How would you commercialize my startup, Gifty.co.nz? | Hacker News Reader

How would you commercialize my startup, Gifty.co.nz?

7 pointsbenhoyt17 comments

I put together Gifty.co.nz for a friend's wedding, but a lot of others have already used it and found it helpful. So I'm planning to commercialize it, probably through businesses (or shopping malls or whatever) rather than through individuals.

Any thoughts? If Gifty were your startup, how would you commercialize it?

Also, as most of you are U.S.-ites, is the New Zealand .co.nz domain off-putting? (I've tried finding more out about the squatted-on domain Gifty.com, but I don't know where to start trying to acquire that -- anyone have an experience there?)

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I would implement product feeds from retailers (available from the big affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Linkshare, Share-a-Sale, etc). You would earn a commission on sales generated through these products. Since the model is about generating purchases, it seems to make perfect since to get a piece of that transaction. I am not sure, as a user, that I would pay to maintain a list because there are similar free options available on the web (thinking mainly about wedding registries like weddingchannel.com).

Get the .com if you want to have universal acceptance of the brand. A large percentage of the population assumes that every website is a .com, so if you stick with the .co.nz you will essentially be delivering free traffic to the gifty.com domain owner (since many people will just use the .com out of habit).

Its likely that the domain squatter will want more than you are willing to pay for the domain. You are best off just spending a few hours on the domain registrar of your choice trying to find an alternative name that is descriptive and available.

Thanks for the useful comments.

The main difference between Gifty and traditional gift registries is that with gift registries you're tied to a particular store, say "Bed, Bath & Beyond". With Gifty you can add gifts to your list from whatever store. I'm biased, but I think this is a fairly big advantage.

Actually, I'm probably more keen to capture the NZ market at this stage, but you're probably right about .com's for universal appeal.

My pleasure. The only follow up point I would make is that if you decide to expand beyond NZ and have built the brand about the localized extension, then you may have some headaches to deal with down the road. Best of luck!

It might work on a large scale in conjunction with shopping malls. Or better yet, in conjunction with many specialty retailers.

Typically, in the U.S. people use wedding registries from stores. They go to a store and are given a scanner and scan the things they want. Then they tell people what stores they are registered at, and people sign in and get a list. they then pick something and when they purchase it (either online or at the store) they just hand the teller the barcode and the gift is automatically removed from the list. No chance of four toasters.

Naturally, this mans people register at large, well known stores, so their friends across the country will have somewhere to go to get them a gift. It makes no sense to register at a tiny store if many of your friends from back home or college can never get there to purchase a gift because it is far away.

So, in the U.S., breaking into the wedding/babyshower market might be hard, unless you can come up with a unique way to compete.

Note to others: if you're asking people to check out your site, please make the title a link or at the very least post a link so we don't have to do it ourselves.

Link: http://gifty.co.nz/

What does "without doubling up" mean? Is this like a wedding registry where you can all chip in?

Oh yes, that isn't the clearest, is it? I mean "without buying doubles of things for the wedding couple." Like three toasters.

I'm thinking about the multiple-people-chipping-in thing, but I haven't implemented that yet.

There are plenty of sites that let you make a wedding registry for free. You seem to have the same service, but you are charging $30 for it. I think in order to commercialize, you would need to offer something more valuable.

You're right, there are quite a few free ones. I did a fair bit of hunting 6 months ago, and I have yet to find one that's free, good-looking, and doesn't require a big sign-up process for the guests. (If you can point me to some I've missed, fire away.)

So I figured I'd try for good-looking and not requiring the sign-up process, and make it inexpensive. :-)

Edit: something that makes me believe I'm not too far off is that plenty of people have already been quite willing to pay the NZ$30 to use Gifty.

I found the user interface prevented me from even making a list. I'll stick to the pastebin for making simple lists, or emacs, or google spreadsheets, or a piece of paper...

Really? I'm very interested to know how the UI prevented you from starting a list. Do you mean a bug or a useability issue? Please explain, and if there's an issue there, I'll fix it.

The problem with pastebins / Google spreadsheets / etc for wedding lists is that 1) they look icky and not at all wedding-ish, and 2) they're quite techie instead of being tailored for wedding guests.

You require "NZ $30" for the service of creating a list, and sharing it with my friends. You also require filling out 8 different fields before people can even see what the UI for list-making is like. That's a pretty high barrier before the user even knows what you are offering.

It's quite possible I'm unclear, but I made it so you can start a list and try it out for free ... you only have to pay when you want to share it with your guests. Also, you can try out the demo list as much as you want (either as the bride or groom, or as a guest).

In short, you can try it out with one click ("demo list"). What do you think I can improve on to make that clearer?

.co.nz is very offputting

Giftyapp.com is available. Some other alternatives as well that beat using .co.nz

Gift.ly is also available. Only 150 bucks from nic.ly

I'm curious why it's off-putting. Is New Zealand that bad a place? :-) Or does it just strike non-NZers as parochial?

Speaking as someone who owns a .tv, anything other than .com is just a bad idea. People just don't understand there are things other than .com.

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