

Show HN: CropUp, Sell your _______ on _______ - jackseviltwin
http://cropup.com

======
rohansingh
For the box that shows a random service, I'd recommend just making it
sequential. When it randomly comes back to a service I've seen before, I
assume that I've seen all the services.

For example, I got: YouTube, Tumblr, YouTube, YouTube, Twitter

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Yep, we noticed that as well, will fix it. Excellent observation, thank you.

~~~
darushimo
I want to suggest that it moves a little bit faster too. Either that or have
both fields change at the same time. I get that you're trying to say "you can
sell anything on any platform" by having the item persist while showing a
different platform, but I think the fast that they're different fields is
enough of a hint that you can sell "anything on anything."

------
callmeed
Your design overall is really nice. Me thinks this is either becoming a
crowded space or there's just a lot of people doing similar projects for fun
because the payment part is much easier (I did <http://bngal.com> as a side
project for example).

BIG QUESTION: why PayPal for disbursing funds? With Stripe and
BalancedPayments as options, I'm not sure why you'd use PayPal (other than
possibly international reach).

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Good question. PayPal was the easiest to use, for now, and works well. We'll
likely add additional payout options, but no concrete plans or timing just
yet.

~~~
jareau
Paul, just sent you an email about Balanced Payouts
(<https://www.balancedpayments.com/#payouts>)

Nice job with Cropup!

------
ivan_ah
You should consider modifying your pricing to be more in line with gumroad ---
who appear to be your main competitor. They charge 5 percent of the purchase
price plus a $0.25 flat fee.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CroUp.)

We see shopping cart providers as our competition and they usually charge
setup and/or monthly fees, which we do not. Given the value and
functionalities our product provides we feel our pricing is fair, but we're
open to structuring it differently in the future depending on market feedback,
like volume or product price based, or we introduce a premium account with a
monthly fee but lower per transaction fees.

~~~
manuelflara
I'm sure people who don't know about other direct competitors (Gumroad, etc)
will see it as an alternative to a more elabore shopping cart or ecommerce
site, and in that case 10% may be a no brainer. But if someone -like myself-
knows about both alternatives, I may use CropUp initially but if I get some
decent volume, I'd switch to Gumroad unless you guys had a 5% option for
higher volume customers.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Fair point. We're open to exploring other pricing structures based on the
market feedback we'll get. In general, goal is to rather be the Apple of
eCommerce than the Dell. (Well, that sounds cheesy and not in a good way :)
Sorry.) We don't want to be the cheapest service but the one that provides our
sellers with the most value.

~~~
pooMonger
One interesting avenue for providing further value so that people might not
balk at the 10% fee (as witnessed by a few skeptics in this thread), would be
to perhaps provide next-day shipped shipping labels for merchants.

It seems that since the orders will be coming through CropUp, why not hold the
hand of the merchant just a few steps further? Intake orders, print shipping
labels, provide shipping materials to merchants, One-Stop-Shop concept.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp).

Excellent thinking! This is one of the ideas on our list, no concrete plans or
timing yet though. It should just be real simple to sell the products you make
so that you can spend more time on the things you actually care about like
making some cool products.

------
manuelflara
Great work, love the design. One thing I'd like to see before I sign up,
though, is a sample "product / purchase page". When I needed something like
this I ran to Gumroad because I had used them before (as a customer) and loved
the experience.

~~~
sulldc
(I work at CropUp, I'm the designer there.)

Thanks! That's a great point and we're in the process of creating a few more
product screenshots and possibly a video demo to cycle in that header area. In
the mean time feel free to take a look at it here: <http://crop.to/fW>

~~~
trhaynes
I notice that my shirt size isn't included on the final confirmation page.
Seems like it should be.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Outsch. We're fixing that as we speak. Our apologies.

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mikejarema
Great looking product, I'm a big fan of empowering everyday people to make
money doing what they love. ShopLocket is a (local) favourite of mine, and I
think GumRoad is also in this category.

Are there specific use cases that CropUp provides more value? Eg. on physical
products? Photography? Digital downloads?

I ask because I see more and more similar products cropping up (pardon the
pun) which want to help anyone sell anything online, but can't help but think
that focusing on a specific vertical may result in the platform providing more
value to the sellers.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

For now we're focused on physical products, which come with a couple of
challenges sellers of digital products usually don't have to worry about, like
taxes, fulfillment, returns/refunds, etc. Our goal is to provide a product
that equips sellers with everything needed for selling online and to make it
real simple, so that they can focus on making their products and don't have to
worry about selling them.

~~~
flexie
Cool site! Just notice that in some jurisdictions sellers of digital products
also have to worry about taxes, cancellations, refunds etc.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Interesting. Would you be able to provide me with a link to where I can read
more about this, please? Would be very helpful. Thank you.

~~~
flexie
Regarding cancellation of goods bought over the internet, directive 97/7/EC
applies in the European Union: [http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...](http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31997L0007:EN:HTML)

Directives are implemented differently in different EU countries and the
countries also have the option to impose stricter rules.

In Denmark, consumers have the right to return digital goods such as e-books
etc within 2 weeks (provided they haven't started using the product). I have
no idea how it is in other EU countries but I would not be surprised if
several other countries protect consumers that way.

Most Danish sellers of digital products state in their terms that the right of
cancellation only applies until the file (e.g. an e-book) has been downloaded.
I am not sure that would hold up in court.

As for VAT, in the European Union this is regulated by an EU directive on the
common system of VAT: [http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLE...](http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:2006L0112:20130101:EN:HTML)
Article 58 and Annex II deal with electronic services (and goods). Also look
at the temporary rules in article 357 and forward.

As for taxes, every country has it's own rules and you will probably also have
to consult double taxation treaties.

These issues are very complicated. If your website sells in different
countries you should probably consult with accountants from each country.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Thank you. This doesn't look like a lot of fun to read... Will suffer through
this. Again, thank you very much. Very helpful, very appreciated.

------
guru_shastry
Looks great. One thing I was looking for is a demo/test purchase. As a seller
I want to know how it looks like to buy my product. In general, a sandbox with
a bunch of test products and credit card numbers would make it a lot easier to
adopt. Good luck.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

You're right. We need to -- and will -- figure something out to better convey
the buyers' end to end experience to people interested in using our service to
sell their products.

------
lubujackson
I like it. But 10% seems a little high - I'd at least have reduced percentages
for volume.

I'm not sure if you have (or intend) to support people with a lot of products,
but I'd be interested to see how it works if you have 50 products vs. 500 vs.
5000. It would be nice to get group reporting (like every color of a T-shirt
combined, all my mugs, etc. Ideally with tags instead of categories so you can
cross-report).

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

We have some interesting ideas for what we can do with pricing in the future,
like based on volume or product price or maybe we introduce a premium account
that comes with a monthly fee, but lower fees per transaction. Still thinking
about these.

For now we think 10% is a fair price given the value and the functionalities
our product provides, e.g. calculating taxes based on the seller's nexus
states and the buyer's shipping address. Also, the seller is only charged a
fee in case of a successful order, but not e.g. in case of a refund, which is
different from other services like e.g. PayPal. (And different means better
here, we think.)

------
rgbrgb
Cool! This is a pretty crowded space but your site looks great. My one
criticism is that the pricing is pretty hidden. That's the first thing I look
for before signing up for something like this. It's especially important in
this case because the service is supposed to help users make money, so they
will really want to know how much they can make. Don't be ashamed that you
take a cut for providing an awesome service!

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

You're right, we need to make pricing more visible.

------
zitterbewegung
The start selling button seem to be displaying incorrectly on chrome. The
color isn't filling the button and instead it takes the color of the
background.

~~~
robgaafar
(I work at CropUp)

We can't reproduce that issue. Did you try to clear your cache?

If you're still having that issue, can you send me an email: robert@cropup.com

------
YPetrov
The website looks great! When I opened it, for some reason, I instinctively
looked for a short video explaining what the website does and how it works.
Maybe that could be something you might want to consider? Also, I had to check
the comments here in order to find a demo product page - I would recommend you
add a demo product page link on the front page, so people can see how it looks
like in practice.

~~~
sulldc
(I work at CropUp, I'm the designer there.)

Thanks! I completely agree with you on getting a video for the homepage, and
we're actually in the process of creating one (they just take some time), as
well getting a product demo link up.

------
orangethirty
Ten percent is too high.

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mapleoin
US only. And it's quite hard to figure out. This is all I could find>

<http://cropup.com/help/merchant>

 _What about international buyers?

Yep, no problem. You can accept payments from international customers._

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Hmm. I'm not following, can you please explain? It's not US only and that's
what the FAQ says / is supposed to say.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I think OP is referring to the _merchant_ side of things being US only.

~~~
pfredrich
Ah, I see. Good point, we currently don't call that out anywhere prominently,
but we should. Thanks for clarifying.

------
Tihiy
Excellent idea! Waiting for digital goods selling / purchase notification API.

But.. if you give money to sellers with PayPal, you're paying PayPal fee?

~~~
jollari
Hey I'm curious as to what you mean by a purchase notification API?

Would you imagine something like a pub/sub system or something that you would
ping?

~~~
Tihiy
I mean something like PayPal IPN or another system which notifies my server
about a purchase so I can send digital good to buyer e-mail for example.

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

For digital goods, we'd handle the fulfillment for you. Goal is to make it
dead simple and to provide everything you'd need, so you don't have to use any
other services or do any coding.

Still, a server to server notification would be a good thing to have, no
concrete plans or timing yet though.

Thanks for your feedback.

------
anandkulkarni
Is this only for people who don't have a product order form yet, or is there a
way for us to benefit from using you too?

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

It's for anyone who wants to sell a product on a social network like Facebook,
Twitter, etc., whether you have an online store already or not. It's not great
to share a link to your online store on social networks because then your
customers have to go through the entire checkout flow incl. putting the item
into the shopping cart, going to the shopping cart, clicking on checkout,
creating an account or not, ... even though all they want to do is buy one
specific item quickly and easily. With CropUp you can sell individual products
via a very streamlined checkout flow, that works great regardless of the
social network or the customer's device (mobile, tablet, desktop).

------
chudi
Nice idea, but I couldn't find a demo product or some place with current
customers so I can check how it looks, etc

~~~
jackseviltwin
Sure, try this product: <http://crop.to/fW>

------
eduardordm
I know you guys are overwhelmed with work by now, but I really want to know
how was your experience with AngularJS.

~~~
jackseviltwin
(I'm the tech lead at CropUp)

I'm surprised how well AngularJS has worked for us.

Currently, we're using it for the shopping checkout page and also for the
merchant dashboard. The dashboard is all driven by AngularJS (using
$resource/$http api calls). The checkout page is more like Twitter, in that we
preload data in the DOM when it's rendered, but there are API calls via
AngularJS to create the order, check quantity, etc. These pages are actually
served directly from our CDN.

As far as how it's worked for us. We've actually rewritten our dashboard and
checkout page twice, and it look some getting used to on how to structure our
controllers. Getting used to writing directives instead of using jQuery and
doing DOM manipulation in our controllers also takes some discipline, because
it's just way simpler to drop some selectors and event bindings/triggers in
your controller.

The way AngularJS encourages you to keep any dom manipulation out of the
controller and to think about reusable directives has really helped for
readability and maintainability of the code base. We're consistently surprised
how quickly we can implement features because of AngularJS. We've actually
said, "Wow, that was easier than I was expecting" quite a few times.

However, there are some hurdles. $http doesn't support file uploads, the
stable release doesn't support custom http headers with $resource, only one
ngView, etc. That said, I still would not hesitate to recommend AngularJS.

~~~
alexmic
Did the limitation of having only one ng-view affect your project at all? I'm
embarking on a new project using Angular and there are mixed opinions on the
web. People that were shouting against it have come back saying that it's
actually not so bad [1].

[1]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/angular/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/angular/xIIyGpW8KUk)

~~~
jackseviltwin
(Tech lead @ CropUp)

In the first iteration, we thought multiple ngViews would have been useful,
but it didn't prevent us from achieving the design we wanted. You can use
ngInclude to accomplish a similar effect, if you don't need the routing.

AngularUI seems to have a solution for nested views/routing here
(<https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router>). Although, I would think about
your routes and the pieces of your web application and rethink whether you
really need ngView. Using ngIncludes for pieces you want to reuse might make
more sense.

edit: for clarity

~~~
alexmic
It sure makes more sense, but you need to write boilerplate code to map URL
state to ng-include changes/updates. It would be nice if it was out of the
box.

~~~
jackseviltwin
I don't know the details of your app but maybe you should consider using
ngView in the outer most container, then everything inside the container can
pick the appropriate template via ngInclude. That's the path we took in our
first iteration, this current iteration actually doesn't need nested/multiple
ngViews.

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nikoftime
Really cool idea and site. How do you guys differ from CashieCommerce.com ?

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

I'm not familiar with them, but I'll check them out now. Have you used them?
Do you like them?

~~~
nikoftime
Yeah - I know the guys building it - I definitely like their product and take
on the market. It seems like it must be a crowded space, just saw this come up
on HN: <https://trychec.com>

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zipop
I think 10% will create a rather large barrier to entry for most.

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revorad
What provider do you use for processing the credit card payments?

~~~
pfredrich
(I do product at CropUp.)

Based on the other comments here you can tell we use neither Stripe nor
Balanced :) One of the other big guys... Please email me if you'd like to
discuss details: paul@cropup.com

