A vending machine, on the internet
91 comments
·February 18, 2025xivzgrev
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...
y-curious
I love your website, and thank you for your writeups. I was sad to see that many of the domains in your "getting started" page are not up and running. www.kobebeef.com being dead hit me hard :'( I feel oddly inspired, and my wife will probably be sending you hate mail in the near future :p
eightturn
thank you Y.. I was just a spectator on the KobeBeef.com auction (never owned it)... it was simply a name that popped up once I began paying attention. But agree, a very neat one that was tempting. Not sure who owns it now.
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.
eightturn
I find it very relaxing to leave the computer behind and hang out all day in the Vidalia fields. We even started our own YouTube channel to film each years crop (ha) https://www.youtube.com/@vidaliaonion
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?!
eightturn
yes! most of my customers eat Vidalias like an Apple. But they still have a touch of zing, but the fumes have never hit me before. They're very versatile to cook with. Just ensure you're buying authentic vidalias, cause nefarious sellers try to pawn regular yellow onions off as Vidalia (it's illegal and there are fines for those who are caught doing it)
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.
hondo77
Charge for support emails. $1 (or whatever) to fill out a form and have a support email delivered to you. All other support emails (presumably to old addresses) will be ignored.
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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.
ipsento606
trying to refund a transaction that occurred 8 years ago is actually pretty onerous and time consuming
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bagpuss
if someone relies on an upgrade for 8 years, $2 is not enough!
Obscurity4340
You should be able to pay for upgrades and not hve to ply russin roulette where there's any chance that updating removes features and puts them back behind an eternal subscriber paywall.
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 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!
hampowder
Mm, please see previous comments on dealing with the respective app stores.
In this case Apple have de-listed me from the various EU app stores while they verify my 'trader information' - the requirement to publish my name and home address on the app store, next to my app.
Citizen_Lame
Just rent one of the business address, either mailboxes or virtual office one.
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?
unification_fan
Why should you even care? You're not responsible for those cards.
hcaz
When stripe charged you $10 for a chargeback on those transactions, unless stripe has changed its policy recently
RainyDayTmrw
You lose the original amount plus a fee on chargebacks. If you exceed a certain chargeback rate, your card processor bans you.
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."
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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)
Jap2-0
It's not just Firefox, and it's because https://threekindwords.com/words.json is not json.
But you didn't even lose two quarters. Shrug and move on.
jmholla
Looks like it's fixed now. It's valid JSON for me.
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?
mytailorisrich
The difference between fixed and marginal costs applies here.
The costs you mention are essentially fixed costs. The marginal cost of a sale is then zero (ignoring the cost of the item itself).
With Stripe the marginal cost is 21c or 42%. You can increase sales ad infinitum and Stripe will still take 42%...
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).
y-curious
Not to mention, even intelligent adults in Silicon Valley don't own cryptocurrency. Quite the opposite of a vending machine; Analogous to a vending machine in the US that only accepts Turkish Lira.
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).
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
andai
/dev/drink
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...