10 ms·
Want to meet people, try charging them for it?
- Almondsetat 1y agoIt's a peculiar turn of events I must admit, but I don't think that having those viewership numbers and an easibly reachable email and not getting contacted is actually common.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- daedrdev 1y agoIf you charge money successfully it signals you are legit enough to get others to pay.
- volemo 1y agoAlso when I see a cool person, I think my stuff is not good enough to waste their time, but if they charge for it, then it’s a deal.
- pyman 1y agoDo people pay for knowledge or attention? Because let's be honest, most of the podcasts and books out there already contain more knowledge and wisdom than anyone needs to be successful in any profession.
- bawolff 1y agoThe thing about wisdom is its pretty hard to transmit, there are no quick fixes, so people end up fruitlessly chasing it. Kind of like how some people will do one get rich quick scheme after another despite none of them working.
- fn-mote 1y agoPeople pay to go to school where there are teachers that “make you work”. Some people claim it’s gatekeeping or access to the brand name of the school, but I think it’s more than that. Most of them know they won’t read the (text)books and learn on their own. Even though the knowledge is available. I guess the money is for the transmission of the knowledge.
- KolibriFly 1y agoIt's like a shortcut to perceived credibility
- llm_nerd 1y agoThe corollary of this is that some people lie and claim that people are paying to shortcut to credibility or legitimacy. And to be clear, I am not talking about this submission (which I didn't read, and from other comments is charity-driven regardless), but this industry is absolutely rife with Fake It Till You Make It people who claim they can barely contain the hordes clamouring to give them money and super high-paying consulting gigs. But then it's coupled with a beg that makes everything previously said look super questionable, yet somehow people buy it. It's the supermodel girlfriend that lives in Canada.
- poisonborz 1y agoTitle is a bit misleading, he became a popular academic/author and the proceedings are for charity. Once you are well known, you can charge for a lot of things, especially if it's for a good cause.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThe weird part is that when he was well known, nobody reached out to get the "lot of things". I think it's because a lot of free stuff comes with a catch - free internet for one month, catch is you're stuck on a year long contract. Free consult but the catch is you're in their systems now, agreed to something in the small print, and you now get cold calls to sell you stuff. Free social network but the catch is your data and personal photos are used for marketing and training AI. But charge $100 and that's it, that's all the strings attached. Straightforward transaction.
- cheschire 1y agoThat’s how it used to be but there’s a trend of more companies double dipping now and justifying it by saying they would charge MORE if they weren’t allowed to attach all those strings.
- trainerxr50 1y agoThe title is ridiculously misleading when people are donating to charity.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoIt is sort of entertaining to see the gymnastics writers (or LLMs) do to get clicks.
- eatonphil 1y agoTo the contrary, I did not even send this post to my mailing list. It wasn't exactly a throwaway post but it was something more like that. A post I didn't expect anyone to care much about.
- landgenoot 1y agoMy experience with blogging and being easily reachable is that you mostly get people with very specific questions/problems. Not someone who is interested in meeting you.
- amelius 1y agoMaybe try video blogging about fitness or fashion and cosmetics.
- thenthenthen 1y agoI just did a workshop at a small non profit. There were 3 people who came there to meet me to chat about other non related opportunities and projects. We charged a small amount, 5$. It was not advertised or told (not by me or leaked through the topic of the workshop) that I would be there, nor am I famous. They came specifically for me, not the workshop (but did participate in a good way). Not sure what to take away from this, other than that it was really nice!
- Thorrez 1y agoHow did they know you would be there? Did you ask them how they knew?
- thenthenthen 1y agoOh good one! One through a friend of a friend of a friend. I will ask the others haha.
- thenthenthen 1y ago‘Coincidence’
- KolibriFly 1y agoSometimes the "signal" we put out is way more visible to the right people than we think
- wodenokoto 1y agoThis reminds me of video that went simi viral a decade or so back. Not sure how much of it was staged, but the creators went to a public place and stood next to some “free hugs”-people and then put up a sign “Premium hugs $1” and apparently collected more hugs to the chargrin of the free-huggers.
- Chris2048 1y agoI'd personally pay to witness the chargrin
- HPsquared 1y agoIf it's free, people are suspicious and judge the cost to be something implicit, generally with a higher expected cost than $1. On the other hand if you make the cost explicit, people are more comfortable. It ties in with the story in Freakonomics about the daycare that started to charge a small "fine" to discourage parents picking up the child late, with the effect that these incidents happened more often. Because the cost went from implicit (shame, etc) to explicit (it's only $10).
- bravesoul2 1y agoFree hugs? Yeah probably going to be churchy!
- scott_w 1y agoI'd be careful of inferring too much from things like this, particularly given how much criticism Freakonomics has received. One example from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11eTG4_iwqw&pp=ygUVZGVhdGggb2YgZnJlYWtvbm9taWNz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11eTG4_iwqw&pp=ygUVZGVhdGggb... > If it's free, people are suspicious and judge the cost to be something implicit, generally with a higher expected cost than $1. On the other hand if you make the cost explicit, people are more comfortable. To address your point explicitly, if someone believes the cost of a hug is higher than $1 ("higher than expected cost"), then offering one for $1 should trigger a similar suspicion in your head. Think about it, if a stranger offered you a free Porsche, you'd rightly be suspicious. Would you be less suspicious if they offered that same car for $500?
- Unit327 1y agoThis sounds like the same behaviour from introducing fines for overdue library books or being late picking up children from day-care. It goes from a social olbigation or question ("Do I want to bother the day-care people by arriving late?" / "Do I want to bother this blogger and ask for their time?") to a financial transaction.
- lewantmontreal 1y agoLLMs made things a lot easier but before them I wished there was a stackoverflow but paid, so you could pay someone for an answer if they happened to have specific information. You could kind of emulate it by buying stackoverflow upvotes, then placing that as a bounty. Its not exactly money but it made it more comfortable (and successful) than hoping someone answers for free.
- moffkalast 1y agoSO bounties were kind of useless though weren't they? Timespans far too short for anyone with the right knowledge to notice besides professional bounty hunters, in the end you had to either give the sum to someone who didn't do the job or take the loss.
- CharlieDigital 1y agoWasnt that how Experts Exchange worked?
- BlackFly 1y agoAuthor notes that there is still a standing offer to answer questions for free "if time allows" but doesn't get any inquiries. I believe this shows that it isn't due to fame or the payment making the author seem more legitimate. Instead I think that the payment creates the expectation that the inquiry will be answered and when someone expects an answer they are more willing to inquire. When the consultation is free or "time permitting", then it might simply be refused but making the inquiry itself isn't zero cost for the individual and their mental calculus makes it not worth asking. The mental calculus is, "What is the person getting out of this interaction and why would they choose to answer me but not someone else?" When it is financial you can see that you are equal to everyone else and you see exactly what the consultant is getting out of it.
- KolibriFly 1y agoWhen there's a clear transaction, people feel entitled (in a good way) to your time
- guappa 1y agoOh no don't worry. They feel entitled also when they're not paying.
- laughinghan 1y agoNot the same people. I’d expect to get way more out of talking to one of those sets of people than the other
- Davidzheng 1y agoThis makes the most sense to me too
- avipars 1y agoThere was a site called earn.com which charged to email notable people (VCs, etc). They got acquired by coinbase and the site has since shutdown.
- jpalomaki 1y agoIt's a similar as described in Freakonomics book. Daycare was annoyed with parents picking up their kids late. They introduced a fee for this. As a result, late pick ups increased. Something that was not considered to be socially acceptable, became more acceptable when you put a price tag for it.
- verbify 1y agoClearly the fine wasn't high enough.
- bell-cot 1y agoWas the actual goal to stop the behavior? Or to cover their staffing & overhead costs for the extra time?
- guappa 1y agoWhat they should have done is call the cops and report abandoned children :)
- pferde 1y agoNo, what they should have done is to increase the fine progressively for repeat offenders.
- KolibriFly 1y agoThere's something oddly liberating about making the implicit social cost explicit; it gives both parties a clear structure
- rpastuszak 1y agoOK, this is a very interesting post for me because in the past 5 years I've met 200+ people via my Say Hi page: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/say-hi/ https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/say-hi/ and many of my speakers suggested that I should charge for the calls. Many of my calls involve tech/product advice (often from people with a ton of experience in other areas, e.g. ex FAANG managers, already accomplished founders, designers). Many of the people who message me with concrete questions, asking for my expertise are often already well-off, established and happy to pay. The thing is: 1. I often get calls from students or people struggling financially 2. I enjoy serendipitous interactions with beautifully weird people I can probably solve 1. by adding two call lines. But I worry that adding a commercial aspect will prevent 2. from reaching out. I don't live in London any more, and most of my nerdy/artsy/techy/hacker friends live allover the world. Ah, and: 3. I genuinely love speaking with people in this manner, and personally, I'm getting so much of my Say Hi calls. I just finished a call with a very clever engineer setting their first steps as a solo-founder. They're not "indie hackers", they're people with genuine curiosity, talent and will to help people. It feels amazing to be able to help someone like that, and even better -- to become infected with that enthusiasm! I am very much aware that I'm rationalising this and perhaps even preventing myself from letting people pay for my work. Whether it's impostor syndrome or the fact that this is such a precious subject to me is a question that I'm trying to answer.
- noname120 1y agoPaying ⇒ customer ⇒ expectations
- kimjune01 1y agoyou can simply make another page that is commercially oriented
- swah 1y agoA/B test it and let us know which group is more interesting...
- gwbas1c 1y ago> I enjoy serendipitous interactions with beautifully weird people Gosh, I wish I could articulate that into words when I was younger. I remember having a fun conversation with a batshit insane lady who walked into a porch party, and one of my friends thought that I actually thought she was sane.
- 11235813213455 1y agoI also had this idea when wanting to sell my apartment directly (because real estate agency are a total ripoff), I thought about proposing a price 2k lower and charging 50 per visit, that way only really interested people would show off
- mmarian 1y agoHmm, interesting. I launched a blog a few months' back; one of the reasons was to talk to people about things I care about which, in my case, involves the struggles of launching a bootstrapped startup. I put a link to my linkedin and a contact form, just for that. No one contacted me. But funnily enough, when I speak to people they often tell me they've read my blog. And I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at giving startup advice - mostly thanks to my failures and a podcast that I've been listening to. Might end up trying this.
- rorylaitila 1y agoI've found the number of people that read my work vs interact is greater than 100 to 1. Similarly to you I get a lot of feedback IRL. Some people consider me 'prolific' within my small network, even though it feels like there is often no engagement at all. It's not easy to measure the true effect you have!
- mmarian 1y agoYep, it's what I tell myself to keep going ^_^
- ericmcer 1y agoI have been on the other end of this. I have a few Spanish tutors I pay ~$10 to chat with for 30m sessions. It is nice creating a dynamic where you can shamelessly talk about yourself without worry, because you are paying. In the rest of life I usually am the captive audience (kids, wife, etc.) and put my own stuff on the back burner. The author is questioning why people would pay, but it is nice to curate a conversation that is intentionally one-sided, otherwise if you contact him the onus is on you to make it worth his time.