A vending machine, on the internet

[xivzgrev]

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...

[eightturn]

ha, onionman here : ) I also wrote an essay similar to this vending machine analogy... simple minds think alike I guess https://www.deepsouthventures.com/building-things-that-do-ju...

[isaacremuant]

Why is it contrarian? Entrepreneurial spirit is well appreciated in popular culture even if most people don't have the ability to lose 10k without worries. Risk aversion might separate most people from entrepreneurs but it's not really a contrarian attitude, right? Maybe I've been interpreting the word wrong forever.

Would it be less contrarian if it was apples?

[RestartKernel]

Thanks for the link, I loved reading it. When you spend all day building software with sometimes unclear and questionable purpose, the straightforward approach of "just" selling a produce when in season seems deeply appealing. Greener grass, I suppose.

[moffkalast]

> They’re classified as a sweet onion, and because of their mild flavor (they don’t make your eyes tear up)

The WHAT. Did I seriously go my entire life without knowing there's a better type of onion?!

[ipsento606]

> 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.

[y-curious]

This is my parents and my in-laws. They will gladly tip a bartender $5 for pouring a beer but God forbid you suggest they spend $2 on a productivity app on the app store.

[rcxdude]

Probably because while they paid $2 for it, it was worth far more than $2 to them.

[SL61]

I run a free website with a monthly active user count in the 100k range. When something breaks - even if it's a really niche feature or a compatibility issue with an outdated browser - I get an army of furious users contacting me however they can. I can't imagine what would happen to me if the site completely broke or went down for more than a few hours.

[nicbou]

You can choose not to engage. What are they going to do, fire you?

[batch12]

That sucks, but with the stakes as low as $2, I'd happily give the money back and move on.

[bagpuss]

if someone relies on an upgrade for 8 years, $2 is not enough!

[wruza]

I guess the idea is to not provide contacts and to explicitly claim this position in the user agreement. How much pissed they are may really depend on how much of it is allowed. Some can kick the machine, but in this case it will be their pc.

[hampowder]

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 intention is to make it at some point a one-time purchase. I'm trying to conceive it more like writing/distributing a book than a subscription app.

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/

[janosett]

Seems the App Store link isn’t working for me (in Spain). Would love to give it a try!

[savolai]

This vending machine seems jammed indeed on iphone. The select boxes are empty. All three cards show ”whats” as the word.

[egeozcan]

Same on Firefox Desktop. The business didn't lose a customer though as I suppose it's US only anyway?

[gcr]

It's because the browser tries to fetch `/words.json` but that isn't JSON, it's the homepage.

[threekindwords]

thanks for reporting this, i fixed it! here's a writeup of what went wrong: https://threekindwords.com/blog/how-not-to-launch-on-hackern...

[rgbjoy]

shrug oh well

[foreigner]

Same on Android. Cute idea tho.

[stevoski]

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.

[RainyDayTmrw]

What's the solution for bad actors using your product to test stolen credit cards?

[sosodev]

When you say something like this what are you hoping to accomplish? Should nobody build products like this?

[everly]

OP addresses this directly, if you bothered to read the whole thing:

"The stakes should be low. Whatever you’re selling, it’s gotta be cheap. And if things go awry? No one’s going to launch a chargeback crusade. Just like a reliable vending machine, if it jams, it’ll return your coins."

[iandanforth]

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.

[jvanderbot]

Hey man he's out drinking free beer with his buddies, not losing sleep when the machine jams.

(Paraphrasing TFA for anyone confused)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

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.

[foreigner]

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.

[alexchamberlain]

How does that $0.21 compare to the cost of maintaining the coin machine on a vending machine and sending someone to collect the cash?

[notpushkin]

Aren’t there payment processors that charge a flat percentage without the fixed part? Or you can use alternate payment methods (e.g. SEPA payments in Europe are practically free, and many eWallets / QR payments in Asia use flat percentage as well IIRC. Crypto is also a possibility if you’re in the right niche.

[Ferret7446]

My understanding is that you can do it on layer 2 networks like Lightning, though it suffers from the same limitations shared by all decentralized systems (e.g., depends on gaining widespread adoption and weakness from internetwork blockades).

[jauntywundrkind]

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

[DeathArrow]

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).

[andai]

The title gave me PTSD flashback to the snack machine at my library, which requires you to scan a QR code, interact with a React app, and do internet banking to access the snacks.

[rmetzler]

Hey is the blogpost reloading every second (on mobile safari)?

[venky180]

Yes, mobile (chrome)

[starfezzy]

Yes (mobile Firefox)

[soneca]

For me it is indeed

[bitwize]

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.

[synack]

Big Drink got me through many long nights. I miss it.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/csh-coke-machine-info/

https://github.blog/news-insights/the-internet-coke-machine-...

Looks like it got the Rust treatment a few years ago: https://github.com/ComputerScienceHouse/bubbler

[__MatrixMan__]

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.

[Waterluvian]

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.

[otteromkram]

> ...if it needs to remember you, it should do so with tokens and one-time links, not user accounts or forgotten-password flows...

Not for me, thanks. I've skipped submitting job apps because of the Oracle HRM platform and having to visit my email an enter a six-digit code EACH time I wanted to submit an app, which required re-uploading a resume and re-correcting any parsing errors.

I will 100% skip your website if you rely upon cookies/OTP and don't let users create accounts (if they need one).

[bubblethink]

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.

[yapyap]

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.

[thih9]

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.

[3dsnano]

there's a post about it here https://threekindwords.com/blog/building-a-postcard-vending-...

[numtel]

This is the analogy used in the first description of a smart contract in 1997

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/the-idea-of-smart-cont...

[chiffre01]

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.

[SunlitCat]

The title of the post reminded me of a certain, famous, coffee pot!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot

[smitelli]

Reminds me of the networked vending machines in Computer Science House at RIT [0].

[0]: https://csh.rit.edu/about/projects.html

Full disclosure: I was involved in a hardware overhaul on all those machines, about 15-20 years ago.

[neodypsis]

so this "vending machine" is a postcard drop shipping website?

[pryelluw]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vending%20machine

vending machine noun : a coin-operated machine for selling merchandise

Coin is currency. This website sells merchandise. If they wanna call it a vending machine, then why not?

Either way, silly hill to die on. The post does explore our understanding of a vending no machine and maybe how we may approach online versions.

[morkalork]

With a cute gimmick to hook customers and so cheap / low stakes that people will toss a few bucks into it for fun and not think too hard about it. It's like the chocolate bars and other items at the cashier of a supermarket, works entirely off of impulse purchases. The problem for OP is that they aren't physically in front of hundreds of potential customers wandering by. They're on the internet so they need to go viral like the bag of dicks guy or do stuff like blog about it and get posted places like hn.

[aqueueaqueue]

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.

[amelius]

This is the entire idea behind the iPhone. It is a vending machine in your pocket, that you paid for.

[wenbin]

i’ve built a few web apps. the closest to a “vending machine” is https://Transcript.New – dead simple, transactional, zero outages in 14 months, and almost no support emails (maybe 2 in the past year).