I commissioned a guy to make a small game for me last week, it can be just like working with any other artist/individual business
the unfortunate reality is that an hour of software labor doesn't go far, and software labor is super expensive
the unfortunate reality is that an hour of software labor doesn't go far, and software labor is super expensive
But I do think there is a possibility of paying for a custom api or something that connects up pieces of other apps (an app build, phone or ui) - it's not that they are doing something less worthwhile, it's that I think integrating a few existing things in an existing way can with new ui elements, pics, style can yield something useful and pleasing with "just" a few hours of effort.
Back in the dawn of time, if you had a pc, you had a modem, and there were plenty of different terminal programs (that started up the modem for a call to a BBS usually), and implemented one or a variety of different terminals or bbs ui packages. I recall there were certain kind of enthusiast ones, where you could get a new feature added by paying the author $50. Maybe you wanted it to retry calls some number of times, or add somenew protocol to transfer something.