

Show HN: My startup: code4cheap.com, a code marketplace - blake8086
http://www.code4cheap.com/

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alnayyir
I like the idea, I don't like the implication of the branding.

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ChuckMcM
Its an interesting concept, but basically mechanical turk for code eh?

One way to incentivize it a bit more would be offering to sell a previous
answer for half of the original cost. So buyer A pays $10 for an answer, if
someone else wants it they can buy the same solution for $5. That creates a
long tail effect and keeps people motivated to answer questions.

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drallison
I think there are significant problems with this approach which you have not
thought through.

First, I believe this kind of market devalues programmers and programs. It
takes a whole lot of small transactions for a programmer to make a living in
this kind of market.

Second, it's not really useful for anything other than trivial programs.
Getting agreement on a reasonable specification for anything at all
complicated takes time, and for the programmer in this space, time is money.

Third, What happens when there are multiple responses to a question--does only
one responder get paid, or do all get paid.

Fourth, there is no effective mechanism for quality control. Who has the
liability about quality? How is testing conducted?

Fifth, who owns the code? who owns the copyright on the code? Can the code be
redistributed to others?

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parkern
Cool idea! Sometimes I wish Stackoverflow had a similar functionality, where
rather than getting help, I could literally offer a cash bounty for the
solution. I realize the focus of SO is for education, but would be a nice
option, particularly since it already has a very active community.

Hopefully this site will too!

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blake8086
Thank you. This is exactly the reason I built this site.

I had the idea a long time ago, and then SO came out a few weeks later, so I
abandoned it because I thought SO would fill that space. However, they've
remained free, and it's still hard to get an answer on something requiring
more than a few minutes' time.

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sklivvz1971
I don't get it - why are there only four questions and no answers? What
happens to my code after I've posted it? Can it be used by the site (as in re-
sold)?

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blake8086
I have just launched.

Your code remains public on the site under any license you specify. It may be
republished by the site, but only used under the terms of your specified
license.

The ToS has the full gory details.

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Killah911
What specifically ties your system to "code"? It seems anyone can ask any
question. Aside from the monetary award, how are you differrent from Yahoo
answers?

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blake8086
It is true, anyone could potentially ask anything. I'm simply trying to target
the code market.

It is not different aside from the monetary award yet.

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wcarey
From the FAQ:

Can I post homework problems? Absolutely!

That seems to encourage academic dishonesty? The stackoverflow community tends
to self police homework, so it'll be interesting to see how explicit
permission to pay for homework affects the site's community.

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blake8086
Academic dishonesty comes from academically dishonest students. Instead of
policing each question and guessing if it's homework or not, I'm simply
allowing any question.

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misterbwong
Then you should say you are allowing any question (or don't say anything at
all).

By addressing it in the FAQ and explicitly saying you allow it, you are
implying that you condone academic dishonesty.

 _edited for clarity_

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true_religion
What if the schools' homework policy is to allow collaboration between the
student and any sources (including just looking stuff up on Wikipedia)?

That was the defacto policy in my school. Homework was 5% of your grade, and
was expected to just be a learning experience. The real trials were the labs
and the projects.

You could theoretically cheat by copying project code from somewhere, but
without the explanation report you'd still get a 0.

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biot
The problem with these types of sites is that it favors the buyer. A quick
browse of the questions posted shows one awarding a whopping $10 for some
status screen thing. Sorry, but $10 barely compensates me for the time
involved to even consider the question. I'm guessing that this is like any
other Q&A site where the answers are effectively on spec. So you can't claim
the question as being one you and you alone will solve... you have to compete
with many others for a chance at being the one who gets the $10.

No thank you. Might as well have branded this ProgrammersAreCheap.com.

~~~
rgarcia
But for someone else who knows GNU screen really well, the $10 could easily be
worth the short amount of time it would take to provide an answer.

I could see this being a good way to go deeper than the regular Q&A site
format by offering monetary incentives to participate.

~~~
biot
And questions which really are easy pickings will get 10 people answering them
if the site becomes popular. So that $10 reward -- actually $7 after the 30%
fee -- would have a 10% probability to win, assuming equal strength of answers
for the really easy ones. I don't know many people who'd care about 70 cents.

~~~
blake8086
It sounds like 10 people would care about it in that example you gave.

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biot
The first person responding perhaps thought it was easy money. Every
subsequent answer is a race to the bottom. So why not go all the way and allow
responders to underbid the last guy? That way, someone could spend an hour
writing a very detailed response hoping to get the $7 and someone could come
along, crib their answer off of the first one, and offer to accept only $6.
The first guy, not wanting to totally waste the effort he put in, can then
lower his bid to $5. Rinse and repeat.

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marcusestes
Cheap is a poor word choice for your brand; it invokes bad associations for
both of your audiences.

Consider something implying speed instead, which signals "inexpensive,"
without suggesting a shoddy product.

~~~
blake8086
I suppose I may have to change the name at some point down the line. It is
quite difficult to find good names.

In my search, I sat down with instantdomainsearch and said "ok, I'm going to
come up with at least 100 acceptable domain names", this was the favorite out
of everyone I polled.

I like the idea of implying "speed" instead.

~~~
njl
Somebody on here built <http://impossibility.org/>, which I've found to be
fantastic. You give it a word, it sticks other words around it. I found about
half a dozen better names in just a few seconds worth of work.

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blake8086
Well that's definitely worth a look.

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qeorge
Love impossibility.org. Wonderful tool.

Does FinishedCode.com do anything for you? Its available, and I think it has a
nicer ring to it.

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Sakes
I like the idea. Do I have to wait for questions? Have you considered adding
the ability for me to start adding scripts to be purchased?

~~~
blake8086
I'm not sure what you mean by "wait for questions"...

Yes, I would love to add that ability in the future. If I get a lot of re-
usable submissions, that may happen sooner rather than later.

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blhack
I assume that Sakes means that right now, it appears as though a coder uses
this site by fulfilling requests (questions).

Currently, there are 3 requests that a coder could potentially fulfill. Sakes
is asking if it is possible to offer services directly, without waiting for
somebody to ask for them.

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blake8086
Oh! I hadn't even thought of that.

So a coder says: "hey, I'm good at Python and..."

I'm having trouble filling in the blank there. Would they solicit questions
and then get exclusivity? Would they just generally advertise? I'm not really
sure how that would work.

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biot
Maybe someone just spent a week writing an ecommerce integration and would
like to sell that script for $250 a pop to as many people as would like to buy
it.

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TuaAmin13
I like the idea, I'm unsure of the pricing strategy. "How much do I get paid?
code4cheap.com keeps 30% of the question's price. For example, with a $10
question, the best answer will receive $7." What if you changed that around,
with something like a question posting fee. When I go to the site as a coder,
I want to get the $50 I see, not $35 after you take your cut. It's inflating
the payment that I would actually get, assuming I read that right. Presumably
you could adjust the posted price to be $35 to do X, not sure how receptive
your audience would be to that.

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blake8086
My feeling was that as a questioner, I don't want to pay $50 to have the
number "35" show up. I think people will get comfortable with the pricing
scheme over time.

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slay2k
Two things. One, I think 30% is a very high percentage to be charging for a
fee, which inevitably will affect how questioners feel about paying it and the
growth of your site. Second, if you don't actually charge until the
transaction is ready, then few should object to paying say, $60 for a $50
question (20% fee) for an answer ready to be read.

