Ask HN: What's the most minimal way to setup a shop on personal website? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's the most minimal way to setup a shop on personal website?

15 pointsslmjkdbtl18 comments

I'm trying to sell some music scores (pdf files) on my personal website, looking at options like gumroad, but wondering if there's even lighter options (e.g. I don't want people to feel the presence of gumroad's stuff)

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Create a Stripe checkout. If someone pays, you can email them the PDF files to whatever email they provided during checkout. I'd do it manually at first. If it annoys you later, automate the emailing of the PDFs.

Stripe has been adding low code tools that I find to be very light and functional that can be added to simple html pages: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout

If you’re planning on selling your pdf internationally and building it yourself, you’re basically planning to commit tax fraud. Unknowingly, yes, but it’s going to happen.

Just use Gumroad.

Care to explain?

So, I assume that you already have a personal website, whether it's built with a Low-Code platform or fully coded. The best approach would be to check whether the same platform supports any plugins or integrations to list marketplace items. If you are using Low-Code platforms like WordPress, Wix, or Webflow, you can do this within the same platform. Alternatively, you can consider using Shopify or WooCommerce and connect it to your website. You can also list your items on platforms like https://www.buymeacoffee.com and link them to your website.

This entirely depends on what your website is built on and what your technical skills are. If you can provide more information on that, I would be happy to give you some good suggestions.

Sorry the post wasn't super clear. It's coded in plain html / js with no framework, need something that can handle just the payment part, have a pluggable UI (or temporarily direct to another page) of forms / buttons to take various payments methods. I'm looking at Stripe Elements right now, looks like what I want, but also curious about other options!

Aside from the suggestions, sometimes having a third-party processor "visible" is kind of helpful in case your website is not super well-known, because it gives "trustworthiness".

I know it's 2023, but yeah, mistrust in online transactions is still alive.

Agreed. If I'm buying from a site and see that they're trying to roll their own checkout and payment processor I'm very, very wary and will, at best, use a disposable card number.

If you use Wix, it's built-in: https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-stores-creating-a-dig...

I think your best bet is to code it yourself (assuming you can, I don’t know your background). If you’re trying to sell a digital product it’s not going to take you much time. The core part will be to integrate a payment processor like stripe. There are lots of libraries which simplify this process. One important thing to take into account is to make sure you have as many payment options as possible to make the sale process as easy as possible. (ApplePay, GPay, etc.)

Yeah ideally I want to code myself except the payment part, just need a good payment system provider that supports multiple options. My country isn't directly supported by Stripe (but I heard there's workaround haven't dived in yet), so I currently don't know other good options.

Edit: I just learned it's called "Payment gateway", looking at various options now..

Great stuff. Yeah in case your country isn’t supported be sure to research local providers. There surely are some. If not local then there’s other ones supporting it.

In https://snipcart.com/ digital products you could upload pdf, for example, and set a price. Integration with Hugo is not so hard then.

In the 90s and 00s, we’d create “buy now” buttons on PayPal and drop them in the HTML. They still have “buy now” button builders, and people trust PayPal.

https://www.e-junkie.com/

Hey, what kind of scores will you be selling?

django has a cookiecutter/stripe integrations I'm sure that should be pretty quick.

+1 gumroad

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