Broke Student Click
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.
Posted at October 14, 2005 01:31 PM
| TrackBack
Hey Cal,
I like the idea of "clickable". You're good at thinking of words that encapsulate an idea. I would add that a lot of what makes something clickable is the target market. It seems that the more niche of an audience we target initially with an idea the higher "click rate" we can achieve. My understanding of how ideas spread is that the initial audience is the key. They will love it the most and take it mainstream.
With that said, I like the idea that the site is focused on a niche. It is "broke college students looking to make money quick and easy with their time." This is especially powerful since college students value their time at a very low rate. I remember my freshman year, all students had a program that delivered ads in their desktop window that was always open. The ads rotated every few seconds. The longer they had it open, the more money they got. This idea successfully spread, but did not have a good business model behind it, which makes me think two things.
1) Another idea is resurrecting this model using "click-throughs" instead of impressions. College students could have a banner or text ads always on, which display relevant Google Adsense depending on the page a visitor is viewing online or even the content they're typing in an email or word documents (if that's possible).
2) But, back to your idea, I think it has the beginnings of being clickable. I feel like to increase the "click rate" it would have to start with compelling service/product exchanges and then broaden out. Textbooks are one that a lot of sites keep on trying, but I'm not sure how successfully.
Another first product could be dating. Think about it. Many guys and girls too are looking to meet people in college, especially for dating. Facebook.com has some functionality where you could find people, but there isn't a site focused on dating. What if people could sell dates to others?
Here's how it would work. People would create a basic profile with how much they would charge somebody to date them. Then they could either forward it through their network of friends (perhaps with their friends getting a referral fee as the matchmaker). People visiting the site could browse a profile and propose a date. I guess the seller could name a price or their could be an auction format. The nice thing about an auction format is that the seller takes on more of the responsibility for marketing themself.
