Ask HN: Best Digital Product Seller Like Gumroad or SendOwl? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best Digital Product Seller Like Gumroad or SendOwl?

I want to sell some digital products like apps. So Gumroad makes it easy but it takes a lot of money when I make a lot. I want to sell 10 products till next month & there after the products will increase from 10 to 50 to 100.

1. So I want to ask will it be worth it to use Gumroad or SendOwl. It seems Gumroad takes a large chunk of money when u make a lot.

2. When Gumroad & similar services take 3.5% of my money, do Paypal/Stripe also take a chunk out of my remaining money ?

3. Am I better off building my own custom Paypal/Stripe Checkout form ?

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I would say, don't build anything custom until you know you can sell how much you think you can sell. Gumroad is perfect for testing your product market fit, since you don't waste a lot of time seting up a billing system. you sign up, create a product, and get a link (or some js to embed). easy.

gumroad is 3,5% + 0,3$ vs. stripe 2,9% + 0,3$

that is not enough of a price increase to justify wasting a lot of time on setting up a custom checkout form, imo.

Thank you, that clears up a lot of things. but when my product gain a lot of traction, then should i still keep using Gumroad or then move to custom ?

Personally, I wouldn't move. I value the time and hassle saved, more then the money. For my business (https://presskithero.com) I use https://paddle.com, which is even more expensive then gumroad (5% + 0,5%). But they handle VAT (value added tax) for me, which otherwise would be a huge hassle and time sink.

Doesn't Gumroad handle EU VAT? https://help.gumroad.com/11164-payments/dealing-with-vat

They do. The reason I went with Paddle is that Gumroad only pays out via Paypal (to customers in Germany). I had problems with Paypal in the past, and don't trust them. Also, they charge about 3% in hidden fees when you convert USD to EUR, which I'd have to do to get the money to my bank account.

What methods does Paddle pay by?

Wire transfer

Thanks.

Woah. I have problems with Stripe since I am from India & it is not supported in India so I have to go PayPal way. Also, can u tell me how much hidden fees they will charge me to convert from USD to INR ?

The hidden fees come in the form of bad exchange rates. In my experience it was always around 3% less, then what Google Currency Converter told me it should be.

Edit: to be fair, Stripe also doesn't give you excactly the same rate as Google Currency Converter would show you, but at least they are transparent about it:

> As currency prices constantly vary, it’s not possible to know in advance the FX rate you’ll pay. The rate displayed online at various sites such as Open Exchange Rates or Google’s Currency Converter is the mid-market rate: the average between the prices at which people are buying and selling the currency. The actual exchange rate includes markups from financial institutions. When Stripe performs a currency conversion, funds are usually converted at 1% above the daily mid-market rate for users in the United States.

https://stripe.com/docs/currencies/conversions#calculating-f...

Thank you so much, you've been such a great help

The problem is taxes. You need to pay VAT on EU sales ("MOSS VAT"), sales taxes in many countries... even if you are not resident of those countries. Even as an American if I sell to someone in EU I need to collect VAT.

Options:

1. Don't pay taxes. I am not comfortable with this.

2. Pay taxes yourself. I do not want to figure this out.

3. Have service pay taxes for you. This is what I chose.

AFAICT only two companies actually cover all tax jurisdictions, FastSpring and Paddle. Gumroad only does some.

With Paddle it's trivial for someone to download content without paying, and when I complained they said "oh yeah we should write some docs warning about that".

So if you care about taxes there's just FastSpring. FastSpring is pretty decent, so I'm OK with that.

>all tax jurisdictions

What do you mean by jurisdictions here? different countries?

Different countries, but also in the US different states have different sales tax.

Got it, thanks.

You could potentially get around the distribution issue using a licensing service like Keygen (https://keygen.sh/distribution) (disclaimer: I’m the founder). You could use it alongside a payment provider like Paddle or FastSpring to ensure only licensed users are allowed to download your product.

Or I could just use FastSpring :)

You’re right, FastSpring was probably a bad example seeing as they offer their own licensed distribution system (albeit a little basic functionality-wise for software), but payment providers like Stripe, PayPal and Paddle do not (well, Paddle kind of does but like you said—-not really, and you have to host your own files).

> AFAICT only two companies actually cover all tax jurisdictions, FastSpring and Paddle. Gumroad only does some.

Can you elaborate more on what Gumroad are missing out on?

When it comes to accepting credit cards, you can do a bit better, but you will have to deal with fraud yourself.

I'd look at the cryptocurrencies with low fees. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, etc. Building your own solution for something like this could be a lot of fun.

Seriously I would love to use something like that but it feels like Rocket Science to me till now. I am going to learn & understand it when I am done with my ongoing project & thank you for telling me there is a credit card frauds too bcz I didn't knew about it. But I still don't understand how can they fraud with Stripe/Paypal? Basically I am not getting Credit Card fraud in Online Banking.

How does Gumroad take a lot? AFAIK they have a fixed rate (percentage + a fixed cents amount) for each sale, at least on the free tier. So how do they take larger (except proportionally) when you make a lot?

Yep that's what I meant. Read it again I said "When u make a lot, it takes a lot" which is synonymous to "Proportional". Also, I can save a shit ton of money if I make my own Gumroad.

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