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Show HN: Create a paid link to anything
- 99failures 4y agoso OK. How do I, the publisher, get my money? A FAQ would be nice.
- Alifatisk 4y agoSo this is like AdFly?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Jamesmoorez 4y ago
- MonkeyClub 4y agoOr rather: https://paidlink.to/l/OxLrwggYVi https://paidlink.to/l/OxLrwggYVi Doesn't work, though, it Server Errors. Also, out of $1.00 I net only $0.25?
- neptuneis 4y agoHrm, seems like your Stripe account didn't get fully created. I'll take a look at this. In the meantime, the UX looks like this: > https://paidlink.to/l/aofBHyHOkU https://paidlink.to/l/aofBHyHOkU (Obviously, don't click through, it doesn't go anywhere for your $15.00).
- cleerline 4y agowhy no paypal?
- pimlottc 4y agoWould be useful to have an example paidlink so you can see what the UX is like for visitors.
- MonkeyClub 4y agoCheck my paidlink.to link to paidlink.to above (https://paidlink.to/l/OxLrwggYVi https://paidlink.to/l/OxLrwggYVi). The UX is as follows: > Server Error (500)
- ezekg 4y agoBut couldn't people just share the link after the redirect?
- jorts 4y agoCould be blocked based on referrer?
- alexcroox 4y agoThis is a no code solution
- neptuneis 4y agoThat's exactly right. This service wouldn't be appropriate if you were trying to protect access to (for example) a full web application. It could be appropriate if you were selling (for example) access to an individual Zoom call or Google Doc and didn't have concerns about the link being shared afterwards.
- aliqot 4y agoyou could do a caching proxy then sell access to the cache data, or make the person selling the link pay more % to keep the link cached longer, maybe like an IPFS pin or something
- pHollda 4y agoWhat's up with all of this financializing of everything??
- JohnCClarke 4y agoCapitalism
- update8887 4y agocapitali.sm
- update8887 4y agohttps://paidlink.to/l/QyiCPgyIAg https://paidlink.to/l/QyiCPgyIAg
- warkdarrior 4y agoFinancialization will continue until morale improves.
- the_third_wave 4y agoIt comes from the drive for "monetisation" which is the most recent form of alchemy. Where the alchemists of old tried to turn base metals into gold these monitists try to turn everything into a bunch of changed bits in a file on some bank's computer system. Future history will tell whether monetists had better luck than the alchemists of old.
- vyrotek 4y agoView this comment for $3! https://t.ly/T8hb https://t.ly/T8hb
- mritchie712 4y agothought this would be a link to an NFT. It's bad, but still better.
- 4y ago
- dotBen 4y agoIf you want this functionality on a WordPress-powered site, which is one of the use cases stated, this is the industry standard way of doing this within the WP world: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/ https://easydigitaldownloads.com/
- algo_trader 4y agoI dont understand this Is it a library/backend/hosted-form? (For just $499 - you save $500!!!) Is it a payment gateway? Do they spare you the need for pp/stripe/CC account ?! I cant possibly image what the other 90 plugins do...
- mitchdoogle 4y agoIt's a system for managing access to digital files on your WordPress site. You have to have your own payment processor and enter the API keys in the settings. The add-ons are mostly API connections to other services, i.e. Dropbox, aws or additional features. $500 is if you want everything and have lots of sites. Probably only a developer would want that. $100 is the basic set up. This is an alternative to something like woocommerce if you only have digital merchandise, and makes restricting access to files easy
- nagyf 4y agoSo how can I trust that after paying for the link, I will get the content that was advertised? What happens if it just redirects me to google.com after that? How do I get my money back? How do you ensure the paid links are safe to visit, and it won't redirect me to a malicious website?
- behnamoh 4y ago> How do you ensure the paid links are safe to visit, and it won't redirect me to a malicious website? Is it up to this website though? It's like asking URL shorteners to check the malicious activity of original links.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoYou don’t pay a URL shortener to redirect you.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TylerE 4y agoThere’s a number of shady “services” like AdFly that are just that.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoI guess people characterizing such services as "shady" is probably a good reason to try and vet the links people submit :)
- aliqot 4y agothis isn't saying that the product is wrong, it's saying we accept you and then offering a gentle gesture toward the center of the circle to commence your nerd beatdown. this is the initiation process. also we're nerds, we ask questions and shit. it's fine. nobody means anything by it.
- 4y ago
- tendiesfortwo 4y agoI like this idea but wouldn't it be really easy to bypass? Once you pay for it, I imagine you get redirected and can just share the final URL destination for free.
- _8j50 4y agoFor third party sites like googledrive I think you're right but if it is your own site, you can restrict based on referer.
- bonyt 4y agoEven that is easily forged, although that takes care of some casual sharing arguably.
- _8j50 4y agoYeah, the argument I guess is most people won't go that far over small payments like $2-5 kind of like how news sites have a paywall you can bypass with archive.is
- alexcroox 4y agoThis is a no code solution
- soheil 4y agoThey could fetch the content of the destination URL server side and serve it under the generated paid URL. Don't ask me about CORS, XSS, CSRF...
- TylerE 4y agoLet’s be real, 99% of uses of this will be porn or malware masquerading as warez. You do not want to be fetching those URLs. Removes any plausible deniability.
- fishtoaster 4y agoMy guess is that this is that this is for use-cases where that's not a big concern, or at least where that concern is outweighed by the easy of use. Some examples off the top of my head: - I'm selling something to exactly one person - I met someone on discord and I'll sell them a writeup on how to do X in language Y for $5, or I'm selling an art commission or something. I use this service to send them a link. - I'm selling a somewhat niche infoproduct - the "Expert's guide to using jq to parse stripe data" or something. I expect most people to find it via my blog or newsletter where I talk about jq a lot. I don't think many people will pirate it and I use this paid link to distribute it. - I'm selling something time-bound, like "Joe's guide to the 2022 world cup tournament for programmers," and I expect that I'll make whatever money I'm going to make on this guide pretty quickly before people get around to sharing the link for free. - I'm selling something that's paid now, but that I plan to make free next week. "Click this link to buy early access to my yadayadayada!" If you want to actively prevent sharing of the post-paywall content, Gumroad and plenty of other options already exist for that use-case.
- Jamesmoorez 4y ago
- EGreg 4y agoHow about selling memberships and roles in a community using crypto, then other websites can just query the blockchain to see if you have that role?
- rgbrgb 4y agoYou’d be unable to use it in safari or embedded browsers though (e.g. twitter app). Apple Pay is 2 clicks here.
- EGreg 4y agoWhy unable to? To read the blockchain you use any Ethereum RPC provider, pure HTTP interface no need for MetaMask. Embedded browsers and iOS safari do sign transactions using WalletConnect. Or you can deeplink into a wallet dapp browser too.
- rgbrgb 4y agoOh nice, I didn't know about that. How does it work? You sign into a centralized wallet provider like paypal? For most things my gut says deeplinking to a dapp is going to kill conversion. Use cases I'm thinking are selling audio samples or a sewing pattern... stuff people use gumroad for. I wonder how the transaction costs compare at these price points ($1-20). Hoping that's gotten better. Last time I tried sending eth it only made sense for big transactions.
- airmint 4y ago[dead]
- airmint 4y ago[dead]
- David_Axelrod 4y agoGod damn it. I really wanted to see what your paywall looked like but got hit with "hey signup. hey link your stripe". Show me an example.
- jraph 4y agoAh, the famous HN "I didn't see the playwall, how can I work around the absence of a paywall?" Here you go: https://paidlink.to/l/aofBHyHOkU https://paidlink.to/l/aofBHyHOkU (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34067109#34067410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34067109#34067410) (does not look pretty with JS disabled, there's an icon the size of my screen)
- doerig 4y agoIf someone hypothetically did a chargeback, who would have to pay the ~$15 dispute fee? You or the user that created the link?
- mitchdoogle 4y agoIt looks like you have to tie it to your stripe account so you (the seller) would be
- dale_glass 4y agoI'm not convinced this isn't a solution in search of a problem. What is it good for? For most things being sold you'll want an account attached. If this is a song or a book then you probably want to at least have functionality like reviews, ratings and recommendations. Whatever it is that you're selling probably forms part of some sort of established relationship -- I don't recall ever getting out my credit card and paying $5 for something from a random link on Twitter. It also seems abuse prone. If we're supposed to share these paid links, that creates an incentive for scammers and trolls to create their own links and get people's money while delivering nothing. That means customers will lose confidence in the system, vendors will get screwed, and the company will be hit with chargebacks. This seems like a dangerous business model. For the vendor side, this seems to be a redirector, so once the first person pays, they can share the URL they got redirected to. This doesn't seem like a good business plan. EDIT: I just got one to load. This is all I get: "This link costs $15.00 to access. You are trying to accessed a link through PaidLink.to, which requires payment to proceed. Fill out your payment details below." What the heck am I even paying $15 for? I haven't a clue. Not only there's no preview, there's not even a description! Screenshot for anyone having issues: https://imgur.com/YIsypEN https://imgur.com/YIsypEN
- sdwr 4y agoYou kidding me? You're a complainer in search of an issue, there's nothing wrong with this. "Buying things on the internet" obviously works already, in the form of patreon, subscriptions, and digital purchases. This is a minimal, clean service, does exactly what it says on the tin. IDK if it gets any uptake, and the UI doesn't quite look trustworthy enough for my taste, but the idea itself is pretty much perfect.
- dale_glass 4y ago> You kidding me? You're a complainer in search of an issue, there's nothing wrong with this. "Buying things on the internet" obviously works already, in the form of patreon, subscriptions, and digital purchases. And I've used such services, yes. But this looks way too minimalistic to me to be useful. On Patreon I subscribe to a specific artist. I know who they are and they can know me if we talk to each other. I can favorite posts, provide feedback, get perks, etc. When an artist says that for $10 I'll get access to their latest sketches that's a public announcement on Patreon, and if they don't hold up their promise, fans will get upset. Here there's an obscure link. I don't know what I'm paying for, or who made it. I don't know whether it belongs to the actual person who's supposed to benefit. Somebody could pay for the first access, make their own link and then leech off the actual artist by spreading their link around.
- vyrotek 4y agoI'm surprised to see the concerns from other comments. Isn't this exactly how Gumroad started too right here on HN?
- samwillis 4y agoYes, this is exactly what they started with in 2011, see the launch post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614 > Over this past weekend I had the idea to build a sort of link shortener but with a payment system built-in. There have been many times in the past where I wanted to share a link - on Twitter or just through IM with a few friends - but did not want to go through the overhead of setting up a whole store. All the same comments as here, but I suppose they ultimately pivoted away from the link format. I suppose it's the perfect MVP though!
- SomeCallMeTim 4y agoNo. Gumroad hosts and sells digital products from a store. This site...well, I can't even tell what it does aside from creating a paywall link that requires $X to bypass. And on that payment page there's no hint as to what you're buying. And after you've gotten a new link...then what? Someone can just post that link everywhere? Or is there some kind of API that unlocks a link? Or...? The service has very questionable usability. Gumroad has obvious utility. That's the difference.
- geysersam 4y agoI assume they won't just give you the link, only read the content from the link and pass it on to you. Although, I haven't tried. Edit: I assumed wrong.
- czx4f4bd 4y agoThis is literally how Gumroad started, though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34068230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34068230
- SomeCallMeTim 4y ago
- franze 4y agogumroad started the exact same way
- dbg31415 4y agoI think there was a link-shortener back in the day (when people used link-shorteners) that did this. The exact same way. I can't remember what happened to them... if they went out of business in a month because nobody used the service, or if it took two months. So many problems here. Once I have the link, I can just re-share it and bypass the paywall. For starters. But also, smaller stuff... the UX on the paywall is bad. It needs a preview... UX on the whole of the site is very bad. If you're going to charge, make sure it's a good experience. Not just something that looks like someone slapped it together in a basement in an hour. Get a real designer, a logo, a brand theme... It'll add trust. The costs seem to not be great in terms of what the content creator gets to keep.
- cc101 4y agoIf I understand your objection, I don't think it is a problem. Wouldn't the preview et. al. be on the web page with the sales pitch? Only after the user was satisfied with what was being offered on that page, would the user request (and then pay) for the link.
- adg001 4y agoIt is worth to note that the users of such service can set an expiration date for linked resource access. This can be used, for instance, by gig workers to deliver documents to their clients, while conditioning the retrieval of such documents to a payment.
- jvanderbot 4y agoI think a lot of folks are mistaking this service for the front-end store. If I create a perfectly reputable storefront with a "We use thirdparty paidlink.to for simple one-time purchases", it's quite easy to understand how you get customers to use this. It's no different than "We use stripe, I promise this popup window that asks for credit information is legit".
- gowld 4y agoThe difference is that, when I am shopping on InterestingContentForSaleSite.com, now I have TWO sketchy companeis to worry about, InterestingContentForSaleSite.com and paidlinkto.com 2 vendors is infinitely worse than 1, because they can blame each other for whatever goes wrong, creating an unbreakable circle of blame. If I try to chargeback paidlink.to, they can say "the link works, not our fault that the user and InterestingContentForSaleSite.com disagree on the value of the link". At least PayPal has some reputation for consumer protection.
- SamBam 4y agoAgreed. As an example, I buy sheet music PDFs from online stores. The stores often show the first part of a PDF and then you pay and get access to download the PDF. It would be easy to imagine then replacing their system with this. As a customer, I see no real difference. If I paid the store and didn't get the sheet music, of probably be stuck in credit card chargeback hell anyway. As the store, there are probably some downsides. E.g. their own system can probably give me a unique link. That link may expire after I use it. With this system, there's nothing preventing me from tweeting the link if I wanted to.
- Raydovsky 4y agoBut you can tweet the link to your files uploaded to Google drive
- thatguy0900 4y agoI can see how it would be more mentally upsetting to have to pay the pirates bandwidth charge with your servers even if it's realistically the same thing
- jesusofnazarath 4y ago
- Deegy 4y agoQuick and blunt piece of advice: you need to redesign your website asap imo. It reminds me exactly of what a webpage looks like once the hosting has expired on it. Very low trust for a service like yours. FWIW the content on it is great. Very concise and to the point. It's just the look and feel I'm referring to.
- urban_alien 4y agoCompletely agree. I think part of it stems from looking GoDaddy-ish.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- terpimost 4y agoI’m ready to help with this. I think the idea is great.
- levpopov 4y agoCool idea, but it'd be great to add an explanation for choosing this over Stripe payment links (https://stripe.com/payments/payment-links https://stripe.com/payments/payment-links). For Stripe, you can configure a redirect on success linking to your paid content so it should work for most use cases paidlink covers, no?
- ujnproduct 4y agoThis is an amazing product & given that gumroad has recently increased prices, the timing could not have been better. But information architecture of the landing page needs to change. I am left with the following questions after reading the content on the website. 1. How much margin does the platform charge? 2. Why can't I see a preview to what I am paying for? 3. How is it better than Gumroad, Stripe and others? Margins, ease of use etc, whatever your arguments are, I would love a detailed explanation.
- mandeepj 4y agoYou can stack the items under "Trusted to monetize access to:" in one row, instead of a column. It'll reduce page height and make the page scroll-free. While you are at it, please reduce the size of those giant icons.
- update8887 4y agoGreat idea! Only seems to work in the USA, with the stripe integration requiring to have an account based there.
- sneak 4y agoThe terms of service for this offering require that you waive your civil rights to a jury trial in event of any dispute. This is very common, but still rude.
- xwdv 4y agoAnybody get a HTTP 402 error?
- max_ 4y agoI would use this if it had stable coin support like USDC. Please add something like that or just BTC. Also, that way we would not need to setup a stripe account.
- fiat_fandango 4y agoThis seems like an absolute legal nightmare - ToS will never hold up in court, you've basically just saved criminals and scammers a few days of work.
- correlator 4y agoSeems like an interesting approach to doing things like online paid concerts. I don't know the space well, there may already be solutions for this in the market. Still, if this is successful, I imagine Twitch/Youtube etc. could quickly add this.
- TylerE 4y agoThat’s a solved problem at this point. Payment processing is not the hard part there.
- ms7892 4y agoRight timing of launch if we consider Gumroad's price increament.
- eternityforest 4y agoLooks awesome, with just a few issues. One is that I don't see PayPal support. Typing credit card info into any site not owned by a billion dollar company is a bit scary. Secondly, and this is just a personal thing, I'm not sure it would support any of my ideas that might be a use case. Do you have any plans to add the ability to handle membership or paid unique codes? As a lone dev, I would prefer to never touch anyone's financial info. It would be cool if there was a service that would handle accounts and user data 100% so an app never had to touch it whatsoever. It could provide Oauth2 SSO or something, but only if the user paid. Or it could just act as a paid proxy that adds a secret API key plus the user's per-site anonymized ID and membership level. It could even have an API fot the app to store files on the proxy, which the user would have full access to in their account portal. That way an app developer never stores any user data at all, you could make a paid app just by making an open access unpaid app and hiding it behind the proxy.
- dubcanada 4y ago> One is that I don't see PayPal support. Typing credit card info into any site not owned by a billion dollar company is a bit scary. I get the PayPal support, but why are you so averse to typing in a credit card for a company who maybe makes 1 million a year?
- topicseed 4y ago> for a company who maybe makes 1 million a year Do they?
- UncleEntity 4y agoBecause they probably have bad interwebs security? PayPal loses credit card information to hackers and there’s congressional investigations, dodgy website selling “links” gets hacked and it’s all about “buyer beware”.
- Cypher 4y agoI thought we were over the age of paywalls
- lx0741 4y agogoldmine for fake links? does it check ownership?
- terpimost 4y agoAwesome idea!
- mankins 4y agoI created a similar service to this called Monetized.Link https://www.monetized.link/ https://www.monetized.link/ ...We describe it as if you put together a tiny url and a paywall. From what I've seen there's a fair amount of interest in easily converting a link into money. Like Gumroad we've tried to make it as easy as possible, but more to be done. Our team's background is in content so we initially were imagining this as a paywall for one-off content. You could put these monetized links inside a newsletter or twitter stream for instance and get an easy to create payment stream from your exiting users. Over the product's development we have found support with the web3 community doing token gating (get the premium content if you own an NFT for instance).
- synergy20 4y agoHow about an e-giftcard that is just a series of numbers and I can use to purchase anything online without filling out my credit info. e.g. I went to somewhere and bought an e-giftcard of $1000, I use $100 of it to buy a licensed software and download it, I pay another $50 for an online subscription,etc. So I do not need disclose my location and even my name when I do not need to, this is basically a simple bitcoin-style-debit-card-for-online-purchases. does such thing exist? any online stores accept that? if not why not.
- byhemechi 4y agoyou can buy visa/mastercard gift cards at supermarkets/ the post office in australia. I am sure that there are similar things in other parts of the world
- synergy20 4y agothat's the simplest way I assume and totally anonymous/untraceable if I need it, thanks!
- trothamel 4y agoAt least in the US, convenience stores sell prepaid debit cards that are basically this.
- synergy20 4y agoonline store does not take it is the problem, plus I have to go there to buy in the store.
- rajivm 4y agoPrivacy.com is designed exactly for this purpose. You can create as many service/purchase specific “debit cards” as you want and set limits. At time of purchase, you can use any name and address you want.
- synergy20 4y ago
- booleandilemma 4y agoI can tell by the amount of negativity and willful ignorance in the comments (why would I buy something by clicking on a link?!) that this service will be a big success. Congratulations!
- miiiiiike 4y agoThis is a good idea. Very simple.
- O__________O 4y agoAnyone able to comment on what fees they’re charging and onboarding process? So far for the onboarding process I have: - signup by giving email and password; does not appear to be an email confirmation - Thank you for registering, [insert-signup-email]. Next, we will have you register with our payment processor, Stripe, to collect payments for your link. (Link to “Continue to Stripe”) - No idea. __________ Edit: In searching for their pricing found a competitor that’s charging 0.5-1% of the transaction: https://help.paid.link/knowledgebase.php?article=22 https://help.paid.link/knowledgebase.php?article=22
- notdonspaulding 4y agoI like this idea. I have no clue whether all the concerns here about ToS/legal/chargeback issues are valid, but I've thought a service like this should exist for a while now (whenever a relative asks me how to get started with a website for a simple product they want to sell). However, I think you need to consider the overloading of the term "link" in your product. I know it's your name, but the example shows just how confusing the overloading of the term is to your users. Here's the breakdown of what my mind does as it scans the example link page: - Ah, I'm at a site, "Paid Link dot To" - "This link costs $15 to access" - OK, the seller page I just left is selling me something called a "link" - "You are trying to accessed a link" - Skip over typo...OK, what's the link I tried to access? Like, what's even the thing I was trying to do on the last page? - "Autofill your card with Link" - Huh? The link already has my card? - "... or create a Link account" - Is link the name of the site I'm on, the site I came from, or the thing I'm buying? Why do I need/want an account from any of them? If any of them, I'm assuming the account I should want to create is with the seller with whom I've just decided to transact business. - "Link logo Learn More" - Is this the link I need to click on to get the thing I want? Like a "Download Now" button on a link scam website like softpedia? - "Access Link" - does this button take me to my Link account? A new website called Link? Ah, it's the content I've been after this whole time. Certainly none of that is insurmountable for the user, but I just wanted to put it out there to give you my impression as someone who's brand new to your site.
- the-anarchist 4y agoI'd like to have this but for XMR payments.
- Justsignedup 4y agohow will this be abuse proof? scenario: You share a link with me, earn $0.50, i notice people willing to pay for it. I then go on to create my own link once I have access to the site. I now earn the money. I can also share the original link once I paid. This is also ripe for abuse because it intentionally hides the original url, so it could be taking you to a scam site after a paywall. Or worse, if you always conceal the original url, the perfect way to get people to pay and put in their google passwords into another site. I cannot see this being anything positive.
- rozab 4y agoThis is absolutely nothing new. Adfly (adf.ly) was the popular version of this 10 years ago. Often modders would put their mediafire links behind adfly to get a little revenue.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lakomen 4y agoI think that's a really good idea
- fitzroy 4y agoDoes the buyer need to setup an account? How does this service prevent the actual (free) URL of the content from being visible / shared after a user pays? It seems like this would be difficult for some of the use cases presented (YouTube, Wordpress, etc) without managing the backend. And how long does the buyer have access? How do they regain access to the link later?
- 10g1k 4y agoWater literally falls from the sky, and people still sell bottles of it. So yes, sell anything.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kypro 4y agoChrist, this is genius. Why doesn't this already exist? I can already think of a bunch of use cases. You should definitely work on getting an API together. I could see people building services on top of this if there was a programmatic way to create paid links.
- W_Knightsbridge 4y agoLove this idea!
- paulpauper 4y agoHow does this handle chargebacks? What is to stop someone from putting in a bunch of stolen credit cards?
- neptuneis 4y agoUpdate: Pushed a fresher design to the home page, which will be coming to the other pages soon. Appreciating the feedback, everyone!
- jtokoph 4y agoShould this be on the page? > Start working with Tailwind CSS that can provide everything you need to generate awareness, drive traffic, connect.
- faddypaddy34 4y agoTheir advertising states charging for links to YouTube, and other hosting sites, which I am willing to bet is a going to violate those sites terms of service. This is in addition to it being a bad idea in general.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fragmede 4y agoCongrats on launching!
- terrycody 4y agoHey I am wondering if paypal payment can be added later or is there an alter service using paypal gateway?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scotty79 4y agoI know this probably won't be used too much but I'd love the concept of pay once links that become public once anybody has paid for them. It mirrors the way I think copyright should work. Or pay sum that become public once the sum of payments from everybody reaches given value.
- Jamesmoorez 4y ago[dead]
- Jamesmoorez 4y ago[dead]
- Jamesmoorez 4y ago[dead]
- Jamesmoorez 4y ago[dead]