Operations
One agent cost $3,916 a quarter
A solo operator runs three small products with one agent. For eight months he told people it cost about $40 a month. Then he counted 90 days in full. Cash costs came to $270.90. The API bill was $126.90 of that. His own review time was 6.2 hours a week. At his $45-an-hour rate, that time cost $3,645. He then cut three features. He also set a hard rule: a task is not done without a real output file to check.
How it wentSales for the 90 days were $1,271 net. The full cost was $3,916. So the work lost about $2,600 in that quarter. Six weeks after the cuts, review time fell from 6.2 to 2.1 hours a week. Cash cost stayed about the same. The margin turned positive, even at his own rate.
Try it · based on the source's workflow
Audit what my agent setup for [business name] really costs. List every cash cost for the last [period]: API bills, hosting, backups, domains, email, and monitoring. Then take my review log and count the hours I spent checking, fixing, and re-doing agent work. Price that time at [rate per hour]. Show the total cost next to net sales for the same period. Count only tasks I accepted with no edits as done. Show me the full table before you change any setting.
A starting template based on the workflow the source describes. Review it before you use it; you are responsible for what it does.
One agent cost $3,916 a quarter — from The SmallOffice Brief, a daily brief of real AI cases for small businesses: https://smalloffice.space/case-one-agent-cost-3-916-a-quarter