Ask YC: Feedback for our new startup
We're getting ready to launch and since I've enjoyed so many of the articles posted here I thought it would be great to get some feedback from the YC community.
Bidboxr.com is a unique blend of online advertising and online auctions. Instead of simply providing a site where sellers list items and bidders bid on those items, we've created an interactive ad banner that bring auctions to the bidders.
One of our major goals when we created bidboxr.com was to provide online entrepreneurs/startups with a profitable source of revenue. Think of it like Google's adwords/adsense model, but we're using interactive auctions instead of static ads. The auctions are relevant to the content of the page, so it's designed to draw users who are interested in that particular content. Imagine reading a blog post about a digital camera and looking at an ad on the side of the page showing an image of the exact same camera on sale and closing in 10 minutes for $50 with a big 'BID NOW' button beneath it. If you're interested in running an ad on your site simply sign up, add a few lines of code and when someone bids from your site you earn money.
I've started to do a few "pre-launch" marketing tests to see which method would bring in the most users - so we've already started to see some sellers listing items. If you have anything you'd like to list or know anyone who might want to list some items - I'll remove all listing fees from anyone that list anything over the next few days.
Thanx!
43 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadI'm quite curious how high the effective CPM is of your usage of screen real estate vs other advertising networks. Since the items are 'relevant' it could be quite high, but initially you might be left with more inventory than you can sell.
Shipping seems to be USA only, you may want to limit your 'ads' to the region that the seller is willing to ship to.
Number 1, people are going to have a harder times finding your site. This is somewhat mitigated by Google's technology around suggesting seatch terms, but not totally.
Number 2, you will have to spend five minutes explaining your name to every potential investor, customer, and even your friends, just so they know what your proper name is. That doesn't leave any time for what you should be delivering - your elevator pitch.
Number 3, it suggests you aren't very creative. Saying that all the good domain names are taken just isn't true. I've bought a number of good domain names in the past couple of years, none of which have been misspellings.
Use real words people.
I used to get paid to think up these names. Here's an exercise you can do. Think up words that apply to your company, and write them down. For example: money, profit, ads, auctions, etc. And also, you don't need to just stick with words that physically describe your company (though I think these are best). You can also look for words that describe your value proposition, and why you are better than your competitors.
Then, go over the list and see if you like any of the combinations. Also, just start free associating with words on the list and words off the list.
Another thing you can do is come up with imagery that you think might be good for an ad campaign or in the design of your site. With this sort of approach, you end up with names like monster.com.
Don't be afraid to use the dictionary, thesaurus, and to do hundreds of searches on Godaddy.com or similar.
Also, don't be afraid to seek out a friend who is good with words, or who tends to say funny or memorable things. I've long since ceased to work in creative at an ad agency, but my friends and colleagues ask me to come up with names for them these days.
And one final thought - it's not that important what your name is, as long as it's not confusing (which misspellings all are).
Clever misspellings have been a solution to that problem.
What do you propose as an alternate solution?
trailbehind.com (also thetrailbehind.com)
greathive.com (also thegreathive.com)
loudmountain.com
darnnews.com
agent1099.com
photosensate.com
surelogic.com
These are all fine domain names made of real words.
That's not a qualitative assessment of your 'good' domains, just an observation.
I think a good name won't help you much, but a bad name can hurt you in tangible ways.
Problem solved... I'll plug my own site for finding good, available domain names: http://Hotnamelist.com
Or, go out and BUY a good one: http://sedo.com or http://Afternic.com
Ive been struggling looking for a new projects domain for days now, snapnames, freshdrop, domainpigeon (from here), so hopefully you might have some suggestions!!
It's nice that your site lists CowardlyAct.com, MountyBounty.com and SecuritySituation.com as available - but that's completely useless to me who's looking for a name that somehow makes sense in conjunction with my business model.
Furthermore a good name is supposed to be short and distinctive. Most names listed on your and similar services meet neither criteria. They consist of more or less randomly combined dictionary words which leads to generic 10+ letter domains like, well, SecuritySituation.
My common sense and probably every marketing book in existance. Think about the internet brand names that you can recall from the top of your head. How many of them are longer than 8 letters?
Security Situation is a pretty damn good name if you're starting a security company.
Most certainly not. It's generic and unsuggestive. That kind of name may work for an information page ("Security situation in your neighbourhood") but not for most businesses.
I thought this too, but did a quick back of the envelope calculation:
The OED had 616,500 English words in the 1989 edition.
In 2003 there were ~24,000,000 dot coms registered.
Let's assume 2% of English words are usable in a 2 word domain name combination. That means there are ~ 12,000 words that you can combine to form a new domain. Which means there are ~ 144,000,000 possible 2 word dot coms.
So the majority of real world combinations are not registered if you only consider 2 word combos.
The market shows combos can be pretty random: surveymonkey, plentyoffish, craigslist, etc.
The founders intended the word Googol: http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:p7kcdIwV8J0J:daily.stan...
You need to get scale first, and you need lots of sources before you'll get lots of products. At then end of the day you are selling affiliate revenue to website owners, so I would focus your message on that, and attempt to stuff the product pipeline with some choice partnerships, until you get enough affiliate sites to drive product.
Something else I noticed though is that in the satisfaction guarantee, you mention that you, Bidboxr, will refund the purchase price if it's not what they expected. I see that lasting about two weeks before you run out of money. If you really want to set yourselves apart with a satisfaction guarantee, you may want to look at some sort of escrow service instead.
Just my two cents.
"We charge the seller a final sale fee of $3.12 which makes $1.56 available to the "active advertiser pool". If 5 people bid on the item from your site and 3 people bid from a different site. You earn 62.5% of the $3.12."
So there is only 1.56 available, but I earn $1.95?
"By signing up for a fee account"
The interactive part isn't really a plus. How does a person know that the interactive banner is yours, and not some scammer phishing for information?
2nd, if you want people to put the boxes on their page, i'd suggest investing in design. Of both your site and the boxes. You have to get peoples trust, and the poor design could sink you.