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How do you sell something that is not your time? Money is just crystallized work time. If you don't sell your time, you got to... sell other's time (by having e

How do you sell something that is not your time? Money is just crystallized work time. If you don't sell your time, you got to... sell other's time (by having employees)? The idea of making something once and selling it multiple times (like software) is nice, but the way I understand the market works is that competition will push down the price so much that even with your one time work investment, you'll only get the "average" rate in the end. So that means, find a niche where there is no competition yet?

ido 5y ago
Your notion of competition in the free market is sorta like the frictionless spherical horse in the physics joke. A successful product will produce more profit than your hourly rate.
- captainmuon 5y ago
  Yeah, of course it is idealized. You know the joke: two economists are walking down the street. One sees a $50 bill on the sidewalk and says to the other: "Did you see that $50 bill on the ground?" - "Can't be, if it was there someone would have picked it up!" Long term I think it is true, though. If you don't have any unique advantage, competition will drive down your revenue to "market" rate. But that's kind of idealized equlibrium, of course there are successful products, innovations, and so on.
  - ido 5y ago
    You should absolutely have a unique advantage!
  - thom 5y ago
    You only really need a brief period of profitability to start building up capital though, and at a certain point that become self sustaining in itself (again in an idealise world, but a fairly reliable one).
politician 5y ago
> Money is just crystallized work time. The value of a currency is a representation of the faith the holder has in the issuer. Consider QE: a government issues digital payments to banks for billions of currency and the work involved is roughly as complex as sending SMS text messages, and yet for $1B you can buy a really nice yacht and a trip to space. A paradox? No, we just believe the currency has a value unrelated to any notion of work required to produce it.
- captainmuon 5y ago
  As a physicist I learned that different, contradictory theories can be complimentary because they approach the truth from different sides. As an employee,´I cannot buy a yacht. I am free to choose many different jobs that all pay about the same for the amount of effort (or less, if I am unskilled in that field for example). So I think at least at the micro level, the labor theory of value still has some explanation power: It explains why there is no free lunch (for employees), but also why you'll want to have people work for you if you want to make more money.
biztos 5y ago
Or maybe find a niche where competition doesn't affect price so much? Vinyl records? Text editors? User-hostile "Enterprise" software?
barrenko 5y ago
What we call time here is sometimes better understood as attention. Attention is the one true currency.
em-bee 5y ago
i sell outcomes and expertise. for 2.5k a month i promise my client that i will be available whenever there is an issue. last month this client called once (actually he just sent a message), checking if i am available in case something that he was working on would blow up. it didn't blow up and i earned my monthly fee literally just for holding hands. the time i invested is the time it took to respond to his message. there is no hourly rate that can measure that. clients will not only pay the least that they can get away with, they will pay what it takes to achieve their goals. what my client needs is assurance that problems will be dealt with. so in effect it's like insurance. you pay for insurance but hope that you don't need it. another way to earn money without an hourly rate is fixed price projects. the goal here is to figure out what is the value of the project is to the client. you may charge 50k to build that custom website, but if the client earns 500k from using it the next year, then it was totally worth it, even if you could have charged less. the challenge here is to find those clients. the answer is generally reputation and referrals. you won't find them on upwork. at least not at first. finding a niche with little competition can help. the client i mentioned above i started out with as hourly rate, continually raising the rate each year until i suggested we simplify the process and agree on a fixed monthly rate. i let the client choose the rate. figuring that if the rate was to low for the amount of work, then we'd renegotiate. it wasn't. i even get bonuses if there is a particularly busy month.
busterarm 5y ago
There's a large number of people who make a living basically selling access to their industry contacts...making introductions. There are a lot of creative ways to make money out there that most people don't realize.

ido 5y ago

Your notion of competition in the free market is sorta like the frictionless spherical horse in the physics joke. A successful product will produce more profit than your hourly rate.

captainmuon 5y ago
Yeah, of course it is idealized. You know the joke: two economists are walking down the street. One sees a $50 bill on the sidewalk and says to the other: "Did you see that $50 bill on the ground?" - "Can't be, if it was there someone would have picked it up!" Long term I think it is true, though. If you don't have any unique advantage, competition will drive down your revenue to "market" rate. But that's kind of idealized equlibrium, of course there are successful products, innovations, and so on.
- ido 5y ago
  You should absolutely have a unique advantage!
- thom 5y ago
  You only really need a brief period of profitability to start building up capital though, and at a certain point that become self sustaining in itself (again in an idealise world, but a fairly reliable one).

politician 5y ago

> Money is just crystallized work time. The value of a currency is a representation of the faith the holder has in the issuer. Consider QE: a government issues digital payments to banks for billions of currency and the work involved is roughly as complex as sending SMS text messages, and yet for $1B you can buy a really nice yacht and a trip to space. A paradox? No, we just believe the currency has a value unrelated to any notion of work required to produce it.

captainmuon 5y ago
As a physicist I learned that different, contradictory theories can be complimentary because they approach the truth from different sides. As an employee,´I cannot buy a yacht. I am free to choose many different jobs that all pay about the same for the amount of effort (or less, if I am unskilled in that field for example). So I think at least at the micro level, the labor theory of value still has some explanation power: It explains why there is no free lunch (for employees), but also why you'll want to have people work for you if you want to make more money.

biztos 5y ago

Or maybe find a niche where competition doesn't affect price so much? Vinyl records? Text editors? User-hostile "Enterprise" software?

barrenko 5y ago

What we call time here is sometimes better understood as attention. Attention is the one true currency.

em-bee 5y ago

i sell outcomes and expertise. for 2.5k a month i promise my client that i will be available whenever there is an issue. last month this client called once (actually he just sent a message), checking if i am available in case something that he was working on would blow up. it didn't blow up and i earned my monthly fee literally just for holding hands. the time i invested is the time it took to respond to his message. there is no hourly rate that can measure that. clients will not only pay the least that they can get away with, they will pay what it takes to achieve their goals. what my client needs is assurance that problems will be dealt with. so in effect it's like insurance. you pay for insurance but hope that you don't need it. another way to earn money without an hourly rate is fixed price projects. the goal here is to figure out what is the value of the project is to the client. you may charge 50k to build that custom website, but if the client earns 500k from using it the next year, then it was totally worth it, even if you could have charged less. the challenge here is to find those clients. the answer is generally reputation and referrals. you won't find them on upwork. at least not at first. finding a niche with little competition can help. the client i mentioned above i started out with as hourly rate, continually raising the rate each year until i suggested we simplify the process and agree on a fixed monthly rate. i let the client choose the rate. figuring that if the rate was to low for the amount of work, then we'd renegotiate. it wasn't. i even get bonuses if there is a particularly busy month.

busterarm 5y ago

There's a large number of people who make a living basically selling access to their industry contacts...making introductions. There are a lot of creative ways to make money out there that most people don't realize.