Show HN: Flurly – sell any digital file online | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Flurly – sell any digital file online

flurly.com

89 pointsflurly85 comments

I know other comments have touched on this a bit, but "any digital file" reminds me that some people think that some files are bad and should not be sold at all. And they sometimes do stuff to try to enforce those views.

Is "any file" meant to suggest that you're aspiring to be more content-neutral than other intermediaries, or was it just meant as something more like "any file type"? (e.g. the same platform can sell music, movies, photos, models, e-books, etc.)

As an intermediary in 2020, you're likely to see a lot of people target you in various ways because they don't like things that people are using your platform for. They may threaten you with lawsuits, complaints to law enforcement, boycotts, DDoS, trying to get your payment relationships cut off, trying to get your other platform providers to cut you off, etc. If your platform has a high profile or is used to sell something high-profile, journalists and politicians may publicly second-guess your content decisions (both things that you did remove and things that you didn't remove).

I don't want to alarm you about this, but it would be nice if you could figure out any content and moderation policies ahead of time, explain them clearly to prospective sellers, and then see if you can stick to them when other people disagree with them. :-)

P.S. EFF has some good resources about §512 and §230 issues for intermediaries, and is always interested in hearing from intermediaries who get U.S. legal threats that the intermediaries find questionable or improper (related to third-parties' use of a service).

P.P.S. I've never been an intermediary or platform operator, but a common thread that I've heard from different lawyers in this space is that it's amazing how much conflict your users' creative use of your platform may draw you into about issues that you never even thought about. :-(

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a platform to enable anyone to affordably sell digital products online. In particular, Flurly charges no monthly fee & only takes 1% of each transaction, which is 5x cheaper than competitors like Gumroad.

I hope this can be useful to online sellers in the hacker news community. I believe more money directly to creators is net good for the world. Some may wonder how I plan to make money on this. It's a fair question. My current plan boils down to two key factors:

1) Cost efficiency. By utilizing technology platforms like Stripe/Firebase/Vercel/Algolia/Sendgrid, I can amortize the cost. Or in other words my costs grow with revenue/usage. This way, I don't need to buy physical hardware servers, or negotiate deals with banks or write my own database, or spend time on SRE. Also since it's just me, I don't need to pay for employee health insurance, benefits, etc.

2) Volume. Hopefully by lowering the cost of doing commerce, more people will buy and sell, increasing the overall volume of commerce. Since the commission is on the overall volume, hopefully I can recoup some revenue/profits that way.

Please let me know if you run into any issues and I'll look into it right away

Thanks!

>which is 5x cheaper than competitors like Gumroad.

Highly misleading comparison since Gumroad doesn't add extra charges on price of the product (other than cases like VAT)

Sorry for the late response. This thing took off without me realizing it.

Flurly doesn't add extra charges, it does basically the same charging scheme as gumroad but cheaper.

So if you sell a $10 item:

1%, or 10c goes to Flurly

2.9% + 30c or 59c goes to Stripe

$10 - 10c - 59c = $9.31 goes to the seller

There is no additional charge to the customer above $10.

So the only misleading thing is "keep 99% of what you make", it's really "96.1% of what you make - 30 cents" or "keep 99% of what you make after payment processor fees".

Still cool, though obviously depends on volume. I use sendowl which is as cheap as $9 a month + Stripe fees (2.9% + 30 cents).

I used to use gumroad, but had issues. I think they've gotten a bit complacent (see https://medium.com/@atrigol/gumroad-review-things-they-need-...) so prob room in the space. Good luck!

Thank you! Pushed a fix to append "after payment processor fees" to make things clearer.

Okay, it doesn't add (I based that on another comment), but it still isn't a fair comparison

For $10 on gumroad (see https://help.gumroad.com/article/66-gumroads-fees):

Free account: 8.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale gives $8.85 to seller

For $10/month: 3.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale gives $9.35 to seller

And there's other options like direct paypal connection, where gumroad charges 6% or 1% and rest is charged by paypal themselves.

These comparisons will vary based on product price, but this is nowhere close to your 5X claim.

We can debate how the monthly fee factors in, but to keep it simple let's just compare apples to apples - the free gumroad plan. For the free plan (https://gumroad.com/features/pricing), Gumroad takes 5% and charges a (3.5% + 30c) payment processing fee.

The 5X is in terms of the "take" percentage (1% vs 5%).

okay, that tells where you are getting that 5x comparison (which is not as good as comparison as overall amount seller gets), but if you'd put this statement in your comment, I wouldn't have had this confusion at all

How do you deal with chargebacks/requests from customers who claim that what they paid for wasn't what they got? Will you attempt to mediate this? Do sellers receive a refund of the fee for things that are charged back on? I'm assuming that at a minimum you will not return the stripe fee since you don't get that back either

Same as all the other platforms. Creators set their refund policies. Unless it was a fraudulent charge, the platform won't issue a refund on its own.

I’m assuming you’re using Stripe Connect Standard then. Otherwise the chargeback is on the platform.

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

The math doesn't work out: https://flurly.com/pricing. The real cost is 3.9% + $0.30 (which takes into account Stripe's fees). If you are a seller and price your item at $100, the platform charges $103.20 to the customer, gives $99 to you, takes $1.00, and gives $3.20 to Stripe.

The additional cost is covered by the customer, so they're not lying about only taking 1% from the seller... still a bit misleading, though.

OP, please fix this! It looks like you've made a cool product; there's no need to be misleading about how much it costs. Just give the real "after-fees" percentage straight out.

This isn't correct. Re-pasting a previous answer to add clarity:

So if you sell a $10 item:

1%, or 10c goes to Flurly

2.9% + 30c or 59c goes to Stripe

$10 - 10c - 59c = $9.31 goes to the seller

There is no additional charge to the customer above $10.

Wait a second -- that means your claim that 99% goes to the seller is false, which is even worse in my opinion because you explicitly state that they get 99%. You can't have it both ways -- someone is paying for the Stripe fees, dude. You should change your wording immediately to make it clear that the seller does NOT get 99%, they get 99% LESS Stripe fees, which is a huge difference, since your entire marketing strategy seems to rely on them getting 99% (which is not the case).

The copy has been updated to reflect that the 99% is after payment processing fees.

The fine print contains a larger fee (2.9% + 30) than the large print (1%), so it's still definitely misleading. It's like selling someone a $5 item with fine print that shipping will be $10. Shouldn't you be up front about the larger term? Anyway, good luck. Also, you forgot to update the gif.

I think those charges are applied along with the 1% cut to Flurly.

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

Thanks pushing a fix now!

There's still a missing word or something else going on: "Flurly is a Shopify alternative attempts"

Looks great! I’ll be trying it out!

Thank you!

Your Terms of Service don't appear to currently restrict what sorts of digital products can be sold through your site.

Does your credit card processor permit sales of adult content, and are you comfortable with that being sold through your site? If not, you may want to clarify that.

Good call. Will queue up a task to revisit this.

I don't have digital content to sell, so I have no stake here whatsoever, but this response seems concerning. I have no problem with startups building a functional prototype without getting an army of lawyers involved. But you should then have a good gut sense that you're doing something that's pretty safe. This business model, as broad as it's positioned, clearly isn't. How can that ever be so much of an afterthought as here demonstrated? Does that also mean that the pricing is based on not factoring in the risk (penalties, legal costs) of selling copyrighted or restricted materials? Does it factor in the moderation that needs to happen?

Isn't that largely a factor of where in the world this is operating from?

Honestly, the credit card processor is going to be the real limiting factor. They obviously won't permit anything illegal, but there are also going to be whole categories of legal-but-risky services that they won't allow either. If I'm correct in understanding that OP is using Stripe, they've got a whole page of things they won't deal with:

https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses

How do you determine if people are selling something they truly own or not? How will you even manage this overhead given your thin margin.

You tell all over the site that Flurly only charges 1% but then at "Pricing" says: 1% + 2.9% + other fees. Care to explain that? I see it like: here's a new iphone, 1$, cheapest in the market. And then at small print: 1$ + 999$.

As this service uses stripe or other payment processors, the 2.9% is probably a third party fee. So, while not representative of the total overhead, it is accurate about their cost beyond what any similar transaction would involve.

^ this. But I understand it can come off as a bit confusing. Let me see if I can rework the wording a bit.

Makes sense, thank you.

Do you have a clear content moderation strategy? As this is inevitably going to be used for illegal and very illegal purposes.

How does Gumroad do it?

This looks like a solid product. Kudos! 1% feels very fair for the service you're providing.

However, you mention 2.9% in processing fees from Stripe. This is accurate for non-EU cards. The fee on cards issued in the EU is only 1.5%. Would those savings be passed along to a seller on your site?

In addition to credit cards, Stripe offers a number of other payment options as well, such as direct debit and many national schemes. Are there plans down the line to add support for those as well?

Wow, I wasn't aware of that distinction for EU cards. I assumed 2.9. Stripe actually even says 1.4% + €0,25 - I'm going to switch a couple projects to Stripe now. Thanks for pointing it out!!! You made me save a few hundred Euros!

Not a problem. Thank the EU for capping the interchange fees, as well. Processing cards here is a lot cheaper than in other parts of the world.

Nice job. A suggestion: support alternative payment processors besides Stripe.

I paid with cryptocurrency for the first time today when I realized my webhost accepted it in lieu of cash and that it had the lowest fees among all payment options. For example, right now my webhost's calculator says that for a $10 deposit there's a 20 cent fee for a net deposit of $9.80 if I use "Bitcoin". (I actually have no Bitcoin and managed to pay anyway, because my webhost is using BitPay as a processor, which seems not to limit you to Bitcoin only.)

A product on Flurly right now using Stripe at the same price looks like it would be $10 - (2.9% + $0.30) - 1% for a net of $9.31 after net $0.69 fees. Considering the example on Flurly's homepage is $1, for this and the $10 example I gave and for other small payments, it's obviously a better deal for sellers if buyers avoid using Stripe. And it turned out to be easier to log in to Coinbase and pay with some giveaway coins I'd received than it would have been to pull out my credit card and fill in the info.

100% agree. Working on adding Bitcoin and PayPal over the next few days :)

Stripe already has Bitcoin support, but you have to enable it and set it up for how you want your cash out.

Has there been an update after this announcement ending bitcoin support https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support?

Wow, that shows I exited the Bitcoin space a while back in 2016. It was the best payment system for Striope.

This looks great.

Do you have plans to support selling dynamic content, like this?:

1. User clicks "buy now" and pays. 2. Flurly sends a request to an API on the seller's server with the user's info and an auth key. 3. API responds with a file or text. 4. The file or text is given to the user.

I would like to use this flow to sell license keys for a minimalist SaaS product I built. I would want Flurly to connect to my webhook URL to generate a new license key for the customer.

This process could also be used to deliver personalized, watermarked ebooks.

This is super interesting. Could you shoot me an email at hi@flurly.com with a link to your site?

Few follow up questions:

1) Would you have the website? Or would the flurly product page be your "website"? If the former, does it make sense to skip the product page altogether and Flurly just serves as a super thin layer over Stripe Checkout?

2) Would the purchase be a subscription or a one time payment?

Thanks for your interest!

What about tax remittance?

The reason gumroad charges more is because they deal with EU/VAT remittance issues because they act as the merchant of record. Same with fastspring.

How do you plan on moderating misleading/false products (especially if your platform grows)?

This would be a good problem to have :)

But jokes aside, most likely would be similar to how most integrity operations work:

1. Enable community to flag misleading/false products

2. Contract/Hire some folks to review flagged products

3. Use automation / ML to weed out egregiously bad products

Similar https://pymt.online

Oh this is a clever site :)

Cool site and idea. I guess they’ve run out of decent domain names, though, huh?

Hey! What's wrong with flurly :p

To me it seems like it could be a tongue twister initially or for some people all the time. Not a very accessible name since it’s also easy to misspell when heard (“furly”, “flurry”, etc.).

I know nothing about the market you are entering. I think you would benefit (and prospects would) from moving the comparison links from the footer to the homepage though.

Congrats on launching this. It looks useful and the pricing is fair. In fact it may be too low considering time spent on support and maintenance.

This is awesome!

Are you planning on adding support for crypto integrations?

Definitely curious on your arch choices for front end? This css / design looks great!

https://tailwindcss.com

Yep working on Bitcoin integration over these next few days.

Front end arch choices are tailwind + nextjs + react.

And thanks!

Please natively support BTC/similar with btcpayserver. I dislike seeing invasive, privacy violating third party gateways.

look like, you get an inspiration from https://tinyprojects.dev/guides/tiny_website

How do you plan dealing with charge-backs?, and how often do users get paid after selling product?

Would Apple allow this in the app store if it had an app?

They would happily take a %30 cut of any digital goods sold like they always do. And they would probably require at least some basic moderation system so users can report illegal content.

Do they also take 30% of meals sold through Uber eats?

You know it's a Tailwind site with a single look.

Yeah. I wonder if you could train an image classifier to guess the CSS framework. That’s a fun winter vacation project for someone.

You could probably get away with just using a heuristic of average number of classes per element to classify tailwind =D

If you look at the HTML, frequency analysis of the class names should be enough. The impressive thing would be using CV to do it.

If your only selling point is lower fees, why don't I just make a site that takes 0.9% and eat your lunch?

Make it.

Can you add the PayPal please?

Working on adding PayPal support in the next few days. If you shoot me an email at hi@flurly.com I can pay you out manually in the meantime.

“Global edge network” I don’t think that means what you think it means...

Could you sell illegal files? Perhaps in an encrypted format?

You don't need to sell an encrypted file, just the decryption keys. Still gets to the heart of the moderation problem though: how do you moderate a small text file containing a string of characters?

I foresee this being used for stolen license keys (and maybe porn, though probably not much - feds would get a warrant and know who it's getting cashed out to.)

If OP adds Bitcoin as a way of cashing out though, they'll probably go to prison as an accessory for the many horrible use cases that would inevitably result. Don't do it OP!

Even if you couldn't, you could upload the encrypted illegal file somewhere else and just sell the key. But if someone is buying illegal files, why wouldn't they just pirate the file in the first place?

I think you forgot to include more details or at least a link :-)

EDIT: Oh I see, the link in your profile ^_^ ( https://flurly.com )

Oh shoot. Thanks for the heads up. Can a mod please help me edit the link to https://flurly.com

No problem. I think your best bet would be to use contact email on HN page.

EDIT: Project looks interesting. Thanks for sharing!

FEEDBACK: Products page should list items some one are selling. Maybe make an option to sell publicly (show on Products page) or Privately (hide on Products page). Search could use a bit more helpful tips, like example products selling for example. Also, some sort of support contact page might be a good idea.

Thank you for the tip and checking out flurly! Just emailed HN, hopefully it can be fixed before the post expires :)

From my experience, useally they fix it very quickly. Withing an hour or two.

Fixed now.

Thank you :)!

dang is an amazing human.

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