A vending machine, on the internet
I looked up alien stickers, and you can get 300 of them for $52. Assuming you sell them at 50 cents each and sell out in one month, that's a $98 profit. However, that depends on the cost of placing/location the vending machine.
Rock on man. The contrarian attitude reminds me of the “I Sell Onions on the Internet” guy
https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-inter...
> The machine was jammed. It wasn’t a big deal. I shrugged and moved on to buy my groceries.
I resonate with the sentiment, but this is very far from my experience selling cheap software products.
I had multiple people reach out to me because a software upgrade they paid $2 for 8 years ago stopped working. And they were, like, pissed about it.
I'm trying to make an analogous product (native app) for learning vocabulary after Memrise shut it simple, flashcard app down.
One thing about the vending machine model is that the transaction is done. You don't require any continued interaction from the vendor to enjoy what you bought.
For that reason I made it:
- a native app so it didn't require a server once downloaded
- offline first, using WatermelonDb to sync with a server if available
- all data bundled, so my server doesn't need to exist when downloading
The hardest elements have actually been complying with the various app store requirements. Google Play now requires developers to have 20 users test your app for 14 days. I've been stuck with 4x 14 day cycles for the Catalan version with no specific feedback as to how to satisfy their desire that it has been sufficiently tested.
Interestingly with Google Play, if you want to make an up-front paid app, your testers must pay for the app too. If you make the app free, such that your testers can download it, you can't make it paid again afterwards. You can add in app purchases later, though.
If anyone wants to check it out, it's available for Spanish and Catalan for now: https://learnthewords.app/
Hey is the blogpost reloading every second (on mobile safari)?
This vending machine seems jammed indeed on iphone. The select boxes are empty. All three cards show ”whats” as the word.
OP is in for a nasty surprise when they discover that the customers who complain the loudest are those that pay the least, and that it is difficult to turn a profit on a low-priced service due to the cost of acquiring customers.
Edit: And credit card fraud. A $5 price combined with a Stripe payment process is very attractive to people who want to test stolen credit card numbers.
In New York, vending and videogame machines tend to be … ”connected,” … but maybe not the way you think.
I know someone that has made quite a bit of money, from vending machines, and he’s … um … “connected.” I generally don’t really deal with him too much. We run in different social circles.
Wiseguys like cash-heavy businesses. Maybe if they become cashless systems, that could change. I encounter vending machines that accept Apple Pay, fairly frequently, in more upscale venues.
I'm reminded of Kagi's privacy pass model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43040521
Generally speaking, kagi is not an internet vending machine. You have an account, you get billed monthly or whatever. Very much a normal SaaS in that regard. But the privacy system they've come up with fits quite well with the internet vending machine idea. You put a token in, you get a search result out.
I think it's got a lot of upside if you're trying to get paid to make software that isn't trying to manipulate its users. I hope to do something similar one day.
This is the analogy used in the first description of a smart contract in 1997
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/the-idea-of-smart-cont...
The article is not about vending machines even if it seems so.
It's about low friction (you don't have to sign up, sign it and the process of buying is very simple) and selling cheap stuff so the customer is tempted to buy without having safeguards (an account, customer support).
The problem is with our payments infrastructure there isn't a practical way to make a "machine" on the internet that accepts two quarters. OP's machine charges $5. The Stripe minimum charge is $0.50, and their fees on that charge would be almost $0.21.
I get the point that this is trying to make but what a terrible analogy. Vending machines suck! There are few things in life more frustrating than a printer that is jammed or a vending machine that is stuck. I don't want a vending machine on the internet. I don't want to buy junk food from Costco marked up by 5x on the internet. I want the finest goods available to humanity at rock bottom prices.
That was an interesting read, thanks for sharing!
How does the postcard logistics work? I.e. is there a platform that offers sub $5 drop shipping with three different templates and on demand print? Or is the author sending the postcards themselves?
Vending machine suggests automation, so the former; but I looked at some drop shipping options and couldn’t find anything like this.
The title of the post reminded me of a certain, famous, coffee pot!
so this "vending machine" is a postcard drop shipping website?
Sell courses, ebooks etc. online and use one of the many easy to use payment systems for that kind of thing. That is vending machine like.
I thought this was gonna be a story about that collegiate Coke machine from the 90s people could telnet into to see which rows were filled with what, the temperature, etc.
Matt Webb's Machine Supply (2015-2018) comes to mind, albeit a bit higher brow. A vending machine selling books & notebooks, that also tweeted it's activity. https://www.actsnotfacts.com/made/machine-supply
I’ve been buying piano sheet music and I’ve seen the two extremes:
1. You look at a preview, buy it, get a PDF emailed to you. No account needed.
2. You look at a preview, you make an account, you buy, you get told your browser isn’t supported. You get told a PDF costs extra. You get told you can only try to print it once so be careful. You get told you have 24 hours to complete this.
As a developer the second one was incredibly offensive. As if business types who do not comprehend technology beyond smacking rocks together thought they actually could lock down and police consumption of the sheet music. I printed to PDF and then never came back.
I appreciate the article but if what the writer linked would not send one of the cards or even multiple I would chargeback, not on a crusade type thing but if you don’t deliver the service you promised it’s not a weird thing to do.
Also I’ve seen some people go mad over a vending machine taking their money and not spitting anything out, over the principle of it.
Just depends on the person and how they see vending machines.
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Your machine has jammed, doesn't work in Firefox (macos). The words dropdown doesn't populate, nor does the style dropdown. I see a JSON.parse uncaught SyntaxError.