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InstaThreat.com: Demand letters as a service

4 points by gtbcb ↗ HN
I'd love to hear your feedback on my side project InstaThreat.com - we send physical demand letters to people who owe you money. Basically, if someone owes you $500 - $5,000, your options have previously been limited. We sit in the space between doing nothing and hiring a lawyer.

We'll send 3 legal-sound letters that escalate in seriousness over the course of 6 weeks for $49 encouraging people to pay up. Our service has been used to get back rent deposits, collect payment for consultants and freelancers, get money owed from friends, etc.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Would you use the service? Why or why not? What services should I add or change? Thanks.

16 comments

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namenotrequired
I'm not in your target market, I just wanted to mention that the name doesn't seem to fit the seriousness of what you do. Expect a lot of people asking "What does this have to do with instagram?"

Edit: forgot to mention it sounds like a good opportunity and I wish you the best seizing it. Also your landing page does a good job explaining what you do, except it doesn't mention the price and the "tell us about your situation" line seems to contradict the "...in 2 minutes" claim in the main headline.

gtbcb
Thanks for the feedback. Yea, the name could probably use some work. I'm pretty small, so I could definitely change the name down the road.

Good observation about the price. I purposely don't mention price on the home page because I don't (yet) want that to deter people from filling out the form - I want that contact info ;0) I use Stripe to ask for payment after they submit the form. In my ads, I'm testing mentioning price (to set expectations) as well as not mentioning price to see what performs better.

What would you suggest instead of "tell us about your situation". I figured I need to gather at least some info about the issue for customizing the demand letter.

exolymph
I'd be interested to hear how the show-price-versus-not-show-price test works out regarding conversion. Also, have you thought about offering multiple price points for different levels of customization? That might muddy the waters or it might let you capture more purchases ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
exolymph
I think the tagline "We encourage people to pay up!" could use work -- without knowing beforehand what the website is for, this could be interpreted as "We encourage you to give us your money!" Which is true in a way, but maybe not what you want to emphasize right off the bat.
namenotrequired
You're welcome!

I'd rephrase the "in 2 minutes", not the "tell us about your situation". No matter how you change the latter, it has to be clear that you're writing an email to a person, who's never gonna be able to see it, read it AND start the system for you in 2 minutes.

exolymph
This is an awesome idea! Particularly useful to freelancers. I agree with namenotrequired that InstaThreat might not be the best name, but it's certainly serviceable.
gtbcb
Thanks! The idea was a direct result of a friend who was hired to do a 3 month dev contract and got stiffed for the last month ~$5k for no good reason.
exolymph
I almost wish that I had been cheated recently so that I could try it out myself =P
kafkaesq
The service might work, but the name is horrible and, well, threatening.

Like, physically, creepily so.

Please don't use it.

gtbcb
Thanks for the feedback. It was a quick way to get going...copying things like Instacart and Instawork. Any suggestions?
kafkaesq
Some variant on Insta(nt)(Demand|Letter), PayMeNow, etc. should do fine.

The idea is the tone should be coldly neutral, but not... threatening.

gtbcb
It started out as a joke, hence the ridiculous name =0)
kafkaesq
Understood, but most people, when they get communications with the word "threat" in the letterhead or domain name, definitely would not take it as a joke.