18 ms·

Show HN: Sell.app – A simple way to sell digital goods

136 points by youseff 5y ago

youseff 5y ago
Hey HN! We recently launched SellApp and wanted to share it with the HN community. SellApp is a simple way to sell digital products online. A digital goods seller can spin up a storefront in less than a minute and start selling instantly, while we automatically take care of all the difficult parts — delivery, checkout, payment methods, security, and more. We built SellApp with a small (remote) team of 3, in a little less than 4 months from start to finish (happy to elaborate more on how) What makes SellApp different from competitors: 1. Simplicity; Unlike competitors whose interfaces overwhelm first-time seller of digital products, we decided to keep our interface as minimal/simple as possible. 2. Payments; where other storefronts tend to custody funds and pay sellers out after 7-14 days, we enable sellers to receive earnings instantly. 3. Pricing: Alternatives either charge a high monthly recurring subscription to start, or take anywhere between 8% to 25%+ in commission per sale. It's completely free to start selling on SellApp, with no fees being taken (though we'll introduce a 3% fee per sale in a couple months) Happy to answer any questions and go more in-depth on the technical side of things.
easytiger 5y ago
What is a "digital product"?
- youseff 5y ago
  Great question! We see a digital product as anything that can be delivered online. This is generally subdivided into 4 different types: 1. A file which you can download, for example an eBook. 2. A text-based product, such as a game key or license code. 3. An online service, like creating a logo for someone. 4. A dynamic delivery which lets you programmatically perform certain actions once a payment is successfully processed. A good example is automatically upgrading someone's account on your forum (or Discord channel)
  - fonix 5y ago
    what about subscriptions? say providing a service or website access to a user every month?
    - youseff 5y ago
      Subscriptions are indeed planned. Our roadmap currently looks something like this: API -> subscriptions -> product embeds -> basket system (so a customer can purchase multiple digital items from the same store)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - IanCal 5y ago
    With the last two, does that mean I could generate a digital product/file in response to some filled in information when the customer is ordering? I've been interested in generating procedural art, and some other similar things and that's been a sticking point.
    - youseff 5y ago
      We do indeed have 'additional info' planned. When that's implemented, the customer will be able to enter any kind of detail you'd like them to (like their username, MAC address, or something else) and we'd pass that info on to you when they successfully check out. With that, you can then automatically perform actions and deliver the digital product/file.
fraXis 5y ago
>> "It's completely free to start selling on SellApp, with no fees being taken (though we'll introduce a 3% fee per sale in a couple months)" Are you using Stripe to process your payments?
- Guffton 5y ago
  The frontpage of the site suggests so.
lloydatkinson 5y ago
Do you have some example sites using this? I don't see any demos. How does this compare to SnipCart?
- youseff 5y ago
  Hey there, there is indeed an example store which you can view here: https://admin.sell.app/ https://admin.sell.app/ Not too familiar with SnipCart, but looking at what they offer (& correct me if I'm wrong here) it's a little more technical than SellApp. SnipCart lets you upload a product to their platform, but then they return HTML/JS which you have to add to your own site. That means you have to purchase your own domain and hosting, then enter the relevant code to your server, plus take care of the site's design and whatnot. SellApp has a different approach. As soon as you sign up, you can create your own storefront by specifying the subdomain you'd like (such as admin.sell.app) and you're good to go. Any product created in the dashboard, will then be visible & purchaseable on your storefront. No code/configuration required.
rgbrgb 5y ago
Do you have an example storefront we could look at? I think that would be a great link from the homepage to help people understand what this thing is. On the biz front, it seems like you guys are taking on gumroad? How are you thinking about getting users? I'm not super familiar with how gumroad does distribution.
- youseff 5y ago
  Hey there, I do indeed have an example storefront which you can view here: https://admin.sell.app/ https://admin.sell.app/ You are right in saying that we are taking on Gumroad. IIRC, most of Gumroad's traction has been organic/word-of-mouth, with little/no money spent on paid advertising. We're still figuring out the best way to acquire users at scale by experimenting with both conventional (Reddit/Twitter ads) and unconventional (Discord channel/niche forum advertising) methods. PS: Great suggestion! I'll be setting up & linking an example storefront on the homepage shortly.
  - porcc 5y ago
    Why you and not gumroad?
    - youseff 5y ago
      Great question! Gumroad seems to be focusing more and more on creators with a large following and is pivoting towards that segment of the market. This includes the decision to diversify into physical products, tipping, subscribing to a user (like Patreon), and so on. Given their refocus/pivot, it's made their interface a little too complex/overwhelming for new sellers and/or sellers who just want to sell digital products without all the hassle. SellApp is built for this segment of the market.
  - toefee 5y ago
    The success of Gumroad is in part due to the stores-beget-stores snowball effect: if someone is successful selling online, those that want to emulate the success -- of which there are many -- will gravitate towards the platforms their eyeballs are on. I suggest setting aside paid advertising, and instead invest in paying creators[1] to switch platforms. For example, pick some medium successful Gumroad creators (maybe they do $1k/sales per month) and offer them a 20% bonus on each sale they make through your platform. A single creator using your platform to make sales will deliver far more value than thousands in paid adverts -- and you can directly link spend to revenue, which is nice for attribution of spend. [1] I'd pick creators who operate in the creator niche, e.g: people who make content about running an online business, because they're most likely to convert into platform users.
masterof0 5y ago
Hey, one question, what type of digital goods can I sell in your platform? is in-game digital currency acceptable? (WOW gold, etc...) do you act as a escrow for that type of transactions?
- youseff 5y ago
  Hey there, yes that would be OK from our side, though we don't act as an escrow or custody funds. Given the above, you'll definitely want to keep in mind the high chargeback rates for in-game goods/currencies and put (additional) appropriate measures in place to negate those.
  - masterof0 5y ago
    thanks for your reply, I wish you luck, and I feel you will got something big going on there.
bberenberg 5y ago
How do you square "2. Payments; where other storefronts tend to custody funds and pay sellers out after 7-14 days, we enable sellers to receive earnings instantly." with chargebacks / refunds?
- youseff 5y ago
  That's a great question! What we currently do on SellApp, is block purchases coming from VPN's/proxies (via MaxMind) which'll help reduce the rate of fraudulent purchases. However, that by itself is probably not going to be enough to keep a low chargeback rate for all our sellers, so we are also planning on creating a fraud detection system that factors in a number of aspects in order to keep malicious customers at bay. For refunds, customers can open a ticket with a seller to request a refund. We also give sellers the ability to set a 'refund timer' and terms of a refund during the product creation process, so that in case something does go wrong, they have that to refer back to. Lots of room for improvement on both aspects though!
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    > What we currently do on SellApp, is block purchases coming from VPN's/proxies That's basically a non-starter for me as I need to give all potential users a good UX.
    - youseff 5y ago
      We give the customers a heads up to contact the seller when they get blocked, so it'll be as easy as telling them that they need to disable their VPN/proxy in order to make the purchase. Although, it'd make more sense if we tell them that and save you the time to reply to a few customer support tickets. Will add it to our roadmap :)
      - netr0ute 5y ago
        > that they need to disable their VPN/proxy in order to make the purchase. That's also a non-starter because that defeats the purpose of a VPN.
adamqureshi 5y ago
So i can make some GIF's and sell them? Is that a "digital" product? I can't refund and what about if i get a chargeback?
- youseff 5y ago
  You can indeed. Anything that can be delivered digitally, can be sold on SellApp.
fraXis 5y ago
Are you going to apply to YC?
- youseff 5y ago
  I'm still on the fence whether to apply or not.
samrolken 5y ago
The pricing page mentioning “platform fees” without specifying what they are doesn’t seem like the best thing. If you charge, or plan to charge, other fees, maybe also mention them on the pricing page. If you aren’t charging fees yet you can turn it into a promotional thing about how you’re waiving the fees for the first X months.
- youseff 5y ago
  Agreed, the pricing page was rushed a little, so the "platform fees" placeholder isn't relevant at this point in time. We will indeed introduce fees at a later date (in ~6 months or so), so I'll definitely be incorporating your suggestion. Thanks for that :)
  - somebodythere 5y ago
    You can say "Platform fees (waived during beta)" or something like that to make it clear.
  - samrolken 5y ago
    If you are already planning to charge people that are signing up for free, then it is relevant at this point in time. How do you plan to handle: Today: customer signs up for free. In six months: you start charging fees In six months plus one day: the customer sells something, incurring a fee even though they signed up for free.
rileymichael 5y ago
Is there currently support for programmatically handling completed purchases? I can't seem to find any docs. These type of digital marketplaces are actually pretty popular in gaming communities, where players purchase something through the store and receive it in game (e.g. runescape private servers), so I thought your username placeholder was pretty funny. Might be a niche worth exploring.
- youseff 5y ago
  We do indeed support dynamic goods via a pre-defined URL, though the docs still need to be written on this. Give me a little and it'll be up. And yeah that's what my intuition is telling me as well, people really underestimate the amount trades that are done in gaming/niche communities. Already reached out to the admin of Sythe to inquire about advertising ;)
joshmlewis 5y ago
The stats are a bit confusing on the home page. 1,100 stores and millions of views but only $32k in revenue generated?
- youseff 5y ago
  Those stats will need to be changed as they are from the 'old' project on which SellApp was based/rebuilt (toffee.com), but they are indeed correct. That platform didn't convert particularly well, heh. For a view of current stats - updated daily: https://sell.app/stats https://sell.app/stats
  - toefee 5y ago
    oh hey! you're the toffee guy. Did you swap the name because it was bad, or are you selling the domain? I thought the novelty of the toffee.com domain would be quite valuable to users -- but clearly not.
    - youseff 5y ago
      Hey, I am indeed! I actually obtained the toffee.com domain on a lease from a company (venture.com) back when funds were very limited and the lease made sense. When I raised funding earlier this year and inquired about a potential outright purchase of toffee.com, the answer was that they didn't want to sell. So instead of staying on the lease plan (which'd increase by a sizable amount y/o/y), I started looking for a suitable domain we could purchase outright, and luckily found sell.app for sale.
otterpro 5y ago
This looks like a great alternative to Gumroad, Sellfy, and even Etsy and Shopify. I hope this takes off, as I like this freemium pricing.
- youseff 5y ago
  Thank you! If you have any feedback on how we can improve, I'd love to hear it :)
gnicholas 5y ago
> It's completely free to start selling on SellApp, with no fees being taken (though we'll introduce a 3% fee per sale in a couple months) How does this stack up against Stripe or other platforms? What will the all-in fee be for credit card sales?
- baby 5y ago
  Stripe is less, but they don’t deliver the goods for you
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    How does the delivery happen, and what makes this a value add? I'm trying to figure out how this would work for the various digital products I sell, and I'm not quite sure I understand what is difficult about delivery.
    - youseff 5y ago
      Delivery happens when the customer successfully completes a payment. The value add is this: If you sell e.g. a downloadable product, it's relatively easy to manually email out a link to it every time you make a sale. But when you start to grow and/or see an increase in sales, you'll be wasting a lot of time on delivering that eBook to all those customers. This, x10, for other digital content like license keys. And if you look at it from the customer's perspective: you don't want to wait for the seller to come online and send a link to the product you paid for hours ago. You want it instantly. That is where the simplicity of SellApp comes in. We handle the payment, automatically send out the product to the customer, and help the customer get in touch with you in case anything is wrong with their purchase.
      - gnicholas 5y ago
        Thanks for explaining. Would this work for an ebook that has unique watermarking per customer, or does it have to be the same exact downloadable each time? Other than ebooks, what are other popular product types that you're seeing?
virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
Damn, how much did it cost to buy sell.com?
- pradn 5y ago
  They don't have sell.com, just sell.app - but that must have been expensive as well.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
    Good lawd what is wrong with me.
Cyph0n 5y ago
Nice work! I’m also in the process of working on a checkout app + API, but focused more on the payment processing side of things and targeting the North African market. I’m still in the very early stages, but I’ve been prototyping the checkout page and we seem to have both chosen a yellow Tailwind theme haha! I won’t be sticking to that, but I just thought it was a funny coincidence.
- youseff 5y ago
  Great to hear, wishing you the best of luck with your product! And yeah, Tailwind is really mind-blowing in how good it is. By the way, the Tailwind team will soon release an eCommerce package, so you might want to look out for that (I sure will!)
  - Cyph0n 5y ago
    Yep, as someone who sucks at frontend design, I was absolutely blown away by Tailwind. Is there any way to follow the development progress of Sell.app? And best of luck to you as well!
    - youseff 5y ago
      Thank you! And yes, we post regular product updates on both our Discord as well as Twitter (https://twitter.com/AppSell https://twitter.com/AppSell)
floatingatoll 5y ago
Congrats on the launch! I have a question. Is the EUP restriction against 'adult content' included solely because that restriction is placed upon you by one or more of your implementing vendors, platforms, etc?
- youseff 5y ago
  Hey there, thank you! The restriction in our AUP is indeed because payment processors (unfortunately) still frown upon platforms which help facilitate the sale of 'adult content'. Without it, it's unlikely we'll be accepted to e.g. Stripe Connect and/or PayPal for Marketplaces further down the line.
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    I'd like to suggest you add the words sexually and porn to your AUP - first thing I did was go to that page and ctr-f > "sex" - then "porn" - nothing was found.. so it created interest.. then I saw "are prohibited by the payment processing service; or " near the top and went oh my - many people are not going to get that this is the cop out - I came back to the comment thread here and did the ctrl-f 'adult' - and found the answer.
    - youseff 5y ago
      Ah, good suggestion! Will add that in to prevent confusion
analognoise 5y ago
Could I offer programming services on it? Or is this like if you had IP to sell (a file or group of files), you could sell it? It would be interesting to sell FPGA odds and ends people needed. Probably not enough of a market though.
- youseff 5y ago
  With SellApp you can sell both your programming services as well as IP, that's the interesting thing about our platform. We don't limit you on what kind of product you sell, as long as it's digital (and not illegal)
  - analognoise 5y ago
    So I could test out a storefront for no cost, and if it looks like it isn't viable it's not much of a loss? Is there any kind of tracking or metrics? Like if I setup a storefront, could I A/B test different marketing copy and be able to figure out what was working? This frankly sounds pretty awesome.
    - youseff 5y ago
      You can indeed spin up a store at absolutely no cost. There's no tracking or A/B testing yet, but you'll definitely be able to see which product performs better in terms of sales.
laurent123456 5y ago
> 1. Simplicity; Unlike competitors whose interfaces overwhelm first-time seller of digital products, we decided to keep our interface as minimal/simple as possible. Is that really the number 1 differentiation point? Because it's common that new services claim to be simpler than competitors - and why shouldn't they be? They have less features at this point, so that would be weird if they were more complicated. I'd be more curious to know how the service compares to Stripe for instance.
- youseff 5y ago
  Agreed on the first point, however the common thing of storefronts like ours is that they start with digital goods, then tack in physical products, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and so on. All on the same interface. Stripe and SellApp go hand in hand. Where Stripe is a payment processor, SellApp is the storefront that takes care of the pre-sales and after-sales process including product delivery, security, order replacement, etc. That said, Stripe does seem to have recently launched a new product known as "Payment Links" which may eventually grow out to something similar to SellApp.
IconianGate 5y ago
The payout times and fees you advertise for competitors charging are overly inflated by like double at least. Once you move away from Shopify or woocommerce there are plenty of companies offering these services with similar enough interfaces. Sellfy, selly, rocketr to name a few that have been around ~3+ years. Most of these have clones that offer free services in all major payment options and cryptocurrencies. I think you will need to differentiate your company more to have any traction. Creator sponsoring of some nature seems like the best suggestion I read here. Good luck
- youseff 5y ago
  Both Sellfy and Selly charge a monthly fee starting at $20 to even create a store. Rocketr has stalled/been abandoned since early 2019 if I'm not mistaken. However, I do agree with you in that we need to differentiate ourselves a little more, which is what we'll be doing as we progress with our roadmap. Sponsoring does indeed look like a good way to get traction going and we'll definitely be looking into that as a viable way to grow our userbase. Many thanks for the feedback!
  - IconianGate 5y ago
    But sellfy started at under 5% fees and selly was originally free. These are the pricing models they moved to with the hopes of growing beyond the percent commissions which honestly isn't that great for the general “indie” market. They do both have multiple clones that have popped up and which you could eventually probably find for free. Sellfy sort of went with artists if I remember correctly. Another one focused on films. Another on ebooks. Others stay general to digital products but be aware you're also going to have to combat fraud. Rocketr continues to process orders but development did for the most part stall after not being able to move toward payment processing more generally (costly). Sharing this as a former team member
    - youseff 5y ago
      Yeah, you're right with their respective histories, though I do think a freemium model with a relatively low fee/tx can definitely work (look at e.g. Gumroad/Shoppy) We do also indeed have plans for a fraud detection system to help combat fraud. Btw since you're a former team member, I think we might have crossed paths on HF a couple years ago :)
karolisram 5y ago
So what’s the secret sauce for building it less than 4 months ?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- youseff 5y ago
  One of the things I did, was draft a complete design of the project structure in advance of actually writing any code. This included only the essential features with no additional bells/whistles in order to prevent feature creep. By the time my two team members formally joined, the above design was already split up in manageable chunks of tasks which could be worked on in parallel. In addition to the above, we decided not to decouple the frontend and backend, but instead used Livewire in conjunction with Laravel & Alpine. This, coupled with Tailwind's UI components (tailwindui.com), helped us spend very little time on the frontend aside from a few specific aspects.
webinvest 5y ago
Can we see a working example of something to buy? For example: 10 cents just as a test purchase.
- youseff 5y ago
  Hey there, I just created an example listing costing 10 cents: https://admin.sell.app/listing/ycombinator-news-test-purchase https://admin.sell.app/listing/ycombinator-news-test-purchas... - The listing has a volume discount, so if you make the quantity 10 or more, it'll automatically apply a 10% discount - You can also opt to pay more by clicking on "or more" just below the product's price - If you wish to apply a coupon code to see how that works, you can enter "coupon" into the "Coupon code" input field to get 5% off the product's price
youseff 5y ago
I'm off for a couple hours, it's 2AM here, but will get back to this as soon as I wake up. Thanks a lot for the candid feedback HN, learned a lot from talking to you all! I've already gone ahead and implemented most suggested changes in the thread, and will be implementing the others soon.
sjg007 5y ago
Don’t compete on price. Offer a better value.
KrishnaShripad 5y ago
Congrats on the launch. The first thing I did was check if you are an MoR or a front for other payment gateways and quickly realised it is the latter. Please make it an MoR. We have too many digital goods/services payment processors (which I am sure many commenters have already listed) but very very few that are a full blown MoR. I don't mind paying 5%-8% fees for MoR. MoR is the selling point for me. Everything else can easily be achieved with Stripe and some coding. Not MoR. MoR requires a lot of setup but any Startup that can properly pull off an MoR specifically made for creators will take off big time IMHO. For whatever reason best known to Startups in this space, they actively tend to avoid going the MoR route. Maybe it is the legal hassles of setting one up or complications with handling taxes across multiple regions. I don't know what exactly is the issue but a disruption is required here. I can literally count on my fingers the number of payment processors that are MoR. It is that low. If you are a Startup that is in the payments space and want to truly reduce burden of Creators then it is not in the fees. It is in providing an MoR. I am honestly surprised to see payment startups fighting to lower fees (which probably isn't a concern for most) rather than innovating on and fixing real pain points of Creators. When I choose a payment processor I don't fixate only on the fees. That is probably my last priority. I have other factors that take precedence (the points are listed in order): 1. Are they an MoR? (If no, I just skip. It doesn't solve my pain point). 2. How do they handle chargebacks? 3. How do they handle scammers who misuse their services? 4. How do they handle Creator accounts? Do they have draconian policies where Creator accounts just get shutdown without proper notices? 5. How flexible is their payment schedule? 6. Do they support Wire transfers for payouts? 7. Pricing As you can see, Pricing comes at the very bottom of the priorities I have set before choosing my payment processor. It is, in all aspects, a lifetime relationship. Why would I give more importance to pricing if you are solving my pain points? That is worth more than a few percentage points you shave off the price. I want Startups in this space to compete on the 6 points and give the 7th point a lower priority. Only those who are not exposed to this space tend to first go for point 7 but quickly realise they have to deal with taxes and other complex legal stuff and quit your service. You'll just end up having a higher churn rate and not so loyal customers. Not taking anything away from your launch. Just providing some constructive feedback.
- motoxpro 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
What makes you better than Gumroad?
- youseff 5y ago
  Gumroad seems to be focusing more and more on creators with a large following and is pivoting towards that segment of the market. This includes the decision to diversify into physical products, subscribing to a user (like Patreon), email marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging, and so on. Given their refocus/pivot, it's made their interface a little too complex/overwhelming for new sellers and/or sellers who just want to sell digital products without all the hassle. SellApp is built for this segment of the market.
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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debdut 5y ago
Couldn't sign in after sign up, keeps looping me in Verification. Please fix!
- youseff 5y ago
  Just checked, you should have received a verification mail sent to the email you entered during sign-up. Once you click on that, you'll be able to sign in.
dataflow 5y ago
How does a seller deal with taxes and related legal stuff across jurisdiction? Do you handle them automagically?
- youseff 5y ago
  Great question! For now, the seller has to deal with taxes themselves, but we plan on introducing a number of nifty ways to streamline & automate this process.
warkdarrior 5y ago
Could I sell my credentials to a Netflix account? It's a digital good, though I am not sure how a buyer would verify that the credentials are valid before completing the purchase.
- youseff 5y ago
  This is a tough one, since it'd be difficult to verify whether the Netflix account does indeed belong to you (versus of it being hacked). I'd say if it's a one-off sale, you're good to go. But if it's more than one account being sold, we'd have to remove your store.
gondo 5y ago
"while we automatically take care of all the difficult parts" Taxes are the difficult part.
- youseff 5y ago
  They are indeed part of what's difficult, which is why we'll be bringing out a number of tools & features to help simplify things.
melfrey 5y ago
Can you give an example of a business that uses this? How does this set apart significantly from other competitors with similar use cases and functionalities?
- youseff 5y ago
  We've launched just last week, so there aren't any sizeable businesses who've joined SellApp (yet). However, the few dozen sellers I did have a chance to talk to, primarily cite three reasons why they switch to us instead of staying at a competitor: 1. Our freemium pricing. When a seller wants to spin up a storefront and sell a digital product, most competitors charge upfront (i.e. Shopify, Sellfy, Podia) whereas we have a completely free plan a seller can make use of immediately. 2. The way payouts work. Alternatives tend to hold/custody funds for a specific timeframe for various reasons. SellApp makes it possible for a seller to directly link their PayPal and Stripe accounts with their storefronts, resulting in them receiving payments instantaneously. 3. The interface/UI. As also mentioned in a few other replies, competitors tend to start off as a digital product storefront, but then completely neglect it in favor of physical products, tipping, email/affiliate marketing, and so on. That, for the average digital goods seller, becomes overwhelming and unnecessary. SellApp's intuitive and minimal design is a 'breathe of fresh air' in that sense.

136 points by youseff 5y ago

Hey HN! We recently launched SellApp and wanted to share it with the HN community. SellApp is a simple way to sell digital products online. A digital goods seller can spin up a storefront in less than a minute and start selling instantly, while we automatically take care of all the difficult parts — delivery, checkout, payment methods, security, and more. We built SellApp with a small (remote) team of 3, in a little less than 4 months from start to finish (happy to elaborate more on how) What makes SellApp different from competitors: 1. Simplicity; Unlike competitors whose interfaces overwhelm first-time seller of digital products, we decided to keep our interface as minimal/simple as possible. 2. Payments; where other storefronts tend to custody funds and pay sellers out after 7-14 days, we enable sellers to receive earnings instantly. 3. Pricing: Alternatives either charge a high monthly recurring subscription to start, or take anywhere between 8% to 25%+ in commission per sale. It's completely free to start selling on SellApp, with no fees being taken (though we'll introduce a 3% fee per sale in a couple months) Happy to answer any questions and go more in-depth on the technical side of things.

easytiger 5y ago

What is a "digital product"?

youseff 5y ago
Great question! We see a digital product as anything that can be delivered online. This is generally subdivided into 4 different types: 1. A file which you can download, for example an eBook. 2. A text-based product, such as a game key or license code. 3. An online service, like creating a logo for someone. 4. A dynamic delivery which lets you programmatically perform certain actions once a payment is successfully processed. A good example is automatically upgrading someone's account on your forum (or Discord channel)
- fonix 5y ago
  what about subscriptions? say providing a service or website access to a user every month?
  - youseff 5y ago
    Subscriptions are indeed planned. Our roadmap currently looks something like this: API -> subscriptions -> product embeds -> basket system (so a customer can purchase multiple digital items from the same store)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- IanCal 5y ago
  With the last two, does that mean I could generate a digital product/file in response to some filled in information when the customer is ordering? I've been interested in generating procedural art, and some other similar things and that's been a sticking point.
  - youseff 5y ago
    We do indeed have 'additional info' planned. When that's implemented, the customer will be able to enter any kind of detail you'd like them to (like their username, MAC address, or something else) and we'd pass that info on to you when they successfully check out. With that, you can then automatically perform actions and deliver the digital product/file.

fraXis 5y ago

>> "It's completely free to start selling on SellApp, with no fees being taken (though we'll introduce a 3% fee per sale in a couple months)" Are you using Stripe to process your payments?

Guffton 5y ago
The frontpage of the site suggests so.

lloydatkinson 5y ago

Do you have some example sites using this? I don't see any demos. How does this compare to SnipCart?

youseff 5y ago
Hey there, there is indeed an example store which you can view here: https://admin.sell.app/ https://admin.sell.app/ Not too familiar with SnipCart, but looking at what they offer (& correct me if I'm wrong here) it's a little more technical than SellApp. SnipCart lets you upload a product to their platform, but then they return HTML/JS which you have to add to your own site. That means you have to purchase your own domain and hosting, then enter the relevant code to your server, plus take care of the site's design and whatnot. SellApp has a different approach. As soon as you sign up, you can create your own storefront by specifying the subdomain you'd like (such as admin.sell.app) and you're good to go. Any product created in the dashboard, will then be visible & purchaseable on your storefront. No code/configuration required.

rgbrgb 5y ago

Do you have an example storefront we could look at? I think that would be a great link from the homepage to help people understand what this thing is. On the biz front, it seems like you guys are taking on gumroad? How are you thinking about getting users? I'm not super familiar with how gumroad does distribution.

youseff 5y ago
Hey there, I do indeed have an example storefront which you can view here: https://admin.sell.app/ https://admin.sell.app/ You are right in saying that we are taking on Gumroad. IIRC, most of Gumroad's traction has been organic/word-of-mouth, with little/no money spent on paid advertising. We're still figuring out the best way to acquire users at scale by experimenting with both conventional (Reddit/Twitter ads) and unconventional (Discord channel/niche forum advertising) methods. PS: Great suggestion! I'll be setting up & linking an example storefront on the homepage shortly.
- porcc 5y ago
  Why you and not gumroad?
  - youseff 5y ago
    Great question! Gumroad seems to be focusing more and more on creators with a large following and is pivoting towards that segment of the market. This includes the decision to diversify into physical products, tipping, subscribing to a user (like Patreon), and so on. Given their refocus/pivot, it's made their interface a little too complex/overwhelming for new sellers and/or sellers who just want to sell digital products without all the hassle. SellApp is built for this segment of the market.
- toefee 5y ago
  The success of Gumroad is in part due to the stores-beget-stores snowball effect: if someone is successful selling online, those that want to emulate the success -- of which there are many -- will gravitate towards the platforms their eyeballs are on. I suggest setting aside paid advertising, and instead invest in paying creators[1] to switch platforms. For example, pick some medium successful Gumroad creators (maybe they do $1k/sales per month) and offer them a 20% bonus on each sale they make through your platform. A single creator using your platform to make sales will deliver far more value than thousands in paid adverts -- and you can directly link spend to revenue, which is nice for attribution of spend. [1] I'd pick creators who operate in the creator niche, e.g: people who make content about running an online business, because they're most likely to convert into platform users.

masterof0 5y ago

Hey, one question, what type of digital goods can I sell in your platform? is in-game digital currency acceptable? (WOW gold, etc...) do you act as a escrow for that type of transactions?

youseff 5y ago
Hey there, yes that would be OK from our side, though we don't act as an escrow or custody funds. Given the above, you'll definitely want to keep in mind the high chargeback rates for in-game goods/currencies and put (additional) appropriate measures in place to negate those.
- masterof0 5y ago
  thanks for your reply, I wish you luck, and I feel you will got something big going on there.

bberenberg 5y ago

How do you square "2. Payments; where other storefronts tend to custody funds and pay sellers out after 7-14 days, we enable sellers to receive earnings instantly." with chargebacks / refunds?

youseff 5y ago
That's a great question! What we currently do on SellApp, is block purchases coming from VPN's/proxies (via MaxMind) which'll help reduce the rate of fraudulent purchases. However, that by itself is probably not going to be enough to keep a low chargeback rate for all our sellers, so we are also planning on creating a fraud detection system that factors in a number of aspects in order to keep malicious customers at bay. For refunds, customers can open a ticket with a seller to request a refund. We also give sellers the ability to set a 'refund timer' and terms of a refund during the product creation process, so that in case something does go wrong, they have that to refer back to. Lots of room for improvement on both aspects though!
- netr0ute 5y ago
  > What we currently do on SellApp, is block purchases coming from VPN's/proxies That's basically a non-starter for me as I need to give all potential users a good UX.
  - youseff 5y ago
    We give the customers a heads up to contact the seller when they get blocked, so it'll be as easy as telling them that they need to disable their VPN/proxy in order to make the purchase. Although, it'd make more sense if we tell them that and save you the time to reply to a few customer support tickets. Will add it to our roadmap :)
    - netr0ute 5y ago
      > that they need to disable their VPN/proxy in order to make the purchase. That's also a non-starter because that defeats the purpose of a VPN.

adamqureshi 5y ago

So i can make some GIF's and sell them? Is that a "digital" product? I can't refund and what about if i get a chargeback?

youseff 5y ago
You can indeed. Anything that can be delivered digitally, can be sold on SellApp.

fraXis 5y ago

Are you going to apply to YC?

youseff 5y ago
I'm still on the fence whether to apply or not.

samrolken 5y ago

The pricing page mentioning “platform fees” without specifying what they are doesn’t seem like the best thing. If you charge, or plan to charge, other fees, maybe also mention them on the pricing page. If you aren’t charging fees yet you can turn it into a promotional thing about how you’re waiving the fees for the first X months.

youseff 5y ago
Agreed, the pricing page was rushed a little, so the "platform fees" placeholder isn't relevant at this point in time. We will indeed introduce fees at a later date (in ~6 months or so), so I'll definitely be incorporating your suggestion. Thanks for that :)
- somebodythere 5y ago
  You can say "Platform fees (waived during beta)" or something like that to make it clear.
- samrolken 5y ago
  If you are already planning to charge people that are signing up for free, then it is relevant at this point in time. How do you plan to handle: Today: customer signs up for free. In six months: you start charging fees In six months plus one day: the customer sells something, incurring a fee even though they signed up for free.

rileymichael 5y ago

Is there currently support for programmatically handling completed purchases? I can't seem to find any docs. These type of digital marketplaces are actually pretty popular in gaming communities, where players purchase something through the store and receive it in game (e.g. runescape private servers), so I thought your username placeholder was pretty funny. Might be a niche worth exploring.

youseff 5y ago
We do indeed support dynamic goods via a pre-defined URL, though the docs still need to be written on this. Give me a little and it'll be up. And yeah that's what my intuition is telling me as well, people really underestimate the amount trades that are done in gaming/niche communities. Already reached out to the admin of Sythe to inquire about advertising ;)

joshmlewis 5y ago

The stats are a bit confusing on the home page. 1,100 stores and millions of views but only $32k in revenue generated?

youseff 5y ago
Those stats will need to be changed as they are from the 'old' project on which SellApp was based/rebuilt (toffee.com), but they are indeed correct. That platform didn't convert particularly well, heh. For a view of current stats - updated daily: https://sell.app/stats https://sell.app/stats
- toefee 5y ago
  oh hey! you're the toffee guy. Did you swap the name because it was bad, or are you selling the domain? I thought the novelty of the toffee.com domain would be quite valuable to users -- but clearly not.
  - youseff 5y ago
    Hey, I am indeed! I actually obtained the toffee.com domain on a lease from a company (venture.com) back when funds were very limited and the lease made sense. When I raised funding earlier this year and inquired about a potential outright purchase of toffee.com, the answer was that they didn't want to sell. So instead of staying on the lease plan (which'd increase by a sizable amount y/o/y), I started looking for a suitable domain we could purchase outright, and luckily found sell.app for sale.

otterpro 5y ago

This looks like a great alternative to Gumroad, Sellfy, and even Etsy and Shopify. I hope this takes off, as I like this freemium pricing.

youseff 5y ago
Thank you! If you have any feedback on how we can improve, I'd love to hear it :)

gnicholas 5y ago

> It's completely free to start selling on SellApp, with no fees being taken (though we'll introduce a 3% fee per sale in a couple months) How does this stack up against Stripe or other platforms? What will the all-in fee be for credit card sales?

baby 5y ago
Stripe is less, but they don’t deliver the goods for you
- gnicholas 5y ago
  How does the delivery happen, and what makes this a value add? I'm trying to figure out how this would work for the various digital products I sell, and I'm not quite sure I understand what is difficult about delivery.
  - youseff 5y ago
    Delivery happens when the customer successfully completes a payment. The value add is this: If you sell e.g. a downloadable product, it's relatively easy to manually email out a link to it every time you make a sale. But when you start to grow and/or see an increase in sales, you'll be wasting a lot of time on delivering that eBook to all those customers. This, x10, for other digital content like license keys. And if you look at it from the customer's perspective: you don't want to wait for the seller to come online and send a link to the product you paid for hours ago. You want it instantly. That is where the simplicity of SellApp comes in. We handle the payment, automatically send out the product to the customer, and help the customer get in touch with you in case anything is wrong with their purchase.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      Thanks for explaining. Would this work for an ebook that has unique watermarking per customer, or does it have to be the same exact downloadable each time? Other than ebooks, what are other popular product types that you're seeing?

virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago

Damn, how much did it cost to buy sell.com?

pradn 5y ago
They don't have sell.com, just sell.app - but that must have been expensive as well.
- virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
  Good lawd what is wrong with me.

Cyph0n 5y ago

Nice work! I’m also in the process of working on a checkout app + API, but focused more on the payment processing side of things and targeting the North African market. I’m still in the very early stages, but I’ve been prototyping the checkout page and we seem to have both chosen a yellow Tailwind theme haha! I won’t be sticking to that, but I just thought it was a funny coincidence.

youseff 5y ago
Great to hear, wishing you the best of luck with your product! And yeah, Tailwind is really mind-blowing in how good it is. By the way, the Tailwind team will soon release an eCommerce package, so you might want to look out for that (I sure will!)
- Cyph0n 5y ago
  Yep, as someone who sucks at frontend design, I was absolutely blown away by Tailwind. Is there any way to follow the development progress of Sell.app? And best of luck to you as well!
  - youseff 5y ago
    Thank you! And yes, we post regular product updates on both our Discord as well as Twitter (https://twitter.com/AppSell https://twitter.com/AppSell)

floatingatoll 5y ago

Congrats on the launch! I have a question. Is the EUP restriction against 'adult content' included solely because that restriction is placed upon you by one or more of your implementing vendors, platforms, etc?

youseff 5y ago
Hey there, thank you! The restriction in our AUP is indeed because payment processors (unfortunately) still frown upon platforms which help facilitate the sale of 'adult content'. Without it, it's unlikely we'll be accepted to e.g. Stripe Connect and/or PayPal for Marketplaces further down the line.
- stevenicr 5y ago
  I'd like to suggest you add the words sexually and porn to your AUP - first thing I did was go to that page and ctr-f > "sex" - then "porn" - nothing was found.. so it created interest.. then I saw "are prohibited by the payment processing service; or " near the top and went oh my - many people are not going to get that this is the cop out - I came back to the comment thread here and did the ctrl-f 'adult' - and found the answer.
  - youseff 5y ago
    Ah, good suggestion! Will add that in to prevent confusion

analognoise 5y ago

Could I offer programming services on it? Or is this like if you had IP to sell (a file or group of files), you could sell it? It would be interesting to sell FPGA odds and ends people needed. Probably not enough of a market though.

youseff 5y ago
With SellApp you can sell both your programming services as well as IP, that's the interesting thing about our platform. We don't limit you on what kind of product you sell, as long as it's digital (and not illegal)
- analognoise 5y ago
  So I could test out a storefront for no cost, and if it looks like it isn't viable it's not much of a loss? Is there any kind of tracking or metrics? Like if I setup a storefront, could I A/B test different marketing copy and be able to figure out what was working? This frankly sounds pretty awesome.
  - youseff 5y ago
    You can indeed spin up a store at absolutely no cost. There's no tracking or A/B testing yet, but you'll definitely be able to see which product performs better in terms of sales.

laurent123456 5y ago

> 1. Simplicity; Unlike competitors whose interfaces overwhelm first-time seller of digital products, we decided to keep our interface as minimal/simple as possible. Is that really the number 1 differentiation point? Because it's common that new services claim to be simpler than competitors - and why shouldn't they be? They have less features at this point, so that would be weird if they were more complicated. I'd be more curious to know how the service compares to Stripe for instance.

youseff 5y ago
Agreed on the first point, however the common thing of storefronts like ours is that they start with digital goods, then tack in physical products, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and so on. All on the same interface. Stripe and SellApp go hand in hand. Where Stripe is a payment processor, SellApp is the storefront that takes care of the pre-sales and after-sales process including product delivery, security, order replacement, etc. That said, Stripe does seem to have recently launched a new product known as "Payment Links" which may eventually grow out to something similar to SellApp.

IconianGate 5y ago

The payout times and fees you advertise for competitors charging are overly inflated by like double at least. Once you move away from Shopify or woocommerce there are plenty of companies offering these services with similar enough interfaces. Sellfy, selly, rocketr to name a few that have been around ~3+ years. Most of these have clones that offer free services in all major payment options and cryptocurrencies. I think you will need to differentiate your company more to have any traction. Creator sponsoring of some nature seems like the best suggestion I read here. Good luck

youseff 5y ago
Both Sellfy and Selly charge a monthly fee starting at $20 to even create a store. Rocketr has stalled/been abandoned since early 2019 if I'm not mistaken. However, I do agree with you in that we need to differentiate ourselves a little more, which is what we'll be doing as we progress with our roadmap. Sponsoring does indeed look like a good way to get traction going and we'll definitely be looking into that as a viable way to grow our userbase. Many thanks for the feedback!
- IconianGate 5y ago
  But sellfy started at under 5% fees and selly was originally free. These are the pricing models they moved to with the hopes of growing beyond the percent commissions which honestly isn't that great for the general “indie” market. They do both have multiple clones that have popped up and which you could eventually probably find for free. Sellfy sort of went with artists if I remember correctly. Another one focused on films. Another on ebooks. Others stay general to digital products but be aware you're also going to have to combat fraud. Rocketr continues to process orders but development did for the most part stall after not being able to move toward payment processing more generally (costly). Sharing this as a former team member
  - youseff 5y ago
    Yeah, you're right with their respective histories, though I do think a freemium model with a relatively low fee/tx can definitely work (look at e.g. Gumroad/Shoppy) We do also indeed have plans for a fraud detection system to help combat fraud. Btw since you're a former team member, I think we might have crossed paths on HF a couple years ago :)

karolisram 5y ago

So what’s the secret sauce for building it less than 4 months ?

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youseff 5y ago
One of the things I did, was draft a complete design of the project structure in advance of actually writing any code. This included only the essential features with no additional bells/whistles in order to prevent feature creep. By the time my two team members formally joined, the above design was already split up in manageable chunks of tasks which could be worked on in parallel. In addition to the above, we decided not to decouple the frontend and backend, but instead used Livewire in conjunction with Laravel & Alpine. This, coupled with Tailwind's UI components (tailwindui.com), helped us spend very little time on the frontend aside from a few specific aspects.

webinvest 5y ago

Can we see a working example of something to buy? For example: 10 cents just as a test purchase.

youseff 5y ago
Hey there, I just created an example listing costing 10 cents: https://admin.sell.app/listing/ycombinator-news-test-purchase https://admin.sell.app/listing/ycombinator-news-test-purchas... - The listing has a volume discount, so if you make the quantity 10 or more, it'll automatically apply a 10% discount - You can also opt to pay more by clicking on "or more" just below the product's price - If you wish to apply a coupon code to see how that works, you can enter "coupon" into the "Coupon code" input field to get 5% off the product's price

youseff 5y ago

I'm off for a couple hours, it's 2AM here, but will get back to this as soon as I wake up. Thanks a lot for the candid feedback HN, learned a lot from talking to you all! I've already gone ahead and implemented most suggested changes in the thread, and will be implementing the others soon.

sjg007 5y ago

Don’t compete on price. Offer a better value.

KrishnaShripad 5y ago

Congrats on the launch. The first thing I did was check if you are an MoR or a front for other payment gateways and quickly realised it is the latter. Please make it an MoR. We have too many digital goods/services payment processors (which I am sure many commenters have already listed) but very very few that are a full blown MoR. I don't mind paying 5%-8% fees for MoR. MoR is the selling point for me. Everything else can easily be achieved with Stripe and some coding. Not MoR. MoR requires a lot of setup but any Startup that can properly pull off an MoR specifically made for creators will take off big time IMHO. For whatever reason best known to Startups in this space, they actively tend to avoid going the MoR route. Maybe it is the legal hassles of setting one up or complications with handling taxes across multiple regions. I don't know what exactly is the issue but a disruption is required here. I can literally count on my fingers the number of payment processors that are MoR. It is that low. If you are a Startup that is in the payments space and want to truly reduce burden of Creators then it is not in the fees. It is in providing an MoR. I am honestly surprised to see payment startups fighting to lower fees (which probably isn't a concern for most) rather than innovating on and fixing real pain points of Creators. When I choose a payment processor I don't fixate only on the fees. That is probably my last priority. I have other factors that take precedence (the points are listed in order): 1. Are they an MoR? (If no, I just skip. It doesn't solve my pain point). 2. How do they handle chargebacks? 3. How do they handle scammers who misuse their services? 4. How do they handle Creator accounts? Do they have draconian policies where Creator accounts just get shutdown without proper notices? 5. How flexible is their payment schedule? 6. Do they support Wire transfers for payouts? 7. Pricing As you can see, Pricing comes at the very bottom of the priorities I have set before choosing my payment processor. It is, in all aspects, a lifetime relationship. Why would I give more importance to pricing if you are solving my pain points? That is worth more than a few percentage points you shave off the price. I want Startups in this space to compete on the 6 points and give the 7th point a lower priority. Only those who are not exposed to this space tend to first go for point 7 but quickly realise they have to deal with taxes and other complex legal stuff and quit your service. You'll just end up having a higher churn rate and not so loyal customers. Not taking anything away from your launch. Just providing some constructive feedback.

motoxpro 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

What makes you better than Gumroad?

youseff 5y ago
Gumroad seems to be focusing more and more on creators with a large following and is pivoting towards that segment of the market. This includes the decision to diversify into physical products, subscribing to a user (like Patreon), email marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging, and so on. Given their refocus/pivot, it's made their interface a little too complex/overwhelming for new sellers and/or sellers who just want to sell digital products without all the hassle. SellApp is built for this segment of the market.

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debdut 5y ago

Couldn't sign in after sign up, keeps looping me in Verification. Please fix!

youseff 5y ago
Just checked, you should have received a verification mail sent to the email you entered during sign-up. Once you click on that, you'll be able to sign in.

dataflow 5y ago

How does a seller deal with taxes and related legal stuff across jurisdiction? Do you handle them automagically?

youseff 5y ago
Great question! For now, the seller has to deal with taxes themselves, but we plan on introducing a number of nifty ways to streamline & automate this process.

warkdarrior 5y ago

Could I sell my credentials to a Netflix account? It's a digital good, though I am not sure how a buyer would verify that the credentials are valid before completing the purchase.

youseff 5y ago
This is a tough one, since it'd be difficult to verify whether the Netflix account does indeed belong to you (versus of it being hacked). I'd say if it's a one-off sale, you're good to go. But if it's more than one account being sold, we'd have to remove your store.

gondo 5y ago

"while we automatically take care of all the difficult parts" Taxes are the difficult part.

youseff 5y ago
They are indeed part of what's difficult, which is why we'll be bringing out a number of tools & features to help simplify things.

melfrey 5y ago

Can you give an example of a business that uses this? How does this set apart significantly from other competitors with similar use cases and functionalities?

youseff 5y ago
We've launched just last week, so there aren't any sizeable businesses who've joined SellApp (yet). However, the few dozen sellers I did have a chance to talk to, primarily cite three reasons why they switch to us instead of staying at a competitor: 1. Our freemium pricing. When a seller wants to spin up a storefront and sell a digital product, most competitors charge upfront (i.e. Shopify, Sellfy, Podia) whereas we have a completely free plan a seller can make use of immediately. 2. The way payouts work. Alternatives tend to hold/custody funds for a specific timeframe for various reasons. SellApp makes it possible for a seller to directly link their PayPal and Stripe accounts with their storefronts, resulting in them receiving payments instantaneously. 3. The interface/UI. As also mentioned in a few other replies, competitors tend to start off as a digital product storefront, but then completely neglect it in favor of physical products, tipping, email/affiliate marketing, and so on. That, for the average digital goods seller, becomes overwhelming and unnecessary. SellApp's intuitive and minimal design is a 'breathe of fresh air' in that sense.