You're not missing anything. As jolan said, it's basically the twitter version of "The Million Dollar Homepage"... minus the million dollars. :p
I'm also not saying this is a good idea or that I would like everyone to start putting things like this live.
The whole point of this post (which I suppose I understated) is that I generally have ideas that are much more interesting and complex, but their complexity causes even more doubt and I never launch.
In this case, I stopped over-thinking it and launched a very simple idea with a layout and model that I wasn't very happy with. For this, I was rewarded by getting money in my account right away and now I am watching the trends of actual paying customer and can tweak the site to meet their needs.
I know that we've all heard "Launch Early, Launch Often" and "If you're not embarrassed by your first version you're waiting too long" but it took me pushing out a really simple idea to actually get a feel for it.
The hope is that I learn my lesson and launch my real ideas faster.
Rest of Hacker News:
Do any of you have similar stories or some insight that you'd like to share?