Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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I want people's opinions / feedback / idea's regarding this web idea I have and will likely be trying to put into place in 2010.
- Ok the basic idea of the site is about self improvement. Some of you may of read the p90x thread we've got going and there's a load of us in there, helping each other try to achieve our goals in self improvement of our body's, giving motivation, tips on supplements etc.
It's got me thinking, we all generally use this site a lot to ask for advice on things to improve our life, e.g. people asking for advice on hair style, people asking for fitness advice, fashion advice, people asking on improving lifestyle or even career and business.
Basically - people want to improve themselves, I know I do. Yet trying to achieve those goals can often be hard and require knowledge that is outside of your experience, people need to turn to the internet for answers, but unfortunately there's no central place where the expertise can hang out (e.g. the ones with the knowledge on how to improve and the ones wanting to improve).
This is where my idea is for a community site called something like selfimprovement.com - where basically you sign up and post under one of the different sections, e.g. 'Beauty and Fitness, Style and Fashion, Business and LifeStyle, etc.
Now taking the 'Beauty and Fitness one as an example'.
I sign up, and I post a picture of myself as I currently am.
I then tag elements on the picture that I would like to improve, e.g. tag my torso wanting a six pack, tag my skin because its pale and i need a fake tan, tag my teeth as I want to whitene them, tag my hair as it's shit, tag the dark circles under the eyes as I don't know if there's anything I can do about it and finally maybe tag the skin on my nose, as it seems sensative and i'd like to know if there' a cream that can improve the skin quality.
... (Optional, you can leave your picture open for other people to tag elements that need changing, but it's optional, so you don't have to have people ripping the piss out of your style, face, etc).
... Then other users of the site, respond to the tagged items offering solutions.
For example,
for the torso and wanting a six pack they may tag it with a p90x dvd, some myprotein whey protein and some BSN no explode -with a comment that explains how to use these.
For the skin they offer a suitable fake tan that'd suit my skin tone, or recommend a fake tanning salon. For my teeth they recommend a whitening product, etc etc etc...
... I then can choose to take their advice and try the products / guidance, and see what happens.
... Once I've taken the advice, say a month or twos time, I post up an updated pic - showing the improvements and the products I did actually use that got the results I wanted. Other people can now see this and choose to use the same products and get the same results.
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Ok so thats the basic idea, as far as I'm aware nothing like this exists.
2 questions you may be thinking. How do I as the site owner make money and why as users would you want to comment / suggest products?
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Ok, here's the idea. Essentially the site I setup signs deals with certain providers of products to give my site potential discounts and affliate links. When people recommend products, it automatically generates the affliate link related to that product, so that if a user buys the product through the link on my site - we get a commission back from the sale.
Also because we have made a deal for discounts, I'm expecting people to want to buy from us, as we potentially may be cheaper than buying direct from them.
Finally, my overall goal would be to give the person who recommended the product originally to the person, a kick back from the commission based sale. So say the commission is 5% the user who recommened it gets 4% and my site gets 1%.
Therefore, using my self improvement site.
"You can save money, make money and improve yourself"
- obviously it would also have a forum based community at the back end and be aimed at just helping people improve themselves and achieve a better standard of living.
So people, sorry for the essay - opinions, feedback, ideas?
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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Sounds like any fitness forum, sort of mens health type thing.
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BarnshaW
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Registered: 25th Oct 06
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sorry dude just sounds like muscletalk and other fitness/bodybuilding sites.
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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quote:
Originally posted by John
Sounds like any fitness forum, sort of mens health type thing.
Yeah but that's it, they only specialise in one area. This site will be aimed at everything and both male and female. It's just an offshoot of fitness / car forums, that we are discussing things to do with fashion etc - that's not what these sites were built for.
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Ojc
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Registered: 14th Nov 00
Location: Reading: Drives : Clio 197
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Tell me about karting and you winning, I am so suprised we haven't heard about that one yet.
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Paul_J
Member
Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by BarnshaW
sorry dude just sounds like muscletalk and other fitness/bodybuilding sites.
no need to apologise mate, I'm looking for opinions - if the general opinion is these sites already exist, then I won't bother wasting my time and you'll have done me a favour 
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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The magazine based forums cater to all that stuff from my limited browsing of them, not a pure bodybuilding based site.
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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http://www.menshealth.co.uk/chatroom/
That's a bad example of a forum but a good example of covering everything.
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Neo
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Registered: 20th Feb 07
Location: Essex
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Paul...Your back to your amazing essay ways 
Its a good idea granted, but have you taken into consideration
Marketing and Branding ?
How an initially unknown will become affiliated with well known brands ?
Competition (In the form of Mens Health mag+website for example)
What will be your USP (apart from the slight discounts)
What will make people want to join your site when they could walk into Boots and ask what the best teeth whiteners are, go to the gym and get a plan from someone face to face ?
How would the site be moderated as you will always get people (say his name was rizzy debel) who would give advice not particular seen as helpful which others may read without taking a pinch of salt ?
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Paul_J
Member
Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Neo
Marketing and Branding ?
One of the hardest to achieve and would probably be spurred on from viral based things. Take a few people and completely transform them, document the story online say on youtube etc - those sort of transformation vids get 100's of thousands of views, link it directly back to the site and potentially suggest to members they make thier own success vids on youtube when they achieve a similar success. This is one of the ways p90x has marketted itself superbly.
quote:
How an initially unknown will become affiliated with well known brands ?
Getting an affliate link is as easy as creating an account on a few commission based sites - getting the discount will be a harder deal. This could be why you start off offering exclusivity for companies for free, or for minor discounts and then potentially at a later date when you have a lot of traffic actually charge for exclusivity / their products to be listed (e.g. money supermarket.com style)
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Competition (In the form of Mens Health mag+website for example)
To be honest, I've never really used them - so potentially this could be the big thorn in the side of my plan, didn't really realise they covered all this in such detail already.
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What will be your USP (apart from the slight discounts)
the USP was going to be this tagging based system, rather than just people posting up forum threads about stuff and the whole interface that would go along with this. Another USP would be the users getting rewarded financially for recommending products which people buy.
quote:
What will make people want to join your site when they could walk into Boots and ask what the best teeth whiteners are, go to the gym and get a plan from someone face to face ?
Because half the people looking for advice, are too afraid of making a tit of themselves in person. The fact that peope choose to ask advice online already when they could go somewhere face to face, is a perfect example that people are too shy to ask for advice face to face when they don't know anything. Plus theres conveinence of it all being under 1 roof (1 website), not having to go to different sites / go see different people for different advice. Finally things like getting a plan from a gym = ££... so it's cheaper using the site for free.
quote:
How would the site be moderated as you will always get people (say his name was rizzy debel) who would give advice not particular seen as helpful which others may read without taking a pinch of salt ?
Potentially could use a REP based system, have some resident experts in certain fields at first who moderate the different sections, then have a rep based system for people who give advice. Once they reach a certain level they get basic moderation priveledges and once they reach a top level they can be a full moderator. This way, at the start when small I have control, people can aim to build trust and grow with in the site and eventually the ones who have helped contribute to the site the best, can help control and moderate the site in future.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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If you wrote it so it was more of a web based social application over a forum then you've got something. If it's just a forum then you've got nothing to start with. You need to give it a good name to, you could by all means use the selfimprovement.* domain as a re-direct.
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Neo
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Registered: 20th Feb 07
Location: Essex
User status: Offline
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At least you have thought it through tbh
Have a look at menshealth and askmen.com. They are the 2 i use and you have pretty much described what they aim to do. Obviously they don't have the user interaction/tagging etc however most of their articles are written by experts so have far more credibility.
Good luck if you do go ahead with it 
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
If you wrote it so it was more of a web based social application over a forum then you've got something. If it's just a forum then you've got nothing to start with. You need to give it a good name to, you could by all means use the selfimprovement.* domain as a re-direct.
Yeah that's exactly it ed, the forum is only a back end to help the community grow.
The whole point of the site is this unique interface, so you have your personal profile, you have different stages of your self improvement, from initial pics, to part progress, to full success...
Each stage can be tagged and have things responded to them, etc. It has the ability for you to blog about your progress, what you're doing. Others can comment, suggest things etc.
Names are always hard. If you make a name too abstract people wont know what it's about, but i agree sites these days don't generally have names that are exactly what they do, e.g. 'Amazon' - rather than 'BookStoreandOtherStuff.com'
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Cosmo
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
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Make it more community based - have 'diary' pages where peoples daily diets can be tracked (these pages can be private or public).
So you have a database of the popular food stuffs and when you input them it'll track the various nutrition facts. Daily totals, etc.
Maybe some way to track the workouts too, similar to how Nike/iPod system works where you then upload.
That sort of thing would be popular IMO, and would also make it very community based where everyone can see others progress, diet, workout, etc.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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I say you've got a nice idea there. There are lots of nice little apps and things that could be built into it to improve the usability.
Another thing you've got is getting support for what you're doing. If you're blogging your progress on your app and you allow a comments based system in there people are quite likely to give compliment at your progress, or say you have a bad week someone else who's been there may offer you a different thing to do in your workout to solve that problem. Then there are the new users who think they might never get buff, who can look through other peoples progress.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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You could have an iPhone app which allows you to track your progress too.
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Cosmo
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
You could have an iPhone app which allows you to track your progress too.
That'll be a good idea, esp if the whole community had similar things like I mentioned above.
Would allow people to check nutrition whilst on the go, update their profile whilst out and about, etc.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Cosmo
quote:
Originally posted by ed
You could have an iPhone app which allows you to track your progress too.
That'll be a good idea, esp if the whole community had similar things like I mentioned above.
Would allow people to check nutrition whilst on the go, update their profile whilst out and about, etc.
open it up to other smartphones, don't just limit it to the iphone!
But, i think it's a pretty decent idea more so if you went along the web application route rather than a forum. However, like previously said, there are already a number of well established forums and communities where you'll get replies from professionals and i think this is the only major hurdle in the concept.
Another idea would be to add a product review section, might be branching out a little too far into what mens health (and co) website offers.
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Cosmo
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
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tbh they are all revenue generators you can add once you have the established community - products reviews linking through to sponsored stores to purchase the items for commission, etc.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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iPhone, Android and Symbian
Everyone else can piss off because it's not necessary for every phone manufacturer to have their own os.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
iPhone, Android and Symbian
Everyone else can piss off because it's not necessary for every phone manufacturer to have their own os.
probably easier to develope a mobile web based app/version, that way it opens it up to the majority of smartphones. Plus it doesn't actually need to be a dedicated application.
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Cosmo
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Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
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tbh developing an iPhone app will be just as much use as a marketing tool to get people to the site as it will be something useful for members.
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GF-91
Banned
Registered: 8th Jul 09
Location: Burnley!
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Aiming high!
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Some awesome ideas there guys.
I'm not sure which idea to try out first, as i've got a few web ideas to try next year. some easier than others. This one is one of the harder ones to do / build / implement / market / maintain.
Some of the other ones are quite simple / self sufficent.
However, it's this self improvement one that I feel most passionate about.
I can write iphone apps but as dom says maybe easier to do a mobile web based thing.
Cosmo, I'm loving those ideas of stats being pulled through, wouldn't be too hard to implement. Stuff like that would be great, you could put in the amount of time working out to generate a rough calorie burn, figure out your daily calorie intake required, work out how much you're taking in from food etc.
Hell, you could even make this database generate itself from user submissions, e.g. you pick up something in a shop, take a pic, enter the nutritional info like cals into the app and upload it to the database.
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Out of interest, do you think it could still work without the giving commission back to users?
- Basically this would require work, legalities of owing money to users etc. I'd personally prefer to hold off that / hold off cashing in - in general till a later date.
Getting the site up and running would be priority number one.
Each user would end up with their own profile thing, allowing you to give a url to someone to check out directly their self improvement page, their logs, blogs, stats, pics etc.
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