Show HN: Sell anything directly to your customers with SendFlare

Show HN: Sell anything directly to your customers with SendFlare(sendflare.co)

11 points by sixpenrose16 11 years ago | 6 comments

I had this idea to build a community around the digital products people (including myself) sell without setting up the whole site. The shortened link with a payment system and social interactions (prior to downloading) would help with getting something in people's hand in no time while building up the interactions.

So I built SendFlare. Easily create a challenge and let the user pay for the download or make social interaction prior to download. For example, you could setup to "Post a Tweet" challenge before downloading the product. Once the user tweets the message, he/she can download the file.

Here is an example SendFlare link: https://sendflare.co/l/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland - You can accept payment or social interaction for the product. There are still many features are missing. I think there is a potential for this product. What do you guys think? (20% Coupon: HN2015)

danieldreier 11 years ago |

Design and loading "speed" - well, should be optimized! Regarding the idea itself: Where do you see a difference between SendFlare and i.e. paywithatweet.com or any other sort of those tools? I gave some of them a try during the last years and none of them had this "Wow!" effect - was more like a nice to have, but nothing I wanted to use every single day.

Still: I believe that our social "statistics" will become part of payments 3.0 but none of the tools I know consider my exact data i.e. # of followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook just to name the most obvious ones.

sixpenrose16 11 years ago | |

The idea behind SendFlare is exactly what you mentioned, gaining information on your customers and possibly “know” them, as you said through statistics. One way SendFlare differentiates, is through providing many ways for users to download your content, such as Twitter Post, Following you on Twitter, Joining a mailing list or pay for it. I have a plan to generate stats on the followers/customers through social feeds (since we already know “who” the customers are).

sixpenrose16 11 years ago | |

Appreciate the feedback!

abluecloud 11 years ago |

Not really commenting on the idea, but the consistency in the design is slightly annoying. Take your example, for example (https://sendflare.co/l/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland):

- the fonts change constantly - the buttons differ - you have breaks in one tweet box, then no break in the other - the very top download link doesn't work & also doesn't have the correct cursor

The homepage seems to be unnecessarily loading despite the fact I could briefly see the page before the "loader" appeared

sixpenrose16 11 years ago | |

Appreciate the feedback on the design aspects. I agree that the Download page can be enhanced dramatically, maybe even organized differently vs. showing it in accordion format. I will keep an eye on these design aspects.