

A startup for social begging - rafski

This is an interesting concept for a social game site, even if I am not so sure what its business model is.<p>Being the first person to have just won something on it I feel I owe them a plug in (I have no stakes in it, just happy to have won, trying to give back).<p>The site has its quirks and it is still in beta, there is loads of work to be done on it to get some traction.
Improvements to the UX are being made all the time, would you have any suggestions as to what they could do better?<p>The site url: http://begfor.it
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bobwebb
It sounds kind of fun. How does the company intend to fund the giving away of
these items though? It looks to me like they're overestimating just how much
money a visiting user brings to the site. This kind of site would need a large
number of users to become profitable, that's for sure.

Could be an interesting marketing exercise, though. Even if you don't receive
the product in question, you may end up wanting to buy one for yourself
anyway.

Also, the 4-step diagram showing people 'how it works' has two steps saying
how one signs up, one saying 'Beg & Vote' and then 'WINNING!'. It doesn't
explain that well what the site's actually about. Something like "Tell us why
you should get this prize","Vote for other users", "Win!" could work better.

Or I might be wrong. I guess feedback is (usually) better than silence, so
there you go. :)

EDIT: Aesthetically, the site looks really nice. The scrolling sidebar's
annoying, though. Using the scrollwheel or scrollbar makes it lag behind. It
distracts from the items on show, which should probably be the focus of the
user's attention.

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tparsons
Thx for the feedback. The 4 step graphic will be updated.

We will be updating with multiple revenue channels. None of them include basic
traffic, click ads, make a few pennies.

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cyborganics
Possible answer: Promotion for the merchandise. The promoters get tons of
videos and commentary floating around talking about their products. As for the
site making any kind of money, maybe in direct advertising for page views
relating to the promoter.

The more 'ads' of people begging, the more it seems like people really really
want the product and the more funny / entertaining it is the more views it
will gets further reinforcing the popularity of the product... well, that's
how I'd do it. I can't imagine more than a few weeks of lots of cold calls to
get tracking with a few companies that have plenty of product to use for
promotion to kick things off.

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venturebros
Love the idea but I am not really liking the design. The background color is
off putting to me for some reason and I don't like the side menu. If you want
the menu to be there when the user scrolls down just have it fixed.

The video is way longer then it needs to be. Make it shorter and more straight
forward.

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tparsons
Yes the video is too long. It was just an interim for the beta. Once we get
out of beta we'll have a better video that is much shorter.

The color of the background for now stays. Still studying data in regards to
the usage of side menu.

Thx for taking the time to give us some feedback.

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tparsons
Hey just found this in my refers. Thx for the feedback I appreciate it and am
working on improving the system daily. We have a few options for monetization
that I'm working on now. Legal counsel didn't let us go live with it so that
is why you don't see that side of the site at the moment.

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rafski
As cyborganics says, having companies sponsor it to virally launch products
might be the thing…

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mtogo
<http://begfor.it>

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csmeder
hmm, this could be very viral: smart idea.

