Ask HN: What online businesses do you find dumb but make a lot of money?
It always astonishes me how much people are willing to pay for cosmetic digital items (game skins, stickers, NFTs, etc). But it's a huge market, even if you leave out the bits of it that are just gambling.
Hah, you're totally right.
I'm one of those guilty of spending hundreds (or maybe low thousands? yeesh, I don't want to know) of dollars on Path of Exile cosmetics that have no gameplay impact. My justification (ok, self-rationalization) is that it supports a small company* making a really good free-to-play game that has no pay to win elements. As a gamer, I want more games like that, and cosmetics is a way for the whales who can afford it to subsidize free players, while still giving the game a large and thriving community.
That model is so much better than the typical Asian MMO (or Diablo Immortal) that are straight-up pay to win, gating progression behind various currencies that you have to spend real money on.
But yeah, at the end of the day, these are totally ephemeral things with no real value, disappearing into the ether when that game shuts down or the company goes away (which has happened with many of my favorite games, sadly, like Firefall).
*Side note: Path of Exile is actually mostly owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent. But development for the Western market still happens at Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand, and the monetization is still cosmetics-only in the West. I think Tencent made a separate version with pay to win for the Asian markets.
That angle is certainly more understandable - it sounds like you're almost treating them as a donation to the developers rather than purchases for your own benefit. Games like Deep Rock Galactic had something similar - the vast majority of the cosmetics (and all of the gameplay affecting items) were free - but there were a few "supporter" cosmetic packs you could buy.
Yeah, exactly! I think Deep Rock Galactic was like $20 when it first came out? I took a gamble on it and it was one of the best indie early access games I've ever played. For the amount of content and fun it provided, $20 seemed way too low. I was happy to support them and get some cosmetic armors in exchange.
The game kept getting better and better through the years. It's a pretty awesome success story.
They eventually made a board game too (it was okay, IMO).
Overall, I just prefer a gaming ecosystem made of many small but passionate players rather than the Ubi (or Wizards) of the world. And cosmetics can help with that without sacrificing gameplay integrity.
Last week searched for to get a refund for a travel ticket (German train company). Several online companies claim the process is complex and offer an express service, for a 30% cut. The refund process is actually pretty straight forward.
Same with a company that ranked high for "cancel $big_company subscription membership". You fill out a form, pay 10 Euro, and they will print a letter and mail it to $big_company on your behalf.
You can make a lot of money digitalising German bureaucracy against its will. For a lot of people, mailing free form letters around is a pain in the ass. It doesn’t help that some of the forms are complex and the processes unpredictable. My readership (see profile) speaks English, so even writing the message is a hurdle.
I used to think that people are dumb for paying for things that I show them how to do for free, but my dad is a mechanic and still lets someone else change his oil. People are busy and don’t like logistic friction.
I’m joining that industry myself with a 15€ Wohnsitzabmeldung. It’s worth it just for getting your Abmeldebescheinigung by email. I’m thinking of charging a little above cost for a nice layer over post-as-a-service and fax-as-a-service too.
Only in Germany!
Whaaaaaaaaaaat.... the heck are Wohnsitzabmeldung and Abmeldebescheinigung? "De-registration"? Does that mean you have to go through some bureaucracy to move AWAY from somewhere (and then a separate thing to move TO somewhere, later, presumably...?)? That's kind of insane and also super interesting, lol.
I also love these German compound words that can turn entire English paragraphs into a single word. Do you have a word for when someone spends their entire life submitting to trivial government bureaucracies and then goes insane and breaks all the rules and rebels and moves into the woods and disappears from society forever without filing a single form?
Porn. There's so much free content (even amateur), yet some people pay big money for it.
Agree with you there... O.F. especially
FWIW, ehhh... as someone who occasionally pays for porn subs but is generally too cheap for O.F., I'm also glad the porn actresses (and actors, I guess) are getting paid for their work. I wish there wasn't such a taboo against it in our societies.
If we support devs and writers and non-nude actors getting paid for their work, why shouldn't porn people also make a living?
(E-commerce example) Well I was surprised to find out the PetRock from the 70s had its own website and was still being sold - for USD29.99 a pop. Guess its easy to survive as a company with (I'd assume) ridiculously low production costs
It's kinda genius, isn't it?
Bill maher mentioned recently that it’s everything. Everyone has too much money to buy too little shit, and also the money is being inflated away.
Maher is one of those people who I agree with some of the time. Somehow he manages to be anti-woke but also anti-GOP, which is a unique position. He’s interesting. Maybe he’s just libertarian.
In any case, I was at my local city town center this weekend and it was an absolute madhouse. It was like Black Friday of seasons past. I’m not sure where the money is coming from except credit card debt, and I guess people are saying “fuck it” to that? It sure would be cool if this ended up being a precursor to a nationwide debt strike.
NFTs, crypto currencies, ringtones, porn, videogames, even SaaS software one seldom uses…
Crypto anything
is it still a thing ?
I sure hope not