Software as a Parking Garage Attendant
A simple way for folks to pay you for installing a little camera in your home — without needing OnlyFans.
The idea is simple. You place a camera in your window. It constantly monitors the parking space situation on your block to see which spaces free up. Drivers pay to have access to this information — hence you get paid for the data that you are passively collecting.
What’s in it for the driver?
This is what the parking situation looks like on a Tuesday afternoon on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Where it’s red, you can’t park. Where it’s green, you can.
Here is what the parking lot situation look like on that same plot of land.
A sea of parking garages charging anywhere from $14 — $45 for 2 hours of parking.
So rather than paying a ridiculous fee to park for a short amount of time, what if you could have a real word view of street parking. For a nominal fee that you pay into the platform, you are given access to realtime parking spot availability for the area you are driving to.
What’s in it for the homeowner
Homeowner can earn passive income based on how “in demand” their block is. The more people want access to their feed, the more the home owner gets paid.
Launching
Borrowing from Gigwalk, based on the demand shown for a certain block, the higher the immediate payoff would be to the homeowner that supplies that demand. Think of it as a marketplace for blocks. If 63rd and Lexington Avenue is really in demand and no one has fulfilled it, the supply-side homeowner’s immediate payout would increase until someone does. It’s like an auction.
Highrises seem like a great initial market as the higher up you are, the more spaces you can monitor.
Referrals
Another revenue stream for homeowners can be referrals. If a supply-side homeowner refers a friend which also becomes a supply-side, they will earn a commission on their future revenues.
Different revenue options
Paying per ping
There will be areas which are incredibly in demand, Midtown Manhattan, for example. And then there will be areas in which it is easier to find parking, Harlem, for example. Drivers can pay per ping, meaning for each time they search, they are using a credit. This might incentivize drivers to search as only as they are pulling up to their destination.
Paying Monthly
An “all you can eat” option might be better for commuters where they are: 1) driving daily to the same place, and 2) care more about being on time than looking for spots last minute.
Upsell Options
An option to provide push notifications when a desired spot becomes available, or any other way to make a driver’s life simpler.
Tech
Similar to the tech described on the Parking Spotter app, cameras which run computer vision software on themselves are the way to go here.
You will be cross referencing alternate side parking times/rules to accurately show a complete picture. An unacceptable false positive is showing an open spot at 6pm which is a “No Standing until 7pm”.
Tagging
Using Mechanical Turk to tag “always open” spaces such as fire hydrants, sidewalk curbs, etc. The good news is that this is a fixed costs; once this work is done, it won’t change for a long time.
Hardware
All that is needed is a wifi signal and a cheap (wired) wifi HD camera which will continuously provide a feed to our data centers. At the data centers, all the AI will parse the livestream into actionable information.
Conclusion
Just how landlords looked at Airbnb as a way to offset their mortgages, this product can be seen to the same thing. The incentives are the same — finding flats on high floors and in in demand areas where the going rates are high.
