Ask HN: What service are you willing to provide for $1? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What service are you willing to provide for $1?

10 pointsmkovji42 comments

I'll tell you you're a cheapskate. IaaS -- insults as a service.

But for an entire dollar, I want custom insults. None of this telling me the same thing you told the last ten people who gave you a dollar. Cuz, wow, lazy.

;)

I’m sorry but auditing is only available in the Enterprise Plan

Nothing, I wouldn’t want someone who places so little value on my work as a customer.

Remember Whatsapp used to charge a dollar. Multiply $1 by how many millions of users. That's not bad assuming a profit margin is there.

You can't make it up in volume :)

It might be irrational but people value what they buy by how much they spend. I remember when I left my last full time job I felt we were undercharging our customers. I went back to those same customers doing the same work and charged them three times as much as they had been paying. Their attitude towards me changed completely, I was really shocked at the difference, I'd gone from being a grunt who installed systems to a valued member of the team.

You can't make it up in volume when you're charging directly for your time. But you can with a service where the marginal cost to serve an additional user is less than that $1.

A smile.

Note that there are a lot of things many people are willing to do for free but wouldn't do for $1. Such as answering this question.

That's because taking money for it interferes with the personal satisfaction of an altruistic or community-building or socially responsible act.

The key thing that seems to be missing is $1 from how many people?

$1 from one individual involves a lot of overhead to complete a transaction (for your average person), but $1 from N people who each require a minimum of interaction can make much more economical sense. This can be multiplied by getting $1 from N people every X days.

Per the original question there's fairly little I'd be willing to provide to a single individual at $1, but in aggregate (high N, reasonable X) there's a number of viable options (mostly in the software realm).

One minute call twice everyday by real human.

1. First to remind me the things, I would be doing today. 2. Following up on the tasks, I am supposed to do today.

I tried to do using Alexa. Didn't go as expected.

Distributed accountability buddies. I like it.

Neat idea that has existed in other spaces for a while.

There are groups of sailboats on longer voyages that keep in contact, often back to a base on land, over SSB. If you don't respond to the daily check in it is assumed something is wrong, and everyone is told about it and if anyone is close to your last position you hope they can look for you.

Google Assistant might be able to do it well.

I have been selling Android/iOS apps with a $1 price tag on it, I get 1 star review almost everyday blaming why the app isn't free.

There's a lesson on don't price your app at $1.

I don't think that is the right lesson to learn from the given point. There are lot of $1 apps that are successful. There is a huge difference between $1 and free if you can see it.

This for example. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.halfbrick.... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.explodingk...

Sounds like you've seen earn.com and the emails they send users. For $1 sign-up and get some crypto.... the monetary value here is crazy low. The tasks they seem to set probably take ~5mins which translates into $12 p/h... so you've got to really be into crypto.

Service am I willing to provide for $1? Watch my favorite Netflix shows and give you a thumbs up or down :).

I can easily automate that by calling /bin/true.

Find someone/something to solve your problem by providing internet research on the topic. Max 5 minutes.

I'd be willing to:

1. provide positive inspiration

2. provide an answer or at least initial research within 5 minutes of time. (using some automated tools I write)

3. provide a daily list of facts about that day at various points in time.

4. teach a child a simple task.

5. provide the top "movers and shakers" in the stock market from the last day.

You know the service that Bob Newhart provided, as a psychologist? He charged 5$ for 5 minutes. I'd be willing to do that for 1$.

Ref. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw

How does someone really do that? It takes a few minutes just to arrange a meeting or enter the room and sit down with someone.

Be Your Personal Job Hunt VA: Share your linkedin/resume and I will search for the whoishiring posts or SO ads that match your job profile and send you a custom intro email draft. 1$ per draft, hurry limited time offer! akhil.karunAtTheRateGmailDotCom

I am actually working right now on a runtime configs management service for which I am initially planning to charge $1/month/client in blocks of 10 clients with a minimum commitment of 1 year...but still $1 per client per month.

Self-hosted http://killbill.io/ with working bitpay plugin.

Or if you are selling bitpay and other plugins for killbill, i'll gladly pay more.

Almost nothing really. The cost to agree upon any service costs more than $1.

The trick is to productize it and then aggregate many tasks from others at once.

Thats exactly what $1 apps do in the App Store, no?

Take a photo of what I'm looking at in the real world.

This is kind of what Indeed is doing via the Job Spotter app. They pay users ~$1 for snapping photos of help wanted signs.

You can talk to me for 1 minute. I'm great listener.

Send someone an anecdote from my life every month. Not that my life is interesting, but it would be worth the effort from my end.

I kinda like this idea. A subscription based generic version of FML

https://cloudbuddy.cloud/

One minute of my time.

I will recommend one amazing food dish per month for $1

It'd be less hassle to just give it away for free.

Transcribing about 40 seconds of voice audio.

Turn down service.

as in "No, sorry" or you'll come to my hotel room and fold down the blankets and put a nice chocolate on the pillow? Because I would love to have the latter for $1, especially if the chocolate is included.

> you’ll come to my hotel room and fold down the blankets and put a nice chocolate on the pillow?

No, sorry. You now owe me $1.

I'll buy that debt for $0.02

Buy me a beer and I'll tell ya.

7 function calls.

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