

Ask HN: Would you pay for one-on-one programming help when you are stuck? - eibrahim

We all get stuck when we are coding, would you pay $50&#x2F;month to have access to an expert programmer who you can skype and have him&#x2F;her help you get unstuck?
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ScottWhigham
Absolutely - we all would. But the problem someone creating a business around
that model _and targeting HN_ is that the level of expertise we might expect
is far different from that which a government contractor/employee might
expect. So asking us if we'd pay gets a different response than asking
someone/somewhere else, I'd think. And that difference might make a whole lot
of difference if you are trying to make a business case/model.

Man, $50 a month for 1-on-1 access to someone who knows _x_ better than me? I
could do a whole lot of damage with that!

~~~
imcqueen
I don't think you could do a subscription model for this business. It's only
profitable if none your customers use your service.

The value proposition makes sense - find a solution faster than searching for
it yourself. However, I feel like you would have to pay per use and the level
of expertise required would dictate cost.

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taternuts
I was recently asked to join
[http://www.sagebourse.com/](http://www.sagebourse.com/) as a teacher, but I
had a few reservations about it. I do love to teach, but I don't want to put a
price/expectation on it. I just prefer to troll freenode channels like
#learnprogramming. I suspect someone like me would be a good kind of person to
get as an instructor (not that many years in the field, wouldn't ask for much
of an hourly rate, but is still knowledgeable to beginner to intermediate
developers), and I think more experienced people would either ask too much or
just not want to waste time. It would be really cool if there was something
like this available, but I just don't think it will ever scale (and as it does
it probably will degrade in quality significantly) or be reliable. It's
definitely a 'problem' without a real good solution (if you don't count irc)

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eibrahim
This is kind of what I had an mind
[https://gumroad.com/l/bADx](https://gumroad.com/l/bADx) \- again I am just
trying to validate the idea.

PS: I make more than $50 an hour in my day job but the hope is that it will be
like a gym membership - you count on some people never to use your service.

PPS: I know this doesn't scale, at least not at first and if it is just me but
I can see it eventually becoming a marketplace

~~~
ScottWhigham
_... the hope is that it will be like a gym membership - you count on some
people never to use your service._

I think that any consultant who has been in the game for many years has worked
out a recurring monthly "relationship" with some customers for exactly that
reason. The difference is that (a) those consultant deals have a minimum of x
hours per month (where x >= 10), and (b) there's a dollar amount per hour that
you bill for time over that base. As a result, you the consultant have a
strong bias towards helping that customer ASAP. But it has to be at least a
decent amount of money per month - say $1000 at a minimum - for you to put
aside other projects 2-5x per month to help this customer. $50 though just
doesn't cut it - am I going to stop working on this major project with a
deadline three days away so I can earn $50 one time? No. I have 50 unread
emails and they represent $5000 this month - am I going to ignore those right
at this moment and answer the one that's worth $50? No. With your recurring
consulting client though, you would do that - not only are you getting $1000
per month from them, but there's the potential every month to make much, much
more if we go over x hours.

"But, Scott - I don't actually have any of those customers doing that with me
right now."

Maybe not, but everything has an opportunity cost. All it takes is you not
answering a $50 email in what the customer thinks is an appropriate amount of
time and bam - bad reputation. Or all it takes is 2-3 customers in a row who
ask for things that can't be completed in an hour or who don't like the
advice/help you've given them and bam - bad rep. Or all it takes is one
customer asking a problem that you don't know the answer to _and_ you also
have a major project deadline looming and so you "miss" the question (wrong
answer, bad advice, forget to answer, etc) and bam - bad rep. Just not worth
$50 to me.

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kohanz
No, I don't think I can realistically expect someone external to understand
and solve the type of problem I'd pose to them. It's not that they wouldn't be
smart capable people, but if I can't solve the problem easily myself, or with
the help of StackOverflow or Google, the problem is typically of a nature that
is very specific to my niche field, programming environment, etc.

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positivejam
Recently saw a company on HN that does something similar:
[http://www.airpair.com/](http://www.airpair.com/)

Don't know much about them, but they seem to be making a go of it. Apparently
there's at least some demand in the space!

~~~
eibrahim
very cool and similar to what I had in mind...

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thenomad
Yes. Absolutely.

Ignoring the possible problems of your pricing model, I'd go for this like a
shot during the months where I'm coding.

Coaching is incredibly valuable, even for experts (which I'm not, but others
might be), and is much undervalued.

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redrory
I came across codementor.io

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petervandijck
Yes.

