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Hi 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 t

by flurly 6y ago

Hi 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 ago
Looks great! I’ll be trying it out!
- flurly 6y ago
  Thank you!
strombofulous 6y ago
How 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
- flurly 6y ago
  Same as all the other platforms. Creators set their refund policies. Unless it was a fraudulent charge, the platform won't issue a refund on its own.
  - dmak 6y ago
    I’m assuming you’re using Stripe Connect Standard then. Otherwise the chargeback is on the platform.
gnrl 6y ago
Does stripe not charge more than 1% itself? How does the math work out?
- uneekname 6y ago
  I think those charges are applied along with the 1% cut to Flurly.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  The 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 ago
    OP, 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 ago
    This 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 ago
      Wait 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 ago
There's a typo on the Shopify page: "Flurly is a Shopify alternative attemps"
- flurly 6y ago
  Thanks pushing a fix now!
  - pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
    There'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 ago
  Sorry 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 ago
    So 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 ago
      Thank you! Pushed a fix to append "after payment processor fees" to make things clearer.
  - asicsp 6y ago
    Okay, 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.

by flurly 6y ago

imwillofficial 6y ago

Looks great! I’ll be trying it out!

flurly 6y ago
Thank you!

strombofulous 6y ago

How 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

flurly 6y ago
Same as all the other platforms. Creators set their refund policies. Unless it was a fraudulent charge, the platform won't issue a refund on its own.
- dmak 6y ago
  I’m assuming you’re using Stripe Connect Standard then. Otherwise the chargeback is on the platform.

gnrl 6y ago

Does stripe not charge more than 1% itself? How does the math work out?

uneekname 6y ago
I think those charges are applied along with the 1% cut to Flurly.
anonytrary 6y ago
The 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 ago
  OP, 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 ago
  This 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 ago
    Wait 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 ago

There's a typo on the Shopify page: "Flurly is a Shopify alternative attemps"

flurly 6y ago
Thanks pushing a fix now!
- pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
  There'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 ago
Sorry 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 ago
  So 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 ago
    Thank you! Pushed a fix to append "after payment processor fees" to make things clearer.
- asicsp 6y ago
  Okay, 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.