VidFall.com – Pay with your time, not your wallet | Hacker News Reader

VidFall.com – Pay with your time, not your wallet

vidfall.com

22 pointsbadgercapital18 comments

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It looks like I accrued one point for watching one ad. Cool.

Now I try to reduce the price of an item: (First number is the points I need to reduce by that amount)

50 ($0.01)

100 ($0.02)

500 ($0.10)

1000 ($0.20)

2500 ($0.50)

5000 ($1.00)

Do I need to watch fifty ads to reduce the price of an item by one cent?

Watching the video gives you 1 point and reduces the price of the item you are watching by $0.01.

Cynically brilliant. If this works, you've built a platform for the consumption of product ads, in which you consume ads before buying into the original ad.

It just might work. I hope it doesn't, for moral reasons.

It won't, advertisers will eventually stop paying for impressions on this site and ones like it.

That's my guess anyway.

This is an interesting variation on the penny auction sites that were en vogue about 2-3 years ago, but you're "bidding" with your time rather than your money.

Nevertheless, people quickly realized that penny auctions are a sucker's game -- see http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/201... -- and I don't see why it's any different with VidFall.

But points for originality.

Thanks, yea we were definitely inspired by the penny auction sites. However, we saw them as predatory. The nice thing about VidFall is you can't lose any money. Just a fun way to get discounts on gift cards. Thanks for the feedback.

Seems like a variant of swagbucks (http://www.swagbucks.com/) except the discounts you earn toward giftcards from watching videos gets pooled toward the one person who decides to buy first.

It's going to be crawling with bots soon if there isn't a captcha of some sort in place.

We have security measures in place for suspicious activity! We have to protect our advertisers.

The fact that another user can take advantage of the low price before you really kinda sucks. I don't think I'd ever use this.

EDIT 1 - Additionally, you can open multiple tabs with multiple videos muted and to make the price drop faster.

EDIT 2 - These items can run out, which can really stink if you're waiting around for the price to drop to the one you're looking for.

That's the idea behind the classic dutch auction, my friend.

While I'm also unlikely to patiently pinch a few dollars, I find it mildly interesting.

Not bad if you're already in the market for something. I just saved $10 on a $25 gift card.

Do they get delivered by email instantly?

I just received it. It took just over a day. I may not be doing it right, but i left the video on in a separate tab while I did other things. When it hit 1 remaining, I purchased. I'll definitely use it again if the service continues.

Interesting that you can drag the progress bar in the ad to the end, effectively skipping it.

The pricing is WAY off here.

As @voltagex_ noted, you must watch 50 ads to save $0.01, which is a CPM of $0.2, whereas many video CPMs are in the $20 range. A markup of 10000% seems a little extreme.

Hey, sorry for the confusion. Each video you watch decreases the price of the item for sale. In addition to the price decrease, you get vidfall points. These points are used at the 50 to .01 ratio. It is just an added bonus. Something users get even if they don't make the purchase. Users can apply these points at any time.

I'm in the top 10 and I have only watched one video. Awesome.

what ad service is this using?

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