Ask HN: What would you gladly pay $30/month for? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would you gladly pay $30/month for?

28 pointsbuiltforyou53 comments

Looking to hear about things that don't exist, but should.

A service that acts as a personal secretary which will intercept all the asynchronous events that interrupt me every few minutes (email, texts, app alerts, phone calls, etc...) and will make them stop and make me feel safe that I'm not checking if anything important has happened. Only on the very very rare occasion when something is important enough to interrupt my current train of thought will I really be alerted--those interrupt events will have to be very infrequent and super duper important (e.g. "your spouse just went to the E.R." or "pizza's here").

For phone, I was thinking of adding a layer that says "If this is an emergency or your call is expected, press 1 to ring through. Otherwise, press 3 to leave a message or 7 to set up a call at a future time."

Making 7 work well is going to be tricky, though.

iphone "do not disturb" mode can do something like this, I've been told

Interesting! Hopefully patents won't get in the way of others doing similar. Do you know if it includes the scheduling bit?

It doesn't do scheduling. The do not disturb feature just silences the phone, so text, calls, and alerts don't go through. However, the feature also has an option that when turned on allows a call to go through if the person calls twice within like 2 minutes. So, call once, declined like phone is on silent. Call back immediately, the call goes through. You can also add people onto your favorites list and they'll not be stopped by the do not disturb feature.

Oh, right, I had heard about that. Not a bad idea, but not my ideal.

Shut up and take my money! :)

A service that sends me a monthly list of ideas that people want, but don't currently exist.

You know, that actually does sound really cool...

A Baremetrics for Paypal , a service showing me all my KPI using the Paypal API on a nice dashboard so, I don't have to fiddle around with spreadsheets.

+1 - I would be extremely interested in this as well. great idea!

A VA service, like TimeSvr.com or myriad others, but for graphic design.

I need little graphics made all the time (banners, logos, etc) and right now I have to interact with Fiverr/Elance more than I want to. Not looking for Picasso, just decent quality.

So, I want to have an account with a service who will "just bill me" for little graphics. Please, someone make this.

If you don't mind me asking, what sort of business do you have that requires little graphics made all the time? Genuinely curious.

I think you seek https://99designs.com/tasks/

That is a great service! Thank you for the link!

However, its not quite what I want - its really focused on tiny jobs, They won't do anything if it takes over 30 minutes, and I don't think they'll create anything (e.g., a banner ad), only modify something you already have.

I'm fine with a job taking 2-3 hours and billed accordingly, its the latency and overhead of finding/scheduling these small tasks that sucks.

I agree that the latency and overhead of scheduling for the small tasks suck. If you get lucky and a find freelance designer that you like working with it would greatly decrease that overhead. I do some freelance web work with a few clients that I've grown close business relationships with, and its typically just a matter of receiving an email with some requirements, having a brief text chat, and then sending them the invoice. It might take a while to find the right person, and even then it might take a while to build the relationship that allows for very little friction, but when it happens its worth it.

A Getty images of graphics?

An always on, 24/7 service or something where I buy 30 dollars of time (say 3 hours) a month and more if I want it. From my software dashboard I can drop something easy but a complete waste of my time (reformatting 60 documents to have a new logo sizing and saving them as pdf, adding up my expenses receipts and inputting them into accounting, proof read my late night typing, book my flight etc.). This would be made easier by simple task drop down menus (Task => Expenses Calculations), along with customisable tasks.

I simply drop the docs into the syncing software, along with a brief description or quick cam recording of what I want, and then one hour later the changes are sent back to me.

I guess you could call it a mix of Elancer, Dropbox, Virtual Assistant etc.

I feel like Fancy Hands [+] is very close to what you're looking for (disclaimer: no affiliation whatsoever).

[+] https://www.fancyhands.com/

You Sir, are a hero!

Glad I could help!

That's a pretty innovative idea, and likely would be quite useful to a lot of people.

I do some of these things via fiverr.com. Initially it was a bit of a hassle to find the right people. But now, I have certain regular people for some of my manual tasks.

A smart microwave oven. For my inner Quantified Self, analyze my usage over time, show patterns, infer what I'm cooking. For my energy bill, show electricity consumption. For my home, talk to my fridge.

$31+/month of decrease in cash outflow. Or $31+ increase in income.

In truth it probably needs to be more than $1 due to the fact we value our time and the possibility of cost incurred due to some error, mine our outside my control.

On the flipside some new form of entertainment, enjoyment, enhancement to self-worth or similar that I find more agreeable than stuff I spend $30/mth on now. Note how that includes charity.

Like most apartment/condo city dwellers I can't receive packages unless I am home.

I would pay 30/month for some kind of external lockbox or some kind of capability to order anything I wanted to that box (outside my apartment, or would glady let amazon or google inside my place). Also , all/any pick ups or returns would happen from this drop off box.

That would be http://bufferbox.com (acquired a few years ago by Google). Hopefully they grow!

http://www.doorman.it/

Post office does this.

>> Looking to hear about things that don't exist, but should.

Girlfriend :)

On serious note, 1. TaskRabbit like service in India 2. Costly items on rent (say a watch or a laptop). It can be a marketplace where others are giving their products on rent and I am paying $30/month for the service. I can pay additional rental fees to the other party too. So this will be hybrid model of ebay + airbnb

Someone to read my twitter or RSS feed to me just while I wake up…too early for a podcast or music. And I could be like "fave that. save that one. unfollow that bitch"

really though that could be automated with a decent text-to-speech and voice recognition but I'd still pay for it

Someway of linking modern payment processors Stripe/Paypal/Braintree/etc to bank accounts in countries not yet supported.

Is it the bank account part of things that you see as the issue, or is it a solution to everything that is limiting it from being available to you? (i.e. would you also want/need a company set up for you in a supported country to process the transactions?)

How much would this be worth to you?

Product Hunt/HN but for startup related podcasts.

I wouldn't pay $30/month for it but I would buy the app, or bookmark the site.

A service where I add the groceries I want and they get purchased and delivered from local grocery stores.

I'm in Dallas, and InstaCart isn't available. Google and you'll probably find a few local companies trying to startup. One national chain (I think it's a franchise) I noticed is http://www.weshopanddeliver.com/ Their interface is horrible, but I'll probably start using them next week.

You mean Instacart?

We'll be in 94928 soon!

yeah right...

Someone to take my garbage out of the kitchen into the bins outside my house.

You're probably joking, but any cleaning service would do this. Or, spend a lot more money and move into a much nicer place...they'll provide that kind of service for you. A friend of mine, the building janitors come in and take out their kitchen trash.

This is common for apartments where I live. They call it trash service.

Quality mentorship

https://clarity.fm perhaps?

Sorry should clarify, meant high level technical mentorship

That's interesting. Like office-hours-as-a-service?

One-on-one? In small groups?

One-on-one, technical

"Technical" is pretty broad. For you, specifically, what area do you want?

Spotify, but for movies.

Isn't this netflix?

Yes. That said, I think Netflix is much better for TV than for movies.

A cheaper Tesla.

A bicycle that's a cross of Tesla (smart, strong, fast, electric/human powered), Dyson (aerodynamic, fewer moving parts), and Segway (keep me from falling; work on stairs).

That'd be a MUCH cheaper Tesla. Unless you are putting 50k+ down, then its a moderately cheap Tesla.

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