The Startup Story – From an Idea to Our First Customer in 7 Days
@martinadamek's retrospective from 2010 captures the critical transition from initial concept to the first dollar of customer revenue.
Discussions analyzed Show HN launch mechanics, cold DM outreach conversion rates, and the psychology of validating customer demand before writing code.
@Mc_Big_G for ~100 words it would be ~$2.8 and the 'industry' itself is quite big, but it depends on needs, of course.
I see one huge problem on your site....pricing.
Having it in listed in pounds instead of dollars would lead me to close the page right away, thinking it was a british only site. And I dunno but prices seem to be a little high.
Problem #2:...you need to convince people that your editors actually know what they are doing. You need to show that you have your editors take a certain test(ie proofread a 5 page essay to find all errors). That way people know the guy reading actually knows his stuff, and is not just a 12 year old kid who wants to make a few bucks.
Problem #3: Your editors need to be local. Native english speaker means different things in England, in United States and in India. You need to make sure the person proof reading the stuff is in the same country as the person paying the bill.
Problem #4: Domain sucks. Sure korect.me is quirky. But as you just saw I completely misspelled it on the first try. You need a domain that is misspell proof...or at least own the misspelled domains too.
Problem #5: Getting a .me domain is a great way to get penalized in search results. If you want even a tiny bit of people to find you via search engines, you need to change that to a .com
Problem #6: Your landing page sucks. You need to let a person know right away how much they'll be paying.
Problem #7: I want a discount should send a person to a new page, where you tell them about how they can get a discount. Right now you just send them to a blank page, with the discount code below the fold.
Problem #8: You need to add some guarantee...I dunno something like "if we don't catch all errors, you get half off". Make sure there is an incentive for proofreaders to get it right...and for the customer to trust you.
Problem #9: Your page is missing meta descriptions and meta keywords. Not only do those help with SEO but description is how your stuff appears in Google.
Problem #10: You need a word counter on the text box, and you should display a running total of how much the proofreading will cost the person.
It's quite amazing to me that people are willing to pay ~$11 for proofreading ~100 words and won't pay 1 cent for far more technologically advanced services. This is why you have to figure out what people will pay for before you build it. Best of luck to you on this project.
The deciding point was that I had a chance to team up with great editor, Mira.
You might want to correct that (with a great editor). A tiny thing, but as your post is meant to be verified by your own service...
I think it is pretty cool service. Not sure about pricing. With english being my second language, I would definitely appreciate some corrections here and there. Good idea, keep working on it.
Interesting story. I wonder, though, about the company's dependence on Adwords. What if costs go up, and/or the site is unable to get good search engine ranking for proofing services?
@vaksel Thank you for the feedback. This is what we need so much! Some of the points (2, 6, 8) we are solving and those should be live this week. #10 there is a counter - '...get an estimate' link (we can do better I am sure). I really appreciate your time spent on this and will try to get better!