7 ms·

Who is your target market? How / where will you market the product? Can't you do both via geo-targeting?

by lakey 13y ago

robotmay 13y ago
Stripe only lets me choose one currency for an account, as far as I know. The target market is everywhere! I didn't want to plug it above, but it's a new photography community which you can currently see in beta: https://photographer.io https://photographer.io. I have some really active users in the UK, EU, USA, Australia, and some great photos from someone in Senegal right now. I suppose I could always display a different currency but always bill in one, though that then involves fiddling with conversion rates.
- lakey 13y ago
  Nice build - promising. I'm in the UK but quite happy to pay for something in dollars. I don't think it works quite so well the other way around. Ultimately Stripe needs to build out its features, unless there is a hack of some kind to look into (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-pro-quick-hack-for-canadian-dollars-in-stripe http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-p...). It's a very saturated market. Have you got a clear plan of attack, as far as the marketing goes?
  - robotmay 13y ago
    Thanks! If you use it and have any feedback then I'd be really happy to hear it. Aye there are quite a few other sites out there, and I really need to flesh out a page explaining how Photographer.io is different and why you should use it. I'm banking a lot on there being other people out there like me: * I want large images on a photo site (can't believe nobody else is really doing this) * Usage limits/subscriptions should be fair * It should be heavily customisable so I can find the photos I enjoy * It should give me a lot of privacy options * It shouldn't have a million inane comments under every photo * New users should be able to get their photos seen * Photos should be ranked fairly and adapt to prevent popular people taking all the top spots I've got a good start (I think) on a lot of those points, though it's obviously far from done. It's also, AFAIK, the only site served entirely over SSL; though I'm not sure how many people care about that :D I kinda want to position it as the Pinboard.in of photo sites, if that makes sense. I'm not looking to end up with a huge staff; I really just want people to enjoy finding great new photos.
    - lakey 13y ago
      Plenty of good ideas there. Are you aiming at the more serious photographer? You could ban iPhone pics! I think it's key to understand what people will pay for, and where the gaps are on competitor sites. You'll have more clue than me about all that. I used to pay for Flickr, but I lapsed and it felt like a shakedown to have to pay to be able to access my pictures. Left a bad taste. I understand the model, but between that and all of the Yahoo integration I got fed up with it. However I now use Imgur a lot and recently went 'Pro', though it is mainly for screenshots and image hosting, as opposed to decent quality photos. The key, in terms of marketing, is to either have a brilliant story or brilliant content (or both). If you have the former then the latter follows naturally. Your content is largely the photos, but I think you should take some ownership over content creation - a blog is a no brainer and could be crucial for your SEO and social efforts. There are plenty of things you can do on the user experience front, though you've made a great start on that score. The detail matters. For example, I'd use synonyms on the homepage for 'fantastic image', just to mix it up. The ranking algorithm is always a fun thing to work out, and experiment with.
      - robotmay 13y ago
        Hehe, I did consider blocking phone pictures, but some people get some great shots on them and I don't want to miss out on those. I've even managed a few rare half-decent ones: https://photographer.io/p/10 https://photographer.io/p/10 I think most people are actually pretty happy to pay for increased usage limits and the like, though I don't want that to be the only boon. I'm also trying to keep it to one subscription level, as I think the tiered plans on some other sites can make subscribers of the cheaper plans feel less important than those on the higher ones. I definitely don't want to go down the Flickr route of blocking ex-subscribers from their photos. I'll likely just prevent new uploads in that case. Imgur is great and I think there's scope for that ease-of-use in the more photographer-oriented market. My uploader at the moment is a bit basic, but I'm working on improving that. A blog is definitely coming; I've been really lax in getting it set up. I'll definitely have one for launch. I also really need to do some SEO work, as I've done very little so far :D In the past few days I've finally gotten to the point where I'm happy to do GUI work. It's weird; I have a degree in design, but I always feel like it's wasted time until I have all the important backend work done. I know that's not true, but it's why the design definitely needs some work right now. I'll be working on this quite a lot over the next few weeks! The rankings gave me a great excuse to play with Redis sorted sets. At the moment it's very simplistic and I don't think it'll scale very well with lots of new users, so I'll be adjusting that. It's really enjoyable to fiddle with though :)

Who is your target market? How / where will you market the product? Can't you do both via geo-targeting?

by lakey 13y ago

Who is your target market? How / where will you market the product? Can't you do both via geo-targeting?

Stripe only lets me choose one currency for an account, as far as I know. The target market is everywhere! I didn't want to plug it above, but it's a new photography community which you can currently see in beta: https://photographer.io https://photographer.io. I have some really active users in the UK, EU, USA, Australia, and some great photos from someone in Senegal right now. I suppose I could always display a different currency but always bill in one, though that then involves fiddling with conversion rates.

lakey 13y ago
Nice build - promising. I'm in the UK but quite happy to pay for something in dollars. I don't think it works quite so well the other way around. Ultimately Stripe needs to build out its features, unless there is a hack of some kind to look into (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-pro-quick-hack-for-canadian-dollars-in-stripe http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-p...). It's a very saturated market. Have you got a clear plan of attack, as far as the marketing goes?
- robotmay 13y ago
  Thanks! If you use it and have any feedback then I'd be really happy to hear it. Aye there are quite a few other sites out there, and I really need to flesh out a page explaining how Photographer.io is different and why you should use it. I'm banking a lot on there being other people out there like me: * I want large images on a photo site (can't believe nobody else is really doing this) * Usage limits/subscriptions should be fair * It should be heavily customisable so I can find the photos I enjoy * It should give me a lot of privacy options * It shouldn't have a million inane comments under every photo * New users should be able to get their photos seen * Photos should be ranked fairly and adapt to prevent popular people taking all the top spots I've got a good start (I think) on a lot of those points, though it's obviously far from done. It's also, AFAIK, the only site served entirely over SSL; though I'm not sure how many people care about that :D I kinda want to position it as the Pinboard.in of photo sites, if that makes sense. I'm not looking to end up with a huge staff; I really just want people to enjoy finding great new photos.
  - lakey 13y ago
    Plenty of good ideas there. Are you aiming at the more serious photographer? You could ban iPhone pics! I think it's key to understand what people will pay for, and where the gaps are on competitor sites. You'll have more clue than me about all that. I used to pay for Flickr, but I lapsed and it felt like a shakedown to have to pay to be able to access my pictures. Left a bad taste. I understand the model, but between that and all of the Yahoo integration I got fed up with it. However I now use Imgur a lot and recently went 'Pro', though it is mainly for screenshots and image hosting, as opposed to decent quality photos. The key, in terms of marketing, is to either have a brilliant story or brilliant content (or both). If you have the former then the latter follows naturally. Your content is largely the photos, but I think you should take some ownership over content creation - a blog is a no brainer and could be crucial for your SEO and social efforts. There are plenty of things you can do on the user experience front, though you've made a great start on that score. The detail matters. For example, I'd use synonyms on the homepage for 'fantastic image', just to mix it up. The ranking algorithm is always a fun thing to work out, and experiment with.
    - robotmay 13y ago
      Hehe, I did consider blocking phone pictures, but some people get some great shots on them and I don't want to miss out on those. I've even managed a few rare half-decent ones: https://photographer.io/p/10 https://photographer.io/p/10 I think most people are actually pretty happy to pay for increased usage limits and the like, though I don't want that to be the only boon. I'm also trying to keep it to one subscription level, as I think the tiered plans on some other sites can make subscribers of the cheaper plans feel less important than those on the higher ones. I definitely don't want to go down the Flickr route of blocking ex-subscribers from their photos. I'll likely just prevent new uploads in that case. Imgur is great and I think there's scope for that ease-of-use in the more photographer-oriented market. My uploader at the moment is a bit basic, but I'm working on improving that. A blog is definitely coming; I've been really lax in getting it set up. I'll definitely have one for launch. I also really need to do some SEO work, as I've done very little so far :D In the past few days I've finally gotten to the point where I'm happy to do GUI work. It's weird; I have a degree in design, but I always feel like it's wasted time until I have all the important backend work done. I know that's not true, but it's why the design definitely needs some work right now. I'll be working on this quite a lot over the next few weeks! The rankings gave me a great excuse to play with Redis sorted sets. At the moment it's very simplistic and I don't think it'll scale very well with lots of new users, so I'll be adjusting that. It's really enjoyable to fiddle with though :)