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Comment by evoltix | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? I'm not sure I could take anyone seriously that tried to sell me a link of "value." Why not just share the link for free like people have been doing since the beginning of time?

Don't get me wrong. You did a great job getting this rolled out over a weekend and it looks nice. I must need some enlightening because I really don't get it.

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Imagine you have a Fireworks iPhone mockup template.

Instead of setting up a store somewhere to list your ONE item, you put the template up on your website and link to it through gumroad.

Then, you give out the Gumroad link on Twitter: "Need a sweet Fireworks iPhone UI template? Buy it for a buck: gumroad.url"

Your twatting friends click it, give you a dollar, get redirected to your website. They download the template, you get a dollar - all in like 2 minutes while your oatmeal was cooking.

Good example. Makes more sense to me now. :)

And 2 minutes later the "secret" link is shared on Twitter.

Yeah, I'm not sure I understand that part either.

If this really is possible, you'd have to create a user who is somehow whitelisted to get the linked item in question.

I think people who use Gumroad won't really have that as a concern - but if enough people bring it up, I'll see what I can do about it!

For many of the things that people might want to do, a "patronage" model isn't so bad either: the creator demands $1000 for the work behind the link; people can leave an e-mail address and pay anything from $1 to the full remaining price, and will be notified as soon as the work is available.

I think this has tons of value, almost like a mini-kickstarter without the need to advertise for a kick for communities of people (forums, etc) who want new features or some kind of quick bit of work done.

Disable direct links and proxy the content, that way you can create unique URIs for every buyer. Then you can do all sorts of things like add a watermark on the content page containing the credit card number of the buyer or just add expiration time to the links. That'll limit sharing somewhat, although I don't think it's a huge problem.

have the asset be hosted on S3 with a signed url that expires quickly

Then you would need to do that for every customer individually as I understand the system.

That Makes sense. How then do I make sure that they don't just go to the actual url once they know it instead of going through the paywall url?

It's like a freemium model but there's a single price point that starts off as a premium and slowly shifts toward free over time. :D

More likely usage scenario: pornography. Niche pornography.

(Hmmm, you may need to give some thought to legal questions raised when you're suddenly making money by selling every possible type of pornography into every jurisdiction of the world.)

I think there are some links that do have value. For example, if I wanted to release a new web app to my Twitter followers but wanted some sort of barrier (without having to set it all up myself) - I would use Gumroad.

If I had a bunch of files laying around my FTP that I never sold and would like to sell off for $5 a pop without the overhead of creating a store - I would use Gumroad.

Does that make it any better in your mind?

This makes more sense to me now and I see the potential. Perhaps you should put this example on your website to make it a little more clear.

I definitely will. Thanks for bearing with my crappy copy. It'll get better :)

What's being sold isn't the "link" but ability to access what it points to - an image, a blog post, etc. I think it's a great idea with oodles of potential - a link-based mini-paywall :).

Why not act as a download middleman so the buyer gets a download now button, and the link to the originator is not shown?

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