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Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

helpaguyout.com

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Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#1

Post by pghimire »

With my own experience, and others, I always thought there is a market for a service where an otherwise socially awkward guy could ask a girl a question (about anything) and get genuine advice. I wanted to make the service paid, so the women actually had some incentive to spend some time crafting a thoughtful response. Also, wanted to make everything discreet, so that women did not need to hold anything back, and guys owned the responses they paid for. At the same time, wanted money to be very nominal so that anyone could use it - so thought $2 would be just right. I split a buck with the answer provider. Guys can request responses from multiple ladies (5 responses = $10). Guys have option to reject any reponse deemed unthoughtful and request refund.

Income has been interesting so far. About 20 guys asked questions last month. Some of them requested multiple responses. October total $90. Through word of mouth, about 600 ladies have signed up so far to provide reponses. An email is fired every time a new request gets posted, ladies "reserve" the question and respond on a first-come-first-served basis and guys receive reponses within a few hours.

I would like to get some suggestions from the HN community as to how to make it scalable? I know there is a market for a service like this but just haven't been able to get any traction. What can I change, improve? Or is this whole concept is just flawed and I should just "move on".

Thank you for your feedback. Pete

Review my Startup. Help a guy out.
helpaguyout.com

Re: Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#2

Post by tgrass »

Looks fun. Simplify the page though.

1. Use a real picture for the male/female on landing page.

2. Watch your kerning. On the guys_ladies.png the text could use some adjusting. (and the first instance of 'For' should be lowercase)

3. Remove the "Risk Free". I can't find the article, but I've read, and would agree, those labels lower one's trust in a site.

4. A stat breakdown of "your ladies" undermines trust even more. That is not "meeting the ladies" but getting to know their demographics.

The idea is interesting, and I imagine the market could be good for it. How do you see incentivizing the right "ladies" ?

Re: Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#3

Post by shiftpgdn »

Couple of things: 1. You ask for registration information far too quickly. You should allow the users to get a little more invested into what they're doing before prompting for registration/payment information.

2. Meet the ladies doesn't have any information on the actual women who would answer your questions. It's just generic pie charts.

3. PayPal only? :(

4. To the end user what sets this apart from Yahoo! answers?

5. No examples anywhere that I could find.

Otherwise it's a clever idea and you're off to a pretty good start.

Re: Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#4

Post by pghimire »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #3

Couple of things: 1. You ask for registration information far too quickly. You should allow the users to get a little more invested into what they're doing before prompting for registration/payment information. 2. Meet the ladies doesn't have any information on the actual women who would answer your questions. It's just generic pie charts. 3. PayPal only? :( 4. To the end user what sets this apart from Yahoo! answers…

1. Agreed. Should probably engage users first. Will work on that.

2. I wanted to keep their info confidential and just show the demographics based on info provided. What do you think I should show? Should I even include "Meet the ladies" link?

3. Just testing the idea out. So for now, Paypal only, yes :)

4. To an interested user, I think confidentiality and a guarantee that someone will actually spend the time to fully study his question and respond thoughtfully (small monetary incentive). Moreover, the questions we are getting tend to be longer and very detailed. I don't think Yahoo Answers users will have the patience to study the question carefully and take the time to repond to every issues raised.

5. Good point. I will include some examples.

=> Any thought on pricing structure?

=> How about scalability, do you think take-off here is simply dependent on sheer number of users?

Thank you for your feedback.

Re: Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#5

Post by pghimire »

tgrass wrote: post #2

Looks fun. Simplify the page though. 1. Use a real picture for the male/female on landing page. 2. Watch your kerning. On the guys_ladies.png the text could use some adjusting. (and the first instance of 'For' should be lowercase) 3. Remove the "Risk Free". I can't find the article, but I've read, and would agree, those labels lower one's trust in a site. 4. A stat breakdown of "your ladies" undermines trust even mor…

Thanks tgrass.

1. Great point. I will replace them.

2. I need to rework that image.

3. Good to learn about "Risk Free". I had no idea.

4. I never looked at it from that angle. What do you suggest I say / show as far as "Who are the ladies?" is concerned? Or do I even bother? I simply wanted to share the fact that there are real "ladies" involved with the site who will be responding.

5. At this point I do not have any filters set to incentivize the right ladies. Every question asked gets emailed out to all the ladies and I simply ask them to respond only if they can relate to the question. As the user base grows I can certainly allow the "Asker" to target by demographics, etc.

=> Any input on price structure and scalability?

Thanks again. Appreciate your input.

Re: Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#6

Post by tgrass »

pghimire wrote: post #5
tgrass wrote: post #2

Looks fun. Simplify the page though. 1. Use a real picture for the male/female on landing page. 2. Watch your kerning. On the guys_ladies.png the text could use some adjusting. (and the first instance of 'For' should be lowercase) 3. Remove the "Risk Free". I can't find the article, but I've read, and would agree, those labels lower one's trust in a site. 4. A stat breakdown of "your ladies" undermines trust even mor…

Thanks tgrass. 1. Great point. I will replace them. 2. I need to rework that image. 3. Good to learn about "Risk Free". I had no idea. 4. I never looked at it from that angle. What do you suggest I say / show as far as "Who are the ladies?" is concerned? Or do I even bother? I simply wanted to share the fact that there are real "ladies" involved with the site who will be responding. 5. At this point I do not have any…

Re: 4.

I would show profiles. Let the females write their profiles and showcase say a half dozen at a time. Additionally, I wouldn't call them "the ladies." It seems to cheapen them. If you're selling a more machismo site, see what Maxim is calling women in general these days. Realize that whatever label you use must appeal to both the men but also the women. Maybe be euphemistic, but not as vulgar as nuts and bolts.

Your prices seem reasonable. You might consider having a level which is free, receiving an answer from a newbie, where a higher paid level could get a more thoughtful reply. That would allow new users to experience without commitment.

I really want to stress that the idea looks good. The aesthetic execution is rough.

Re: Review my Startup. Help a guy out.

#8

Post by egmike »

Just a thought, but maybe consider offering the ladies a bigger percentage? They're the ones doing the actual answering and you're taking 50%... Or, maybe increase the cost per question so that they get paid more (but still, you should probably give them a slightly bigger chunk).

Just a suggestion though, maybe $1 is enough.

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