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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.
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
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.
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.
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).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it all. No need for snark. Not sure which one of my points you are refuting with that quote.
If you introduce a process susceptible to credit card fraud then you're not keeping it low stakes.
The stakes don't matter if you're testing credit card number. Just that the service tells you if it works or not. And low amounts are good, since you're not wasting the card's limit.
How does the postcard logistics work? I.e. is there a platform that offers sub $5 drop shipping with three different templates and on demand print? Or is the author sending the postcards themselves?
Vending machine suggests automation, so the former; but I looked at some drop shipping options and couldn’t find anything like this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it all. No need for snark. Not sure which one of my points you are refuting with that quote.
If you introduce a process susceptible to credit card fraud then you're not keeping it low stakes.
I was commenting on the reality of his current site. He has a purchase form, where you purchase for $5, connected to Stripe.
In more detail:
A bad actor with a large quantity of stolen credit card info who finds this site (and eventually, someone always does) will use it to test whether each card works. Small-dollar-amount payment forms accessible without going through a sign-up-and-verify process attract these bad actors.
The point I was trying to make is that this won’t be the low-hassle, easy-to-run product that OP wants it to be.
Which sucks. It really does. The bad actors ruin this stuff.
(I write from the experience of running a pay-once B2C desktop app for 10 years and a B2B SaaS for 8 years.)
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.
This vending machine seems jammed indeed on iphone. The select boxes are empty. All three cards show ”whats” as the word.