

Show HN: VidFall – Pay with time, not your wallet - badgercapital
https://vidfall.com

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dkyc
The age old problem that the demographic that watches video ads for .50$ is
not the demographic you want to advertise to...

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ianamartin
So what? The people who click on google ad words and Facebook ads aren't the
target market for those either. Doesn't stop them from making bank.

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bengali3
Clean and i got the message in 3 seconds. I would guess your viewers will
result in lower conversion rates for the advertisers when viewed from your
page. Not sure how to handle that if advertisers notice.

Also, since your whole pitch is about the $$$ your leaderboard should be tied
to $ somehow instead of just # of watches. That's more for your own dashboard.
(ie highlight the wins, not the amount of pain other users have been put
through)

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badgercapital
Definitely need to work on the pitch a bit. Thanks, this will put the fire
under me to get around to cleaning that up. Appreciate the kind words!

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chatmasta
These business models usually face a problem of one ad view not being enough
to incentivize someone to watch it. I like the penny auction spin you put on
that. Clever.

That said, is your ad network aware of this and okay with it?

How do you verify these are real viewers? There are a lot of "attack" vectors
here... automated servers + proxies, or even just somebody with a clickbot on
their home computer cycling through videos and buying an item once its price
goes below what they can sell it for elsewhere?

Also, why would your users not just buy giftcards at any number of the
discount gift sites, many of which offer higher discounts than you, without
the need to watch a video?

I'm very curious about the economics here, because I find it hard to imagine
you could win all these "startup of the month" type accolades without thinking
this through.

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Dragonai
I like that the competitive edge doesn't feel very pressuring. Cool idea, I'll
keep an eye on this site.

Also just a quick note - the copy on the About Us section could use some
slight sentence structure and organization checking. :) The end in particular
reads a little strangely:

> We even feature charity auctions, which apply the revenue users generate
> from watching video ads towards great causes around the world. Thanks for
> your interest in VidFall. Founded in September 2013, VidFall is a portfolio
> company of Wasabi Ventures, LLC.

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sadkingbilly
How does this not violate the terms of your affiliate agreements?

Are the video ads from direct clients of yours or through a general affiliate
program?

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thedangler
I too, would like to know this.

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calbear81
Yup, so who's gonna build the automatic video watching / bidding bot?

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ChrisArchitect
In Time (2011) - "... To avoid overpopulation, time has become the currency
and the way people pay for luxuries and necessities...."

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aaron987
I honestly don't see the benefit of this. If I understand it correctly, a
bunch of people watch ads, causing the price to go down. But only one person
gets the discounted price, and everyone else who sat there watching ads gets
nothing? In other words, the majority of people using the site get no benefit.

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badgercapital
Sorry you feel that way. Thanks for checking us out! Cheers!

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nacs
First time I loaded the page, I got some massive text in the middle of the
page that said:

    
    
      Error 500
      CDbConnection failed to open the DB connection.
    

Should look into caching that front page or at least handling DB errors more
gracefully.

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nicksergeant
Wow, I'm quite impressed. I bought the $100 restaurant gift card (for $30).
They sent it to me tonight, but it was only for $50. I emailed them, and they
responded within 8 minutes with the remaining $50.

Kudos to their customer support.

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neil_s
Really cool concept! I want to try it out, just for the game theory aspects of
it.

Has anyone successfully received the items they ordered off of this?

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badgercapital
Thanks! Appreciate the kind words. We ship out around 6pm every night. We have
a lot to do today!

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neil_s
Turns out I couldn't buy because my Bank of America card currently has a UK
address attached to it. Let people use international billing addresses for
digital goods like Amazon gift cards?

(Also, better aesthetics (like removing the stripe texture and the greyscale
menu) would make this site way more trust-worthy in my eyes. Currently it
looks too much like a rough tech demo quickly thrown together on Wordpress)

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badgercapital
Wow, well thank you HN for the support. Really incredible to be on the front
page. You guys blew up AWS! Cleaned up the DB issues! Let's party!

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llamataboot
Bought an Amazon gift card to test it out. Says it will arrive in 24 hours.
Would be nice if instant, but looks good so far!

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badgercapital
Hey, we ship each night at 6pm! Your card should arrive then. Thank you so
much for giving us a try.

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josh-wrale
Which time zone?

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obisw4n
Its very hard to trust this website when there is a massive misrepresentation
of the number of viewers.

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badgercapital
Hey the watchers variable is dependent upon the number of people actually
watching videos. We were making a TON of calls to our ad networks at the peak
of the HN craze, but not all the videos were coming through. That is why the
viewer variable was all screwy. Lots of work ahead, appreciate the
constructive criticism!

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galuggus
Who do you use for your ad network?

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brandonpindulic
This is awesome

