Bad Times AI: Lower Entry Price, One Photo, and Credit Refunds That Build Trust

Posted on Oct 31 • Originally published at badtimesai.cc

How I shipped a one-photo → quarrel / lip-sync dance product on Cloudflare Workers — honest “not free” pricing, Stripe credits, Seedance via TryAllAPI.

badtimesai.cc takes 1 clear person or pet photo → ~15s 9:16 quarrel / lip-sync dance MP4 with original AI ambient audio. Browser + Stripe. Independent fan tool — not affiliated with song/artists/TikTok creators named in the meme. Person templates 18+ with likeness rights.

Angle: Stripe credits + accessible entry pricing (from $6.90 ), plus explicit “failed generations refund credits” next to the sell. Prices and model ids change; treat live site / console as source of truth.

The hero says packs from $6.90 (one-time, no subscription) and repeats not free. That filters tire-kickers who only want infinite free GPU and sets expectations for a paid render.

Other tiers visible in page copy while writing include $9.90 and $16.90 -style packs — verify live before quoting. Guest checkout path keeps friction low for “I just want one quarrel clip.”

Unlike strict two-face booths, Bad Times leans one reference with alternate scenes (person / pet / character messaging) and a “describe any idea” adjacent path on the page. The credit system still has to:

Why refunds are marketing: face video fails for boring reasons — supply, safety, blurry input. If credits vanish silently, you get chargebacks. If credits restore automatically, the $6.90 experiment feels safe.

1 photo (+ scene choice) → quarrel / lip-sync template → check credits (else Stripe) → Worker creates Seedance task via TryAllAPI → poll until MP4 URL → store / show → on failure: refund credits Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Why a video API aggregator Operational checklist after register / top-up:

Conceptually the call shape looks like this (field names follow the aggregator’s v3 contents API; always re-check current docs):

POST /api/v3/contents/generations/tasks Authorization: Bearer <TRYALLAPI_API_KEY> Content-Type: application/json Accept-Encoding: identity GET /api/v3/contents/generations/tasks/{id} Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode I send Accept-Encoding: identity from the Worker because some gateways behave badly with transparent decompression. Model ids used in production look like Seedance 2.x family strings — treat console ids as source of truth, not this paragraph.

A few details that bit me across this family of sites:

Rough mental model for upstream cost (illustrative only — use your own usage fields and invoices):

tokens ≈ duration_sec × width × height × fps / 1024 cost ≈ tokens × price_per_million_tokens Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Price the site after you measure a few real runs with retry margin, Stripe fees, and failed-job refunds — not from a spreadsheet fantasy of 0% failure.

Keep TryAllAPI USD as COGS; site credits as the customer meter. Rehost signed MP4 URLs. Lower entry pricing only survives if you measure real runs including refunds.

Demo UIs are easy. The line between toy and product is:

Two books of account stay separate: USD balance at TryAllAPI (your cost) vs site credits (what you sold). Mixing them in one mental ledger is how you underprice or invent “mysterious” losses.

When several products share one Stripe account, isolate webhooks by endpoint or by metadata ( site / product ). Callbacks pointed at the wrong apex domain are a classic multi-site footgun.

Secrets stay in Workers: TRYALLAPI_API_KEY, STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, webhook secret, auth secrets. The browser only ever sees publishable Stripe keys if needed.

pnpm install # wire D1 database_id, production env, custom domain in wrangler pnpm cf:deploy Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Before calling a deploy “done”:

Production origin: https://badtimesai.cc. Isolate webhook metadata if Bad Times shares a Stripe account with sister dance domains.

Face-based generation is not “just another SaaS CRUD app”:

Those constraints belong in the product, not in a footnote you add after the first dispute email.

Consumer: upload one clear authorized photo at badtimesai.cc. Builders: TryAllAPI, measure COGS, then set an entry pack that still survives refunds. Cheap only works when failure is refundable.