[HN Gopher] Show HN: Create a paid link to anything
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Create a paid link to anything
Author : neptuneis
Score : 237 points
Date : 2022-12-20 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paidlink.to)
(TXT) w3m dump (paidlink.to)
| franze wrote:
| gumroad started the exact same way
| lx0741 wrote:
| goldmine for fake links? does it check ownership?
| adg001 wrote:
| It 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.
| Jamesmoorez wrote:
| Jamesmoorez wrote:
| terpimost wrote:
| Awesome idea!
| update8887 wrote:
| Great idea! Only seems to work in the USA, with the stripe
| integration requiring to have an account based there.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I 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!
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| doerig wrote:
| If someone hypothetically did a chargeback, who would have to pay
| the ~$15 dispute fee? You or the user that created the link?
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| It looks like you have to tie it to your stripe account so you
| (the seller) would be
| fitzroy wrote:
| Does 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?
| notdonspaulding wrote:
| I 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.
| fiat_fandango wrote:
| This 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.
| Cypher wrote:
| I thought we were over the age of paywalls
| ujnproduct wrote:
| This 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.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I'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
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| You're paying for the information about what the link points
| to, apparently.
|
| Imagine, for example, Musk's twitter requiring payment to see
| what some user's post linked to somewhere else off of Twitter.
|
| Not saying its a good idea. It's mafia-esque, tbh.
| lx0741 wrote:
| good for onlyfans "influencers"?
| layer8 wrote:
| The adjacent submission https://tafc.space/qna/the-topologists-
| world-map/ would be an example use case, for selling the
| digital version of their map.
| masswerk wrote:
| Also: as a user, I have no idea whom I am paying - is it the
| content creator, a scammer, an obscure man in the middle? What
| kind of transaction is this even? Is there any kind of
| resolution in case of conflict? It's just an actual payment
| block box with the promise of some content behind that link,
| which cannot be verified, and no trust at all.
|
| (Edit) In terms of transparency, there isn't really much to
| find out about of who is behind this service. From the _terms
| of service_ (hosted by another domain) we learn:
|
| _Neptune Technologies, United States_ (no further address
| details)
|
| But there's an email address, and this is the site behind that
| domain: http://www.neptune.is (???)
| noxer wrote:
| This is most likely targeted at the onlyfans kinda "internet
| sex worker" who sell zip archives or lewd images and videos.
| This lets "content creator" circumvent the platform fees that
| come with selling over platforms like onlyfans.
| Cypher wrote:
| aren't they just trading Onlyfans fee for this platform fee.
| dale_glass wrote:
| So on one hand, I think this is still too little. Even when
| buying porn one would want to know exactly what it is they're
| paying for, and it would make more sense to do the payment at
| some place with a gallery, previews, etc.
|
| But on the other hand, this might be a plausible deniability
| sort of thing. This way paidlink.to doesn't host anything,
| they don't even say what it is that they're going to direct
| the user to. This might be an attempt to keep payment
| processors off their back as long as possible.
|
| It may not work forever but since next to nothing is being
| provided, this site is extremely cheap to setup and run,
| which means it won't take long to pay off.
| nvr219 wrote:
| Why should the payment piece show a preview or gallery or
| anything? When I buy something using paypal, that info
| isn't on PayPal - it's on the vendor site.
| Nowado wrote:
| If customer has an established relationship with a seller
| already, seller can put this link on a website where
| products are presented. It's not polished, but it's fine.
| lalopalota wrote:
| I imagine the description / preview would be displayed with
| the link on the seller's site. No need for this service to
| open itself to the liability / vulnerability of displaying
| whatever the seller wants (illegal content / XSS / etc)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| From dale_glass' comment below: _This way paidlink.to doesn 't
| host anything, they don't even say what it is that they're
| going to direct the user to. This might be an attempt to keep
| payment processors off their back as long as possible._
|
| This explanation strikes me as being closest. There is a well
| known problem, which is that using the non-crypto payment
| systems for things is difficult, by disintermediating the
| payment provider from the product the paidlink guys can say
| they have clean hands.
|
| VISA: "What are you selling?"
|
| PL: "Links"
|
| VISA: "Links to what? Prohibited items?"
|
| PL: "Oh no, our TOS doesn't allow that, we tell our customers
| not do do that."
|
| VISA: "Can you verify that they don't?"
|
| PL: "Uh, well as far as our platform is concerned their just
| links, you know like groceries are just groceries, we don't get
| into the nitty gritty of what exactly they are."
|
| The weird thing is, even if the PL guys are 100% aligned with
| not letting their customers use this for "bad things" their
| customers are going to try to find ways around any systems they
| put in place to check or regulate.
|
| Watching the shenanigans people pulled to get around our
| efforts to prevent the misuse of Blekko (a search engine) was
| really educational in that regard.
| strifey wrote:
| You might have noticed already, but your reply is quoting the
| same person you're replying to.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| My first thought was that this was made for crypto locker
| payments.
|
| The locker displays the qr code and polls for payment status
| O__________O wrote:
| For clarity, you're referring to ransomware.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > For most things being sold you'll want an account attached.
|
| Who is the subject? Because in my mind, for most things sold,
| as the buyer, you actually just want the product/service.
|
| > I don't recall ever getting out my credit card and paying $5
|
| Even if you never shopped in a retail store or dined in a
| restaurant and paid with your credit card (which seems somewhat
| unlikely) you are familiar with the concept of paying for
| something "random" as a one of. What's the conceptual hurdle?
| robbyking wrote:
| > _I don 't recall ever getting out my credit card and paying
| $5 for something from a random link on Twitter._
|
| The other issues with this site aside, affiliate programs don't
| require the user purchase the item that brought them to the
| site. There's a book I found myself recommending quite often,
| so I created an affiliate account at a retailer and started
| using that link when I recommended it online. I make about $100
| each quarter off of site referrals, but almost no one buys the
| book -- instead they follow the link, click on something in a
| related items carousel and buy one of those items. Sometimes
| the time between click and purchase is pretty long (weeks or
| even months), but as long as the affiliate cook persists I get
| a percentage of the purchase price.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Accounts are a barrier to sales.
| geysersam wrote:
| 1. You can still have reviews, decription of content, etc etc.
| But it doesn't have to ce coupled to payment processing and
| distribution of the content.
|
| This _significantly_ lowers the bar for what is required to
| have a "webshop" like page. For example: a Reddit post can
| have a product description, with payment links directly in the
| description, and reviews in the comments. How convenient is
| that?
|
| 2.
|
| > What the heck am I paying for?
|
| I assume you accessed their example link. In practice you would
| have clicked the link from a page describing what you are
| paying for.
|
| I'm not affiliated with the product. Just found this a really
| cool and innovative idea.
| zyx321 wrote:
| If your example doesn't show how the tool is supposed to be
| used in practice, it's kind of a garbage example.
| croes wrote:
| Clicking a link and getting to a page without mentioning what
| I'm paying for is highly suspicious.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I've seen similar products except the thing was that they made
| you watch ads. These were mostly popular with people sharing
| links to pirated content.
| vikingerik wrote:
| _> I 'm not convinced this isn't a solution in search of a
| problem. What is it good for?_
|
| It's quite possible this isn't determined yet. It might exactly
| be a solution searching for a problem, intentionally so.
|
| The creator can implement the idea and launch it as a proof-of-
| concept, and see if anyone comes up with any good use cases for
| it. Maybe it goes nowhere, but maybe it's worth a shot at
| hitting it big in some unforeseen niche.
| captainmuon wrote:
| I can imagine this is useful if you want to sell digital goods,
| say an ebook or, cough, pictures, but don't want to or can't
| set up a shop, or use a payment processor. It looks like a
| simple and convenient solution, they handle all the payments
| and send you a check in the end.
|
| But oh boy this seems to be an invitation to money laundering.
| 3 2 1 and people are going to put up links, and buy them
| themselves with stolen credit cards.
| sdwr wrote:
| 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. 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.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > IDK if it gets any uptake
|
| This is pretty much what solution in search of a problem is.
| "Here, we made this thing that solves this problem someone
| could theoretically have." _crickets_
| dale_glass wrote:
| > 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.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Wtf man?
|
| First you claim this is useless, then, in this reply you
| claim that you've used similar services before. Make up
| your mind.
|
| Yes, it's simplistic and ugly af. But don't attack the
| idea.
|
| And, I guess, you got that link from somewhere, or rather
| from someone.
| charcircuit wrote:
| He said he used similar services to Patreon.
| yyu990 wrote:
| The artist can just have a webpage/blog/... where they
| would include such "paid links". That is, the audience
| _still_ knows who they are and _still_ builds some trust
| etc. But now they don 't have to deal with setting up
| payment systems and account handling and billing and all
| that stuff. The value proposition of the OP service is to
| take care of all that and the artist can focus on their art
| instead. A per-click webshop, basically.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The issue is I as a scammer can create a paid link to any
| arbitrary URL, including _your_ URL. There 's no
| verification of control like how say LetsEncrypt works.
| As a user I'm taken to a link with no verification of
| what I might be paying for. There's no preview of the
| content or even a declaration of who might own rights to
| the linked content. So I get a link that says I need to
| pay $10, what the fuck am I paying for?
|
| Even if I followed a link and expect to be paying, a
| scammer could also send me a link to the same content. I
| expected to pay through this site so I go ahead and pay
| for the content. Since I followed the scammer's link they
| get paid instead of the content owner.
|
| This is a system just rife with abuse potential.
| lmm wrote:
| > The issue is I as a scammer can create a paid link to
| any arbitrary URL, including your URL.
|
| Sure, but that was a problem that already existed. People
| already sell other people's artworks / pictures / etc..
| Having to copy a file rather than a link is not a
| significant barrier.
|
| > Even if I followed a link and expect to be paying, a
| scammer could also send me a link to the same content. I
| expected to pay through this site so I go ahead and pay
| for the content. Since I followed the scammer's link they
| get paid instead of the content owner.
|
| Presumably you're getting the link from somewhere
| reputable - the creator's own site, or their
| patreon/twitter/etc.. Sure, a scammer can create a fake
| profile to impersonate them - but again, that's something
| that already happens.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| TylerE wrote:
| What happens when the URL inevitably starts 404ing would be
| my first question.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It would be a plus if paidlink.to actually made a call to
| the link before accepting payment, and put up a warning /
| stopped the transaction if it didn't get a 200, "We're
| sorry but thingyouwanted.com/enticing.html isn't
| currrently available, please try again later."
| wpietri wrote:
| It is "perfect" in the H L Mencken sense: "For every complex
| problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
|
| One of the reasons that Bitcoin never took off for their
| stated purpose, payment, is that they had a similarly too-
| simple model of irreversible one-shot transfers. Anybody who
| has worked on an actual payment system can tell you that
| commerce is more complex than that.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I don't think that was the main issue. Bitcoin's main use
| as an actual currency was for things like drugs, where the
| legal system wouldn't be on your side anyway. So lack of
| chargebacks wasn't an issue anyway.
|
| The bigger issues with BTC is the onboarding problem,
| limited capacity and rapidly fluctuating exchange rate.
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't think I said it was the main issue. I agree that
| it had other problems too, including the ones you name.
|
| But I think you're missing my point. The anonymous, one-
| shot nature of things made it most appealing to only one
| set of merchants and one set of customers: people doing
| crime, and who were therefore most tolerant of the risks.
|
| The onboarding problem is also partly a consequence of
| this. Because a bitcoin transaction is irreversible, and
| exchange can't just take a credit card payment and give
| you bitcoin.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I 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".
| hanniabu wrote:
| But all this does is create a middleman link, so people can
| just share the final link and bypass the payment
| SamBam wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| 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 wrote:
| But you can tweet the link to your files uploaded to Google
| drive
| gowld wrote:
| The 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.
| correlator wrote:
| Seems 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 wrote:
| That's a solved problem at this point.
|
| Payment processing is not the hard part there.
| mankins wrote:
| I created a similar service to this called 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).
| [deleted]
| the-anarchist wrote:
| I'd like to have this but for XMR payments.
| EGreg wrote:
| How 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 wrote:
| You'd be unable to use it in safari or embedded browsers though
| (e.g. twitter app). Apple Pay is 2 clicks here.
| EGreg wrote:
| Why 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 wrote:
| Oh 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.
| lakomen wrote:
| I think that's a really good idea
| ms7892 wrote:
| Right timing of launch if we consider Gumroad's price increament.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| If 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.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Or rather: https://paidlink.to/l/OxLrwggYVi
|
| Doesn't work, though, it Server Errors.
|
| Also, out of $1.00 I net only $0.25?
| neptuneis wrote:
| Hrm, 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
|
| (Obviously, don't click through, it doesn't go anywhere for
| your $15.00).
| cleerline wrote:
| why no paypal?
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| God 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 wrote:
| Ah, 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
|
| (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34067109#34067410)
|
| (does not look pretty with JS disabled, there's an icon the
| size of my screen)
| pimlottc wrote:
| Would be useful to have an example paidlink so you can see what
| the UX is like for visitors.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Check my paidlink.to link to paidlink.to above
| (https://paidlink.to/l/OxLrwggYVi).
|
| The UX is as follows:
|
| > Server Error (500)
| O__________O wrote:
| Anyone 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
| miiiiiike wrote:
| This is a good idea. Very simple.
| xwdv wrote:
| Anybody get a HTTP 402 error?
| eternityforest wrote:
| Looks 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > for a company who maybe makes 1 million a year
|
| Do they?
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Because 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".
| max_ wrote:
| I 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.
| ezekg wrote:
| But couldn't people just share the link after the redirect?
| jorts wrote:
| Could be blocked based on referrer?
| alexcroox wrote:
| This is a no code solution
| neptuneis wrote:
| That'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 wrote:
| you 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
| mandeepj wrote:
| You 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.
| pHollda wrote:
| What's up with all of this financializing of everything??
| eterevsky wrote:
| Beats ads-driven publishing IMO. At least you are directly
| paying for what you are getting.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| What's new here? People have been selling things online for 30
| years and selling digital things (ebooks, zines, videos) for
| just as long. This is basically a lower-tech Gumroad.
| JohnCClarke wrote:
| Capitalism
| update8887 wrote:
| capitali.sm
| update8887 wrote:
| https://paidlink.to/l/QyiCPgyIAg
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Financialization will continue until morale improves.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| View this comment for $3! https://t.ly/T8hb
| mritchie712 wrote:
| thought this would be a link to an NFT. It's bad, but still
| better.
| brookst wrote:
| I was 100% prepared to pay $3 to view your comment, and was
| sadly disappointed.
| layer8 wrote:
| I believe it's called capitalism.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Gotta pay the bills somehow.
| logn wrote:
| Crypto/payment startups are a sort of sudoku distracting VC's
| and software engineers, building an abstract world of endless
| technical complexity that passes for fulfilling work.
| 99failures wrote:
| so OK. How do I, the publisher, get my money?
|
| A FAQ would be nice.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| how 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.
| dotBen wrote:
| If 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/
| algo_trader wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It'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
| Alifatisk wrote:
| So this is like AdFly?
| vyrotek wrote:
| I'm surprised to see the concerns from other comments.
|
| Isn't this exactly how Gumroad started too right here on HN?
| samwillis wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly what they started with in 2011, see the
| launch post: 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!
| xwdv wrote:
| Those were different times. There's no more room for scrappy
| products like that now. You can't just post an explainer video
| with an email sign up and expect to become Dropbox.
|
| Lean startups have been rejected in favor of "Do all the big
| work up front and then we'll see if we like it". It's MVP
| fatigue.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| No. 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This is literally how Gumroad started, though.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34068230
| Deegy wrote:
| Quick 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.
| terpimost wrote:
| I'm ready to help with this. I think the idea is great.
| [deleted]
| urban_alien wrote:
| Completely agree. I think part of it stems from looking
| GoDaddy-ish.
| [deleted]
| synergy20 wrote:
| How 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.
| trothamel wrote:
| At least in the US, convenience stores sell prepaid debit cards
| that are basically this.
| synergy20 wrote:
| online store does not take it is the problem, plus I have to
| go there to buy in the store.
| byhemechi wrote:
| you 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 wrote:
| that's the simplest way I assume and totally
| anonymous/untraceable if I need it, thanks!
| rajivm wrote:
| Privacy.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 wrote:
| Thanks. I was unaware of it.
| sneak wrote:
| The 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.
| 10g1k wrote:
| Water literally falls from the sky, and people still sell bottles
| of it. So yes, sell anything.
| levpopov wrote:
| Cool idea, but it'd be great to add an explanation for choosing
| this over Stripe 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?
| pifm_guy wrote:
| This is easier to set up.
|
| And stripes pay links are badly advertised.
| Kiro wrote:
| You still need to set up a Stripe account to use this.
| [deleted]
| nagyf wrote:
| So 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?
| geysersam wrote:
| If you trust the seller giving you the link, why would you
| doubt you'll get the content after paying?
|
| Any link you click on a page could lead to a malicious site.
| But again, if you trust the seller, why would you think they
| would link you to a malicious site?
| [deleted]
| jamesrcole wrote:
| Seems a similar issue to: how can you trust someone you buy a
| physical product from online?
|
| Do they have a reputation? If a third party mediates the sale
| (eg eBay) do they have policies in place to handle such issues?
| behnamoh wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| You don't pay a URL shortener to redirect you.
| TylerE wrote:
| There's a number of shady "services" like AdFly that are
| just that.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I guess people characterizing such services as "shady" is
| probably a good reason to try and vet the links people
| submit :)
| [deleted]
| aliqot wrote:
| this 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.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I think it is, supposing it wants to be useful.
|
| Imagine this catches on. Now I'm not sure why would it, but
| let's suppose we have a paid link to a book, or song, or
| download, or something else useful. If this link is ever
| shared anywhere public, there's an incentive for spammers and
| trolls to create their own links and try to get paid for
| nothing.
|
| Probable end result: platforms start banning links to
| paidlink.to, because a lot of people get cheated out of their
| money.
| cptaj wrote:
| I think it can exist with the limited scope of not being
| responsible for the content it redirects to.
|
| More cynically, if it catches on like you mentioned, the OP
| probably already made a shit ton of money from a simple and
| IMO elegant idea.
| geysersam wrote:
| You'll have to be sure to obtain the link from a credible
| source.
|
| That's the same as for any other sale over the internet.
| There are lots of fake web stores that scam people.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It might make sense if the website let you log in directly and
| manage your payments. Trust ratings on vendors, etc.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| You'd probably do a credit card chargeback - same as if someone
| failed to provide any other good or service you bought online.
| wpietri wrote:
| The problem here is that credit card companies do not like
| chargebacks in the least. A few too many and you'll see
| penalties; more than that and you lose your merchant account.
| Since there's no vetting here, this will be a magnet for both
| the clueless and scammers, meaning that I think it's not long
| for this world.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| That's a fair point. I'll be curious how they handle that.
| Maybe you could get away with booting any user from the
| platform whose links generate too many chargebacks? But
| yeah, if paidlink.to is ineffective at preventing
| chargebacks, they'll get booted from stripe or whoever.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| Which in turn will cost the paidlink service lots of money. A
| chargeback typically costs $15 or so to process.
|
| I wonder how they'll police that?
| tendiesfortwo wrote:
| I 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.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| AFAIK state-of-the-art is requesting a signed URL with a
| timestamp from whatever system can verify you paid, then
| presenting that to the file server, which validates the
| signature and can also elect not to serve links with a too-old
| timestamp (limiting the damage a leaked URL can do).
| layer8 wrote:
| For payed digital assets, usually the links are time-limited
| and/or limited in the number of times you can download.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| Can that be done for links to youtube and other platform
| sites?
|
| It seems to do that securely requires proxying the resource
| but that's not a great idea for platform content (It would
| likely break the site: You would need to rewrite all static
| and dynamic links to resources in order to host the platform
| under a different domain. You would also be responsible for
| bandwidth fees for relaying the content.) and redirecting
| would expose the platform's open url to the resource.
| soheil wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| Let'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 wrote:
| My 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.
| czx4f4bd wrote:
| Yeah, this is it exactly. There are definitely valid
| criticisms of this kind of tool, but people need to
| understand that there are already a lot of small, niche
| creators doing this kind of thing manually, e.g. by accepting
| PayPal and manually emailing Google Drive links to
| purchasers.
|
| These people obviously don't care much about piracy (and
| probably don't need to, either) and don't seem interested in
| setting up another service like Gumroad/Patreon/OnlyFans, so
| being able to trivially automate their existing manual
| processes sounds pretty handy.
| marifjeren wrote:
| Also: any use case where the final destination link contains
| a one-time access code for something.
| badrabbit wrote:
| For third party sites like googledrive I think you're right but
| if it is your own site, you can restrict based on referer.
| bonyt wrote:
| Even that is easily forged, although that takes care of some
| casual sharing arguably.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Yeah, 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 wrote:
| This is a no code solution
| rozab wrote:
| This 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.
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