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Ask HN: Is it possible to earn $1/min (not passively)?

15 points by Terry_B ↗ HN
I was discussing this silly thought exercise with some friends today and thought I'd share..

Would it be possible for a website/app to exist that was similar to the Mechanical Turk in that you can perform a small unit of work whenever you like, except that it has not been commoditized and actually pays well. Say for example, the work required specific niche skills to perform?

If you had these niche skills and such a magical website/app existed would it be possible to earn a reasonable amount of money whenever you had a spare few minutes and had a computer or smartphone handy? (We were throwing around the figure of $1/min as the hypothetical extreme to illustrate the point).

I'm not talking about passive income that earns the equivalent of $1/min here. Specifically a small unit of work that you perform and receive payment for.

Do any such skills/tasks exist? Would such a situation be possible or would the attractiveness of any such opportunity always drive supply up and prices down such that $1/min is not possible as an equilibrium in reality?

I know this is potentially a pretty silly discussion but what do you guys think? What would be the smallest time unit of decent paying work possible? What would these niche skills be? If it couldn't exist, why not?

20 comments

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patio11
While I don't know if it is feasible or not, radiology interpretation can be done in units of one scan or a series of scans, and would easily sustain $1 per minute. The high price is caused by a combination of unique skill set, regulatory capture by the Guild Of Right Honoroable Radiologists, and agency issues separating the person who benefits from the interpretation, the person who orders the interpretation, and the person who pays for the interpretation.
Terry_B
Nice one Patrick. Having authority under some regulation certainly seems like it would be the best way to keep the price up.
michael_dorfman
Would such a situation be possible or would the attractiveness of any such opportunity always drive supply up and prices down such that $1/min is not possible as an equilibrium in reality?

That depends upon the barriers to entry. In order to keep the wages high, you need to keep the number of people capable of doing the work small somehow.

lsc
eh, specialized advice can be given in short bursts like that. The problem is filtering your pool of experts. I'll give someone who I have reason to believe knows the answer to my question well over a dollar a minute. but I'm doing this because I don't know the answer, so you'd have to filter the pool for me. even if it is something I know about, you can't usefully evaluate a person in a minute.

an easy one might be lawyer questions... I hear there are many unemployed lawyers right now? accountant questions, too. I'd pay more than a dollar a minute for that sort of thing, especially if I could get useful answers in a small number of minutes.

If you want $1/minute work for people who don't have advanced degrees, you will have to do more vetting, but that's okay. How about I pay a fashion expert a dollar or two to tell me if a shirt fits me okay? my cellphone has a camera. But if I'm paying, you've gotta certify that the person has taste. I don't have taste so I can't tell if the person on the other end does.

GFischer
Specialized lawyer or tax advice sounds about right to me, especially if you can get a well-credentialed individual.

As Patio pointed out, regulated activities are another possible option.

Anything with a high barrier of entry and information-based.

MisterWebz
Yes they do exist. It's called adult webcam shows.
lsc
considering the low barrier to entry, do you think those sorts of things pay that highly? I imagine that if the customer pays that much, most of the value is captured by the gateway.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I read an article a while back about some British unemployment office causing controversy for posting webcam girl jobs at something like ten pounds an hour. I can't find it, though, so I don't know.

hcho
Can it be because only a smallish subset of the female population are worth paying to see naked?
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MisterWebz
The "talented" do get paid very highly. A chunk of the revenue goes to the website owners, but you'd still earn a decent amount of money.

There are some other services requiring webcams which i've encountered in the past, like someone who teaches you a foreign language or something similar and charges you $X a minute.

noodle
yes. but you're going to be looking at skills and knowledge that are already inherently expensive or otherwise in short supply

example: something where you can send a text and/or photo to a doctor or RN for $1 and have them give some quick advice.

_delirium
> example: something where you can send a text and/or photo to a doctor or RN for $1 and have them give some quick advice.

I'm guessing this is something U.S. doctors won't touch due to liability issues. It could be a way for developing-world doctors to get some rich-world business, though. It'd be even easier if their country's regulators supported it: the biggest issue currently is that if I pay $5 to a doctor in [country] to look at a photo, how do I know this is even a doctor? If their equivalent of the AMA ran a certified portal it'd be easier to trust.

noodle
i wouldn't touch a startup idea like this myself unless i had more knowledge of the law behind it. it was mostly an example. you have to have a decently valuable skill to start with, basically, in order to translate it into shorter/faster $1 chunks.
carbocation
In the united states, the fee that you suggest is off by at least two orders of magnitude relative to what they already do get paid for that type of question.
noodle
i know, it was merely an easy, offhand example. its closer to in line for the pay of an RN who would also be reasonably qualified, though.
carbocation
I didn't know that about RNs' pay, and was merely thinking from a doctor's persective; thank you.
noodle
average RN makes in the $30/hr range. (i have a medical family)
uniquejosh
Hey Terry,

Actually I am working on a start-up called MinuteBox.com (http://www.minutebox.com) and we are doing exactly like this. We are based in London.

We want to create a marketplace for people to buy and sell advice via video chat. Therefore, our users can monetise their expertise in small unit of time. The MinuteBox platform allows users to access expert advice in a cost-effective way. On the other hand experts can sell their time directly to users at their own convenience.

This is our demo video: http://vimeo.com/13758599 You can have an idea how we approach this.

We are preparing for the launch and it would be great to get more feedback from you.

Cheers

Josh

bcx
Hey Josh, Looks really cool. I am not sure if you have launched officially yet, but if your interested in using Olark (http://www.olark.com) to talk to some of your early visitors, to help them through your signup process send me an email sales@olark.com and we'll hook you up.
BenceBordas
I was dreaming about such an application for several years, and I guess it would work very well and generate exactly $1 / small unit of work.

There are tons of everday tasks that cannot be well or fully automated by software only. Such as translation, proofreading, photo masking, retouching, cleaning up 3D models, animation paths, excel sheets, html pages, debugging code, styling, formatting document etc. In many cases the automated features in the software are not good enough, or not possible at all. Human work is required. There are many tasks that an experienced user can do in a few minutes, but a new user would struggle for hours. Working with all sorts of software I have always been dreaming about "human assisted plugin features".

English is my second language. Let's say I am writing a blog entry. It's not very important, I will not hire someone to do a professional translation. So I just right click and select "human proofreading". Within a few minutes the result is back, I accept, $1 is charged on my account.

Or I have a design project and I'm late. I have 20 product photos where I have to make the background transparent. I am capable of doing it myself, but I don't have the time and I'm also a bit too lazy and hate doing it. So I right click and choose "human assisted select object". Within a minute a hand-made Photoshop selection appears in that window, I accept, $1 is charged.

I am sure many people would use such human-assited features for $1 A) to save time B) because we hate doing that task C) we cannot do that task ourselves.

But we need the beauty of the plugin integration into the very application we are using. Because we just dont't want the hassle of hiring someone (go to a website, find someone suitable to do the task, negotiate the price etc). It only makes sense, when the task is as defined as a real software feature such as a spell-check. It's clearly defined what I will receive as the result and I receive the result as if it was a software only function. I don't spend time chatting, phoning, etc, human work is in the background, almost fully transparent to the user. It is a human who will correct the error in my Excel function, but I invoke the feature by choosing a function in Excel the same way as if it was a software only feature.

This integrated plugin application is the key.

I will never hire somebody to cut out an object from its background in Photoshop on a freelance site, because of all the hassle. But when I'm running out of time, I will choose the "human select object" function instead of making the selection myself right in Photoshop.

The success of the service would also be built on the fact, that all sorts of big desktop software already have a lot of power users who are very experienced in producing good results fast in tasks that cannot be (fully) automated. These folks could sign up for the service, check what software and features they are available for work. After installing the plugins, jobs would appear in the application windows.

I think the price should be fixed. When I select a "human assisted proofreading" it's already OK for me to pay $1 for the result and I don't care if it cheaper or not. What I do care about is how good the result is. How fast it comes and how good it is. So I think the system should create a competition among workers not based on price (that should remain fixed) but based on quality benchmarks and feedbacks.

I would not make the system suitable for all kinds of jobs. Complex jobs should be arranged through traditional freelancing sites by hiring somone, explain the project, make a deal etc. This service on the other hand would exist for a limited number of human assisted software features that are best for a reliable implementation and is a frequent need that users will want to "outsource" this way.