As I have posted earlier, my working theory is that at the core of any One Day Idea is a "click" --- the ability for a quick description of the idea induce a release of pleasurable chemicals in a person hearing the description for the first time. Accordingly, before I even consider specific features or promotional plans of an idea, I am first interested in analyzing whether or not the concept is "clickable."
Along these lines, let me first re-present the main idea of BrokeStudent.com:
"BrokeStudent.com is like a manic love-child of Craigslist and Facebook. An online community, where college students try to convince other college students to pay them money for everything from the mundane to the outrageous. There is no longer any reason to ever be broke again. If you need some extra cash, there's got to be something that you can do that one of your classmates is willing to pay money to see."
The primary click I am hoping for here is student's realization that a) they could use some extra cash, and b) this web site might actually make that easy. CraigsList works on that click. But here, it's more focused, because there is something safer and simpler about just dealing with your fellow students then a general citywide community. It seems more youthful, less dangerous, and fun. And the idea of having more money is a powerful one.
What are your guys thoughts? Is this a real click? Or a dud? Is there a way to make it stronger?
The promotion would be, hopefully, viral, in that outrageous posts can get circulated via e-mail forwards, which would inspire more people to post outrageous things. This could be encouraged by a "hall of shame" featured on the front page.
In terms of end game, the obvious option is sale. This audience is so desirable, that if it grows to a decent size, one of the larger players in the field (i.e. Facebook) might snatch you up to add to their portfolio. There is also some media crossover potential here. A related mini-show could be pitched to MTVU or Al Gore's youth network.
In terms of the "perspiration quotient," the launch expense would be somewhat minimal. It would require some back-end programming, but using one of the off-shore firms we know, we could probably reduce the price with a capped-profit sharing agreement (i.e. if they want $1000 for the work, we pay $250, and give them 10% of the ad profits until we have paid them $2500 or shut-down the site). The upkeep would be minimal once launched. As mentioned, people could report inappropriate posts, and the admin could skim through to delete posts as needed.