviously depends on volume. I use sendowl which is as cheap as $9 a month + Stripe fees (2.9% + 30 cents). I used to use gumroad, but had issues. I think they've gotten a bit complacent (see https://medium.com/@atrigol/gumroad-review-things-they-need-to-fix-in-2018-cb3c8a338bbc https://medium.com/@atrigol/gumroad-review-things-they-need-...) so prob room in the space. Good luck!
- flurly 6y agoThank you! Pushed a fix to append "after payment processor fees" to make things clearer.
- asicsp 6y agoOkay, it doesn't add (I based that on another comment), but it still isn't a fair comparison For $10 on gumroad (see https://help.gumroad.com/article/66-gumroads-fees https://help.gumroad.com/article/66-gumroads-fees): Free account: 8.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale gives $8.85 to seller For $10/month: 3.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale gives $9.35 to seller And there's other options like direct paypal connection, where gumroad charges 6% or 1% and rest is charged by paypal themselves. These comparisons will vary based on product price, but this is nowhere close to your 5X claim.
- tux 6y agoI think you forgot to include more details or at least a link :-) EDIT: Oh I see, the link in your profile ^_^ ( https://flurly.com https://flurly.com )
- flurly 6y agoOh shoot. Thanks for the heads up. Can a mod please help me edit the link to https://flurly.com https://flurly.com
- tux 6y agoNo problem. I think your best bet would be to use contact email on HN page. EDIT: Project looks interesting. Thanks for sharing! FEEDBACK: Products page should list items some one are selling. Maybe make an option to sell publicly (show on Products page) or Privately (hide on Products page). Search could use a bit more helpful tips, like example products selling for example. Also, some sort of support contact page might be a good idea.
- imwillofficial 6y ago“Global edge network” I don’t think that means what you think it means...
- dave_4_bagels 6y agoThis is awesome! Are you planning on adding support for crypto integrations? Definitely curious on your arch choices for front end? This css / design looks great!
- sebmellen 6y agohttps://tailwindcss.com https://tailwindcss.com
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- flurly 6y agoYep working on Bitcoin integration over these next few days. Front end arch choices are tailwind + nextjs + react. And thanks!
- ev1 6y agoPlease natively support BTC/similar with btcpayserver. I dislike seeing invasive, privacy violating third party gateways.
- pwdisswordfish4 6y agoNice job. A suggestion: support alternative payment processors besides Stripe. I paid with cryptocurrency for the first time today when I realized my webhost accepted it in lieu of cash and that it had the lowest fees among all payment options. For example, right now my webhost's calculator says that for a $10 deposit there's a 20 cent fee for a net deposit of $9.80 if I use "Bitcoin". (I actually have no Bitcoin and managed to pay anyway, because my webhost is using BitPay as a processor, which seems not to limit you to Bitcoin only.) A product on Flurly right now using Stripe at the same price looks like it would be $10 - (2.9% + $0.30) - 1% for a net of $9.31 after net $0.69 fees. Considering the example on Flurly's homepage is $1, for this and the $10 example I gave and for other small payments, it's obviously a better deal for sellers if buyers avoid using Stripe. And it turned out to be easier to log in to Coinbase and pay with some giveaway coins I'd received than it would have been to pull out my credit card and fill in the info.
- flurly 6y ago100% agree. Working on adding Bitcoin and PayPal over the next few days :)
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoStripe already has Bitcoin support, but you have to enable it and set it up for how you want your cash out.
- flurly 6y agoHas there been an update after this announcement ending bitcoin support https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoWow, that shows I exited the Bitcoin space a while back in 2016. It was the best payment system for Striope.
- smhmd 6y agoYou know it's a Tailwind site with a single look.
- earthboundkid 6y agoYeah. I wonder if you could train an image classifier to guess the CSS framework. That’s a fun winter vacation project for someone.
- flurly 6y agoYou could probably get away with just using a heuristic of average number of classes per element to classify tailwind =D
- earthboundkid 6y agoIf you look at the HTML, frequency analysis of the class names should be enough. The impressive thing would be using CV to do it.
- duskwuff 6y agoYour Terms of Service don't appear to currently restrict what sorts of digital products can be sold through your site. Does your credit card processor permit sales of adult content, and are you comfortable with that being sold through your site? If not, you may want to clarify that.
- flurly 6y agoGood call. Will queue up a task to revisit this.
- dmak 6y agoHow do you determine if people are selling something they truly own or not? How will you even manage this overhead given your thin margin.
- sverhagen 6y agoI don't have digital content to sell, so I have no stake here whatsoever, but this response seems concerning. I have no problem with startups building a functional prototype without getting an army of lawyers involved. But you should then have a good gut sense that you're doing something that's pretty safe. This business model, as broad as it's positioned, clearly isn't. How can that ever be so much of an afterthought as here demonstrated? Does that also mean that the pricing is based on not factoring in the risk (penalties, legal costs) of selling copyrighted or restricted materials? Does it factor in the moderation that needs to happen?
- musingsole 6y agoIsn't that largely a factor of where in the world this is operating from?
- duskwuff 6y agoHonestly, the credit card processor is going to be the real limiting factor. They obviously won't permit anything illegal, but there are also going to be whole categories of legal-but-risky services that they won't allow either. If I'm correct in understanding that OP is using Stripe, they've got a whole page of things they won't deal with: https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- YaBa 6y agoYou tell all over the site that Flurly only charges 1% but then at "Pricing" says: 1% + 2.9% + other fees. Care to explain that? I see it like: here's a new iphone, 1$, cheapest in the market. And then at small print: 1$ + 999$.
- Nzen 6y agoAs this service uses stripe or other payment processors, the 2.9% is probably a third party fee. So, while not representative of the total overhead, it is accurate about their cost beyond what any similar transaction would involve.
- gu5 6y agoHow do you plan on moderating misleading/false products (especially if your platform grows)?
- flurly 6y agoThis would be a good problem to have :) But jokes aside, most likely would be similar to how most integrity operations work: 1. Enable community to flag misleading/false products 2. Contract/Hire some folks to review flagged products 3. Use automation / ML to weed out egregiously bad products
- xwdv 6y agoCould you sell illegal files? Perhaps in an encrypted format?
- tdeck 6y agoEven if you couldn't, you could upload the encrypted illegal file somewhere else and just sell the key. But if someone is buying illegal files, why wouldn't they just pirate the file in the first place?
- sterlind 6y agoYou don't need to sell an encrypted file, just the decryption keys. Still gets to the heart of the moderation problem though: how do you moderate a small text file containing a string of characters? I foresee this being used for stolen license keys (and maybe porn, though probably not much - feds would get a warrant and know who it's getting cashed out to.) If OP adds Bitcoin as a way of cashing out though, they'll probably go to prison as an accessory for the many horrible use cases that would inevitably result. Don't do it OP!
- meagher 6y agoSimilar https://pymt.online https://pymt.online
- flurly 6y agoOh this is a clever site :)
- Hnrobert42 6y agoCool site and idea. I guess they’ve run out of decent domain names, though, huh?
- parisianka 6y agoCan you add the PayPal please?
- flurly 6y agoWorking on adding PayPal support in the next few days. If you shoot me an email at hi@flurly.com I can pay you out manually in the meantime.
- schoen 6y agoI know other comments have touched on this a bit, but "any digital file" reminds me that some people think that some files are bad and should not be sold at all. And they sometimes do stuff to try to enforce those views. Is "any file" meant to suggest that you're aspiring to be more content-neutral than other intermediaries, or was it just meant as something more like "any file type"? (e.g. the same platform can sell music, movies, photos, models, e-books, etc.) As an intermediary in 2020, you're likely to see a lot of people target you in various ways because they don't like things that people are using your platform for. They may threaten you with lawsuits, complaints to law enforcement, boycotts, DDoS, trying to get your payment relationships cut off, trying to get your other platform providers to cut you off, etc. If your platform has a high profile or is used to sell something high-profile, journalists and politicians may publicly second-guess your content decisions (both things that you did remove and things that you didn't remove). I don't want to alarm you about this, but it would be nice if you could figure out any content and moderation policies ahead of time, explain them clearly to prospective sellers, and then see if you can stick to them when other people disagree with them. :-) P.S. EFF has some good resources about §512 and §230 issues for intermediaries, and is always interested in hearing from intermediaries who get U.S. legal threats that the intermediaries find questionable or improper (related to third-parties' use of a service). P.P.S. I've never been an intermediary or platform operator, but a common thread that I've heard from different lawyers in this space is that it's amazing how much conflict your users' creative use of your platform may draw you into about issues that you never even thought about. :-(
- MattGaiser 6y agoDo you have a clear content moderation strategy? As this is inevitably going to be used for illegal and very illegal purposes.
- person_of_color 6y agoHow does Gumroad do it?
- tdeck 6y agoCongrats on launching this. It looks useful and the pricing is fair. In fact it may be too low considering time spent on support and maintenance.
- XMPPwocky 6y agoIf your only selling point is lower fees, why don't I just make a site that takes 0.9% and eat your lunch?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smhmd 6y agoMake it.
- jawngee 6y agoWhat about tax remittance? The reason gumroad charges more is because they deal with EU/VAT remittance issues because they act as the merchant of record. Same with fastspring.
- Cu3PO42 6y agoThis looks like a solid product. Kudos! 1% feels very fair for the service you're providing. However, you mention 2.9% in processing fees from Stripe. This is accurate for non-EU cards. The fee on cards issued in the EU is only 1.5%. Would those savings be passed along to a seller on your site? In addition to credit cards, Stripe offers a number of other payment options as well, such as direct debit and many national schemes. Are there plans down the line to add support for those as well?
- aruggirello 6y agoWow, I wasn't aware of that distinction for EU cards. I assumed 2.9. Stripe actually even says 1.4% + €0,25 - I'm going to switch a couple projects to Stripe now. Thanks for pointing it out!!! You made me save a few hundred Euros!
- Cu3PO42 6y agoNot a problem. Thank the EU for capping the interchange fees, as well. Processing cards here is a lot cheaper than in other parts of the world.
- amelius 6y agoWould Apple allow this in the app store if it had an app?
- johnchristopher 6y agoI know nothing about the market you are entering. I think you would benefit (and prospects would) from moving the comparison links from the footer to the homepage though.
- jitendrac 6y agolook like, you get an inspiration from https://tinyprojects.dev/guides/tiny_website https://tinyprojects.dev/guides/tiny_website How do you plan dealing with charge-backs?, and how often do users get paid after selling product?
- quinncom 6y agoThis looks great. Do you have plans to support selling dynamic content, like this?: 1. User clicks "buy now" and pays. 2. Flurly sends a request to an API on the seller's server with the user's info and an auth key. 3. API responds with a file or text. 4. The file or text is given to the user. I would like to use this flow to sell license keys for a minimalist SaaS product I built. I would want Flurly to connect to my webhook URL to generate a new license key for the customer. This process could also be used to deliver personalized, watermarked ebooks.
- flurly 6y agoThis is super interesting. Could you shoot me an email at hi@flurly.com with a link to your site? Few follow up questions: 1) Would you have the website? Or would the flurly product page be your "website"? If the former, does it make sense to skip the product page altogether and Flurly just serves as a super thin layer over Stripe Checkout? 2) Would the purchase be a subscription or a one time payment? Thanks for your interest!