Show HN: Fruits – Sell digital products via your website, newsletter, etc (fruits.de)
Hi HN!
Whilst trying to build an online community for content creators, we failed! Taking the learnings and stripping down our product to a true MVP, we now started working on "fruits", which allows creators to sell files such as ebooks, designs, checklists, music and online coachings online in less than two minutes.
It works as simple as this:
1. upload a file at "fruits" & set a price 2. you will receive your individual fruits-sales-link 3. share the link wherever your customers are (e.g. website, newsletter, social media)
In addition, we also take care of the tedious office work such as invoicing and VAT collection for you, and this is completely automated.
What do you think? We are looking forward to your feedback!
158 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 89.8 ms ] threadI'd also say that the norm in this space is that your 7% fee should cover this (and if it doesn't, whatever fee you do set should cover it). Saying you charge a 7% fee when actually you mean 7% + some amount is sort of shady.
I would consider hiring a professional English copywriter, generally, as the language page reads as ESL. ("digital contents", "where ever", missing comma after "fruits", generally prefer oxford commas, "where ever [sic] you want to super fast" oddly informal, "receive a link that leads customers to your product", "place your fruits link wherever your customers are", "content formats", redundant "files and content formats of all kinds", "where your customers are already", "every channel, really every one!", missing period at end of secure payment bullet point, missing period at end of automatic billing bullet point, "any open questions", "set itself the task", about us list also missing an oxford comma, "anyone who wants it", "for this purpose")
"fruits" is a slang term for testicles, as in "she kicked him right in his fucking fruits!".
I doubt it's the first thing folk would think of with "fruits", but thought it worth mentioning.
Naming is hard :/
We found out creators don't necessarily need a complicated landing page when selling content through e.g. tiktok or instagram or a newsletter that already provides trust. In addition, we will also process and handle invoices and credit notes
Stripe does this, but going through their whole KYC process has become extremely arduous (and they seem incapable of being clear about what they need/want, as well as understanding that Dutch people with a Dutch company sometimes do not reside on the Netherlands).
We're currently working exactly on that feature - been requested a few times yet. To keep the product as simple as possible for the MVP, we stripped all initial features and will add them step by step in the coming days.
[0] https://www.droptosell.com/
We found out creators don't necessarily need a complicated landing page when selling content through e.g. tiktok or instagram or a newsletter that already provides trust. In addition, we will also process and handle invoices and credit notes
Same for email marketing. I think there is room for tons of creator sales platforms without asking "How does this differ from Mailchimp?"
I think the #1 "product design" problem for these tools is customer trust with a brand you've never seen before.
I find Gumroad a little jarring instead of being in the background. Gumroad has been around long enough that it is now a brand that someone might have interacted with more than once through different creators, but I think that is a secondary use case.
Apart from bookkeeping in their own system, paypal also has to handle fraud and regulatory obligations. How can they be cheaper?
This increases the cost of your service and adds absolutely nothing of value to the customer.
By talking to creators from e.g. OnlyFans, the biggest issues they faced was explaining their earnings to the tax authorities with no proper invoices at hand.
By further automating those tasks, we will be able to reduce costs dramatically and might get rid of the bookkeeping fee alltogether.
I kid, I kid! ;)
Context for all non-Germans: Many "northern" Germans joke about Bavaria not being part of Germany. Another often made "joke" is that Bavaria starts ~50km south of were one lives.
My guess would be that you only cover VAT within the EU, but of course there are VAT regimes outside of the EU too; so “we also take care of VAT collection for you” does not seem to apply in all cases.
Only if you're selling more than 100k CHF per year.
Our connected tax office figured out taxation concerning international transactions. Why and how different taxation rules apply depends on a couple of instruments and setups such as reverse tax charges, MOSS and others.
It basically burns down to fruits:
- charging the buyer with the applicable tax between fruits (company in Germany) and the buyer in country XYZ
- each buyer receiving an invoice (issued by fruits)
- the seller receiving a single credit note for all sales within that month targeting a German company (fruits)
We will have to clarify taxation as I can see from comments in this thread - thanks for your input!
I see the VAT complications discussed all the time online and figured this would be rather centralized by now
As a consumer: PayPal only? I’m outta here. I don’t like my money randomly frozen on a whim.
Are you folks planning to offer Giropay for the consumer side? That’s pretty much the only payment service I can use nowadays.
Of the vast amount of payment options available online, only a handful is used by people in a geographic area. Dutch people have a very strong preference for iDeal, for example, and rarely purchase things with credit cards, while Chinese customers heavily lean on AliPay.
If the OP doesn't have this, there's literally a checkbox for this in the merchant's settings on the PayPal's admin panel. The drawback however is an elevated risk of fraud.
Edit: ... and they don't have this enabled - https://fruits.de/c/v9kgq
Due to limited time (fruits was built within a few days), we reduced the product to the most simple MVP we could come up with. We will now be adding features on a daily basis :-)
Edit: Never mind, didn’t realize they called this out as something they handle.
How are things like fraud and chargebacks handled? With collecting money being this easy, I immediately worry about how it would be abused.
Of course, that could be prevented if they manually check and verify ownership of every submission.
You don't have a legally valid "Impressum" on fruits.de: It points to fanbase.com and that one isn't even mentioning fruits.de. So, as a German startup, it seems you're at least bending German and EU law by not providing the information necessary for proving services on the domain fruits.de. And as a result, as a potential user, I can't trust you with my business.
Moreover, I couldn't find information about your "sales tax" claim. You know better than me that selling digital products in the EU and across borders can be kind of tricky, depending on what you are selling (e.g. ebook vs software), if you're selling B2B or B2C, and depending on the origin of your customer. As a user, I'd need much more information about how you handle this and the bookkeeping you mentioned, but it somehow looks like you're relying on PayPal as the payment gateway and are not handling sales tax / USt by yourself?
And no: As someone looking for a simple solution to sell my digital products, I don't want do book a consultation for answers to the questions above.
Also "for your $20 month business"? I mean I guess he expects it for everyone's $20 month business.
Aside from that of course the EU has made it relatively clear it does not really want unicorns like Twitter or Facebook. So I mean if you take away PII violating companies from the mix then things might look more equal also - but perhaps that is more of that pesky legalese bullshit you seem to find onerous.
But then .. you have Israel who has a 10 times smaller economy per GDP size and still managed 17 unicorns ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
hmm, yeah maybe it doesn't matter so much the GDP size - does Israel have a lot of legalese bullshit?
on edit: changed petty regulations to legalese bullshit. Couldn't remember the exact phrase this far down.
I'd much rather have Big Tech and the money it brings home - nobody is forced to use their free services, I'm simply avoiding them - than have Chat Control forced down my throat unless I move to the Land of Free PII Violations.
https://www.failory.com/startups/israel-unicorns
No insurance in the world will cover you when you ask a lawyer to explain the world to you.
https://vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/index_en
I'm a VAT payer and it's at minimum 15-20 incredibly complicated accounting forms per year, with harsh penalties for mistakes and missed deadlines. I would never be able to start doing business if I had to do this at the beginning, and I'm in the most lucrative market today - and I would never risk it too, the fines are damn huge.
Doing the forms costs me thousands of euro yearly even though my accounting is totally simple, I have just few invoices per month with just few line items.
As I said, this is why this place is failing business-wise.
Fruits is a pivot for fanbase.com which sadly didn't make it. Within a few days, we managed to build fruits and launched it as the quickest MVP we could come up with. That's what you're seeing today. The imprint still points towards the current legal entity (fanbase GmbH). A new legal entity is currently under registration by the founders. Once the paperwork is done, the founders will move all assets to the new company and align the imprint accordingly.
Concerning taxation: this seems to be a clear improvement we need to work on communicating. Taxation is hard and we tried to break it down in a pricing calculator (which does not yet seem to do all that good of a job, point taken).
Disclaimer - as mentioned below/above in some of the comments: not the tax attorney ;-)
We are working with a tax office that helped us figuring out international taxation and will be able to answer all legal taxation questions in detail for each single country we're in business with.
Taxation for fruits essentially means:
- fruits charges the buyer and applies tax applicable for fruits (company in Germany) and the buyer in country XYZ
- each buyer will receive an invoice (issued by fruits)
- the seller will receive a single credit note for all sales performed within a month targeting a German company (fruits)
[Buyer] <<- Invoice (Tax) --- [fruits] <<- Credit note ->> [Seller]
https://www.taxjar.com/product/api
The one thing on the pricing page that jumped out at me was, "AI-driven product taxability recommendations"
AI recommendations and dealing with the tax authorities doesn't really seem like a sound choice.
Make sure that you deal with IP rights very carefully in that situation.
Also, the GP is right, you do need that impressum page.
I am not from Europe neither USA - I'd like only to get paid monthly for the service I provide. Is it difficult? If anyone can give some advice I'd be grateful.
You shouldn't be afraid, you should pay a professional CPA and/or tax accountant to take care of all of that stuff for you.
You wouldn't draft your own legal documents (I hope), correct? It's no different on the money side of things.
At fruits, we are automatically handling all the taxes & invoicing for you - internationally & correctly, so you don't have to be afraid of making illegal billing mistakes. It's all handled for you, you and your customers automatically receive an automated invoice / billing overview. :-)
Edit: I’m not vouching for anyone not following the law. But I do think the rules are much easier to understand and follow in other EU countries.
I am in Europe. That means every time I sell something, I need to charge taxes depending on the country of the buyer. And once a year, I have to make a report for the tax authorities with all the revenues I made with all the countries.
Does fruits abstract that away somehow?
fruits will:
- charge the buyer with the applicable tax between fruits (company in Germany) and the buyer in Country XYZ
- each buyer will receive an invoice (issued by fruits)
- the seller will receive a single credit note for all sales within that month targeting a German company (fruits)
As I can see from the comments (above and below), we need to come up with a way explaining intl taxation more thoroughly.
Disclaimer: I am the developer and not the tax attourney. In case you do have any questions, feel free to contact us (or me) and we will set up a meeting with our Tax-Daniela which will be able to explain taxation-related tasks in detail with a proper legal background :-)
First impressions are that it seems very expensive for smaller purchases - my $2.00 turned into $0.56 (and then I'll have currency fees as GBP wasn't an option).
As for smaller purchases, it is probably best to go for quantity - you can also use our price calculator, to see how you should price your product to receive amount x in the end. Also definitely noting down that GBP should be an option.
Thank you for your input :-)