SHOwnsYou

He thinks 35% of Mint's success was based on their name. That is exactly what he said and it seems like you're trying really hard to lay out some flame bait.

Copy and pasted from other thread:

I don't really get it.

If you're help page doesn't cover someones concerns, your application will add it the help page?

I'd be afraid of getting a monstrous help page filled with random one off errors.

Also, if the process is automated, you may get a help page with some slight variant of "I lost my password" 50 times...

Some variation of the phrase is standard for the fulfillment industry.

Though I just thought this, OP -- It may sound better if you changed "Pick & Pack, and Ship" to "Pick, Pack, and Ship" or "Pack, Pick, and Ship".

I think it looks great, but I'd test if it converts better with the Free Trial button above the fold (most likely by removing or shrinking the header).

Not sure on your level of technical savvy, but it would be trivial to make a website, put it behind a password, and have a simple form for their name and number.

My first piece of advice may sound weird and a lot of people that haven't been in the situation may not get it, but either choose to try for a relationship with this woman or commit to being her friend. Trying to have it both ways may well ruin your chances at either.

Try to hang out with her outside the biking club. Since you guys share similar interests, this should not be difficult.

"Hey, there is a new band playing at <local venue we both like>, want to hit it up?" or "So there is a charity walk this weekend for <what we both support>, we should go." It is important to go somewhere non-threatening where you both have similar intentions.

Once you're there, it is easy. Ask her a lot of questions about her self (Tip: "What made you decide that?" is a decent fall back question when you have no response).

Try to make her laugh and you should smile often. Use this time to get to know her better.

> "Although, heck, maybe he talks about masturbating in front of girls the whole time."

To be fair, I don't know any guy that doesn't, while in the presence of women, talk about masturbating.

Though I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not defending him from downvotes or suggesting people upvote him (I didn't).

Pretty sure it is vastly uncommon for schools to retain publishing rights to your papers.

My university has publishing rights (which they purchased) to a single paper of mine to publish in a journal.

I had no idea TurnItIn checked submitted papers against previously submitted papers.

Today begins my quest to get all of my papers removed from TurnItIn.com's database.

I'm not sure. But your website does not really tell me what exactly the product does.

A video tour (or a working flash example) would show me in more concrete terms what it does/what it looks like.

Create a video tour.

Add a contact form at Contact Us instead of a mailto link.

On the homepage, in the right column next to the MnuBox explanation, I would include a contact us form (but say it is for purchase/information inquiries) OR a quick registration form.

Remove "Products" page with only 1 thing on it and replace it with a Tour or Pricing page.

Nice bottle of Bourbon. Can't go wrong (unless he is a friend of Bill Ws)

Right, exactly like this.

Though I had more success when showing 3 products (I split tested up to 5 products).

Well your proposition is buy and sell handmade goods at no additional cost. Market that angle.

But I think soon you'll find you want a new proposition. There is a lot of work involved in processing payments, dealing with chargebacks, keeping customers happy, etc.

It looks like your revenue model is completely ad based? You need a way to start getting money now, rather than earning spare change each month via adsense.

Running customer service and daily operations take money. If you don't value your time (more than just spare time if you want this to grow) or don't mind paying out of your own pocket for someone else's time, I think you'll need to start taking a cut somewhere.

Initially I am getting a strange feeling about the idea. It is likely just because I am not your target market. I work out 4-5 days a week and would rather pay the $40/month for a gym membership with top of the line equipment instead of the convenience of working out at home. The gym is where I let off steam by myself without the fiance right next to me.

I don't want to shoot down your idea, but I do see a few problems with it...

1) At my gym, I can bring my fiance as my plus 1 every time. Your web app doesn't scale the same way.

2) Anyone that already works out has a major outlay of cash to spend to get up and running. Dumbbells, exercise bands, maybe a few kettle balls... PLUS the membership fee.

3) Solitude. I can't get away from my family when I am at home. At the gym I am in my own little world.

For people that just exercise (ie no complex weight training) and are willing to watch it on their computer, I think the idea is great. But I also think you'll see more success if you target a specific class of gym-goers.

So I'm supposed to bring my laptop into the gym with me?

I love the idea, but man would it feel awkward looking at a computer or my phone screen in the gym to make sure my benchpress technique is right.

If this is geared more towards body-weight exercises, what is your advantage over something like P90X or Insanity?

Build in a module to include upsells in the receipt email and then increase your monthly price by double.

When I worked for an e-commerce shop, I started including upsells in the order confirmation emails and got something like a 12% increase in revenue.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with a wide rich-poor gap.

There is a floor for poverty but not for wealth. You can be really really poor, but you'll never be poorer than having $x.xx of debt associated to your name (I am just ballparking like $50,000, though I know this can fluctuate some -- please no nit arguments about Bernie Madoff)

The rich have no ceiling to how much they can accumulate. In fact, they can accumulate vast sums (maybe more than poorer people make in a lifetime) by simply letting their money sit in a bank account.

1% holding 35% of the wealth doesn't mean anything beyond the most superficial level. What is more important is if the remaining 65% of wealth is distributed in such a manner that allows the other 99% to survive with some amount of quality of life.

It likely auto-generates one and sends it to your email.

This is a good lesson on usability if you (I assume pretty internet-literate) are thrown by this. Very important to note this error.

Grammar errors litter the page.

It should probably be broken down into sub pages instead of going on forever on the first page.

Show me what payment methods you accept on your form.

Make the form higher up on the page. Why give people the option to leave by making them scroll through all the junky content?

Remove the amazon ad, it takes away from your credibility.

Design is not appealing in the least.

I have no idea what you're offering when I first look at your website.

I would remove the word "hack" from the single line at the top. Most people associate "hack" with bad things.

Your form at the bottom of the page is too spaced out.

For the frequency type, I'd change it to a drop down select in order to streamline the backend of the service.

I wouldn't make the customer pick their own question to be asked.

I think you can operate around a 50% profit margin at $10/month.

Worker costs: $8/hr * 8hr/day * 30 days = $1920/month So breakeven is 193 subscribers at $8/hr for your caller.

I estimate each call will take approximately 1 minute. So your caller can handle at maximum 480 calls per day, but more likely 400 after breaks.

So at capacity for a single worker, you have 400 subscriptions, bringing in $4000/month. Your cost for the employee is $1920 per month.

Instead of listing email addresses, I would include a form right on the page. Wufoo.com can easily do this if you're unfamiliar.

The webpage looks kinda scammy. From the 4 super stock photos to the 3 column layout, to buying something I've never heard of, I'm just turned off by it.

Can you go into more detail in to how this works? If I only hire men, but purchase diversity offsets, does this protect me from being sued by a woman because I appear to favor men?

Level 3 VPS at Hostgator is great for a startup and only around $40/month.

I've been using Hostgator for ~2 years and I can only imagine leaving if I plan to run my own servers.

Have to agree with this.

It might take 15-30 minutes to develop your own authentication system.

Even if only takes 10 with facebook, the extra 5 minutes are worth it to me to keep 100% control over my users' experience on my website.

If you actually want literature, my favorite book as a child was Where the Red Fern Grows. If they are around 14+ there are some great, captivating Hemmingway books. A Farewell to Arms, Island in the Stream, A Movable Feast, and The Garden of Eden (In that order).

I keeping editing as I think of new things. This may sound odd, but if they are in the 14+ range, How to Win Friends and Influence People is great. It changed a lot for me.

When I was like 9 I got the book How to be Twice as Smart and it taught me a ton of mental tricks.

This book taught me a lot (probably if the boy is like 10 or 12+?)

http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Ballistics-Cannons-Cincinnati...

Have you called who ever is taking your account to collections and tried to negotiate more time or a payment plan?

Explain that sending it to collections is bad for you and them. If you don't have the money, then you don't have the money. But if also have to deal with a collection agency then you'll have more stress to deal with. Also the collection agency gets a cut of your (current non-existent) money owed.

If you can explain that is in both parties interest to keep it out of collections and extend the deadline or work out a payment plan, you may be more likely to get out of this situation without damaging effects on your credit.

I am pretty sure he pays people to go through a list of numbers and call them to tell them how awesome they are.

At 1 call per minute (which I figure is pretty liberal for a "Hey, have you finished your shit yet?") a single person can clear 400 people per day easily.

But of course if you paid someone $10/hr to call people, your sweet spot for break even is somewhere around 350 customers before you hire someone.

Make it like awesomereminders.com and people get called and bitched at until they finish their project...

I don't know about voting, just a random thought.

One thing I would be interested in though is an aggregating tool that would let me see if more than one of the people I am following have submitted the same item. I might be more inclined to look at/buy something if 40 of my friends have submitted it rather than 1.

Well I figure you will want to demonstrate the service or fill the home page with some kind of content to non-logged in users. If it is nothing but the same product link over and over or affiliate links, there is no way I am going to join it because I figure it is just a spam service.

Good concept.

Is there a voting mechanism/do you plan to add one?

What about a recommendation engine?

Finally, have good fraud protection and you may even want to consider limiting the amount of submissions made by a user in a given time period or this will quickly become a place to spam affiliate links and the same product links over and over.