

Show HN: Perspective for Men - paul_cryer
http://www.helpaguyout.com/

======
scrrr
The advice that men get when asking women about romance is often pretty much
useless and will do more harm than good. It would be way more useful to ask
men that have their stuff together and know what they are talking about.
Besides, every man has female friends to ask. So, sadly, I don't think this is
a good business idea at all.

~~~
Symmetry
I'd go further and say that the notion that there is "a" female perspective is
sort of pernicious.

~~~
Ixiaus
Well, there is a female perspective - thing is, women will tell men about what
they are wanting but have no idea how provide the feeling of what she is
wanting. I whole heartedly agree that women giving romance advice to men is,
_a bad thing_ (I also think men giving women romance advice is also _a bad
thing_ ).

~~~
Symmetry
Thats what I meant by pernicious, not all women are like that. Some certainly
are like that, but not all. I have had girlfriends who _wouldn't_ tell me
about what they were wanting, and in fact my current girlfriend is perfectly
able to tell me how to provide the feeling she wants most of the time.

~~~
Ixiaus
That's awesome, hold onto that! Most of the time you have to play the
domination game in order to have anything of meaning with a woman - but if you
have a girl that's on the same plane with you, that will reduce the amount
"drama" in the relationship and also become a much more long term and
productive relationship too.

Sorry for misinterpreting what you wrote.

------
forbes
I'm a programmer and this site looks like it was designed by a programmer. If
you are serious about this idea, spend some money and pay a designer to make
it prettier. I think this is the kind of site that needs an appealing design.

In particular, the bottom section with the 'guarantee' and the logos of 'buzz'
sites looks like one of those dodgy software download sites with the fake
awards and testimonials.

Also, I would want to see some samples of Questions & Answers before I handed
over my cash. Have a question of the day or something so people can get a feel
of the quality of your responses (if you have any yet).

~~~
Jun8
I second the point about design and especially the point about giving one or
more examples. $2 is a tiny amount of money, what's more important to me (and
costs more) is the time I will spend on your site. If I spend 30 minutes
polishing a question and get BS replies, you can't give back my time.

This may sound corny (but hey, the whole idea is a bit so) but I think putting
a few pictures of the ladies who answer would also boost your chances.

~~~
thomasgerbe
It's $2 per answer. That seems pretty expensive if I want a lot of answers for
one question.

------
JoeAltmaier
Neat idea. I tried it.

Long drawnout payment maze, used paypal, double-billed and my transaction
history shows 3 entries - don't have any idea what any of them mean. No big
deal, its just $2 but weird.

Some one-click payment approach would be nice.

How do I get a response? Email? Poll the site? No clue anywhere in the process
that I noticed anyway.

Good luck!

~~~
paul_cryer
Hi Joe,

Thanks for trying it out.

Please click on the "Check status" page which shows your current questions.
Click on the view details link - which show a status of either :

(1)Waiting for a respondent (i.e. no one has reserved your question yet. (2)In
- Progress (i.e. Someone is working on the answer. But it has not been
submitted yet). (3)Completed. [ You will be able to view the response, and
rate (1-5) the respondent]

Hope that helps. I just found out that the system does not send out emails
when answers are complete. I will have to get that fixed today. In the mean
time, please log in occasionally to check status.

Thanks. Paul

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Got a sterling answer by the way. Far more detailed and thoughtful than $2
justified. Some philanthropy involved in the responders makeup I suspect.

------
rnernento
Maybe I'm way off but I don't see people paying the kind of money your asking
for this. What's the advantage over Yahoo Answers or Quora?

There are girls on those sites as well, there are also plenty of forums for
specific questions with male and female members.

How are you verifying gender?

Best of luck either way, what do I know, I thought Twitter would never take
off...

As far as constructive criticism:

The site seems fast and functional which is great. I think the logo could be
improved and the pink / maroon color and gold / brown text colors could be
adjusted.

~~~
paul_cryer
Thank you for your tips. I appreciate it.

Check out the last box (scroll down) "Gender Verified" on this page:
<http://www.helpaguyout.com/ladies.php>

Basically, we ask women to submit their publicly available profiles such as
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for one-time verification purposes.

~~~
pavel_lishin
But Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter don't verify gender, either.

~~~
paul_cryer
That's true. This seemed to be the most simplistic way I could come up with
without discouraging registrations. I would be happy to entertain your
suggestions.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't really have any, aside from the 4-chan approach - send a photo holding
up a sign with the date and some random string of characters - but that might
also discourage a lot of women.

------
paul_cryer
We have all been through various phases in life where some sort of female
perspective would have helped out a lot. HelpAGuyOut.com lets guys ask
question and get advice from women on dating, relationship, love, life, almost
anything. We are charging $2 for a question and passing $1/answer to the
ladies who respond to the question. The monetory factor helps prevent spammy
answers while making everyone's time worthawhile. Furthermore, 100% money back
guarantee allows the asker to get a refund for any response that he/she deems
unsatisfactory.

Thank you for your feedback.

-Paul

~~~
Peroni
So if a question gets asked & 20 women respond, they all get $1 each?

Out of curiosity, what advantage does your paid service offer over the likes
of r/TwoXChromosomes on Reddit where I can ask my question and have it
answered for free?

~~~
paul_cryer
Yes. But let clarify.

You need to specify how many women you want the responses from. That means, if
you want 20 responses, you pay $40. [$2/response].

Try it out here: <http://www.helpaguyout.com/asker-submit-question.php> It's
fun.

To keep things interesting, ask a question to your significant other, then ask
the same question to 5 ladies on our site. See what happens. You will get very
interesting result. [

To answer your second question, there are variations of advice related
services - from free to proffesional ones charging hundreds if not thousands.
What sets us apart is the ease of use, low pricing and guaranteed response.
Plus our platform allows everyone to remain anonymous - women tend to open up
and give a more insightful, genuine opinion that way.

Since the advice is paid for, the asker "owns" the advice and the woman
understands that it is a private advice only for him. So, though, anonymous,
there is a bit of "I am actually helping this guy out" factor involved.

------
michael_dorfman
Some sample questions and answers would help.

Maybe I'm lacking imagination, but I'm not exactly sure what I would ask the
ladies, or what kind of answers they could give.

~~~
paul_cryer
Since all of our Q & A's are private, they are not published. However, as you
mentioned, showing some sample may help encourage others to participate. I
should probably add a checkbox saying "My question may be publicized" to get
permission.

Anyways, to help you get started, here is a sample question for you:

Let's say you are into slightly older/mature women. So your question would
simply be something like: "Can I get some advice on dating older women?"

And you would elaborate it further by adding details: "I have not dated anyone
for a while. Last week, I met this very attractive woman at a local bar who is
34. We really hit it off. We have been out once for dinner since. Even though
I wanted to pay, she insisted we split the tab (mixed signals??). I would like
to get romantically involved and take this up a notch but cannot tell how she
feels. Any advice on how to pull this off without messing things up or coming
across as a little too desperate? I am 21 and she is single."

~~~
pavel_lishin
What's the guarantee that the answer (answers?) I get for $2 are going to be
better than those from a reddit thread?

~~~
paul_cryer
There is no such guarantee. Sometimes, free services might offer much better
results. Our pricing, $2 and compensation of $1 to women does not warrant
time-consuming, elaborate, results. With the small charge of $2, the
intention, and the goal, is to:

1)Keep spammers at bay 2)Provide a small incentive to women to participate
3)Give you a genuine, insightful, no-b.s. response 4)Do not pretend to be a
professional advice service

------
wallflower
My first thought was the site did not look girly (not to be sexist but no
pastels)

Are you competing with <http://www.girlsaskguys.com/> ?

~~~
paul_cryer
Wallflower,

Did not know about this site. Anyways, even though the concept is somewhat
similar, I believe our approach and what we are trying to accomplish is
different.

------
frobozz
$1 seems like a frightfully trivial amount of money to receive for a well-
considered answer.

See: "Pay enough, or don't pay at all."

[http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/05/pay-
enoug...](http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/05/pay-enough-or-
dont-pay-at-all.html)

~~~
paul_cryer
Frobozz,

Agreed - as long as quality/depth is of critical importance.

A trivial fee ($2) does not warrant such response and neither do we guarantee
that.

However, by charging that trivial fee, the goal is to "guarantee" an answer to
anyone. In sites like Reddit, unless you can pique some corners of one's
brain, you are not likely to get an insightful response in a private setting.
We allow you to 'own' your advice and women understand that it is only seen by
you and not the whole community. Therefore, they tend to have a more
'personalized' approach.

Of about 65 questions asked and a few hundred responses received so far we
have noticed that women are actually taking the time to respond. It's not the
$1 they make, but the trend seems to be that they actually 'enjoy' providing
advice to men.

~~~
frobozz
How do you guarantee the answer? What hold do you have over the ladies that
makes them answer?

If someone is only going to pay me a dollar for something, I'm not likely to
do it were it not something I'd do for free anyway.

This is the point of the "pay enough or don't pay at all" statement. Both
quality and quantity tend to go down if you go from pure volunteers to paying
below market rate.

To earn US Federal minimum wage, answerers would have to spend, on average, 8
minutes on each question. This is not just the reading and writing of the
question and answer, but also any time spent getting ready to work.

Obviously, you're the one who has real-world experience of this, and I'm just
an armchair pundit who has read a few articles; so you know more than me. I'm
just curious about how you have managed to go against the current received
wisdom.

------
ljlolel
You want to get some SEO traffic and linking going on. After the guy says he's
satisfied with an answer, ask him if he wants to make the answer public for
others to benefit from. (You can also offer for it to be edited to take out
any extra detail)

------
Ixiaus
Women giving advice [to men] is not a good thing - women only have a "feeling"
based notion of what they want (feelings are intangible and subjective).

In addition to all of the PUA/seduction stuff, theres one simple "technique"
I've learned: have fun, fun is infectious (particularly with women) and when
women are having fun they get horny and they also start to "feel" something
for the fellow that is their source of fun! Fun is light and not weighed down
by the dependency for an archetypal mother projection (needy and "smothering"
guys, that's you).

Fun feels so good - women love to feel good. If you happen to be the person
she's with when she's feeling even slightly above her baseline "good" she will
associate it with you, and if you can keep your cool and "play" with her a
little bit (ya know, don't be so easy to catch) she will fall head over heels
for you.

~~~
thomasgerbe
Likewise for women: just show interest and don't be afraid to be
aggressive/forward. I've met so many awesome women who either lament their
singleness or wonder why they never attract the 'good' guys.

------
araneae
To whoever asked "What do you think about this site?
<http://news.ycombinator.com> you are probably going to get a lot of women
answering that question that read HN already. FYI.

------
epaga
Sorry if this is answered somewhere, but I didn't see it in the FAQ: how do
you prevent guys from signing up as girls? I.e. how do you guarantee this is
really female advice?

~~~
paul_cryer
Check out the last box (scroll down) "Gender Verified" on this page:
<http://www.helpaguyout.com/ladies.php>

Basically, we ask women to submit their publicly available profiles such as
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for one-time verification purposes.

------
andy_boot
I wrote something similar as an experiment a year or so ago: <http://www.how-
they-think.com/>

except its free

------
edu
Why would a I pay $2 to a website when for more or less the same I can invite
a female friend to a coffee and talk about the issue as long as it's
necessary?

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jimwise
There's a Mr. Turing here to see you about whether this site is really
connecting him to a lady, sir.

------
kamakazizuru
and what's the guarantee that it's actually a woman answering and not some
greedy male who put up a female facebook profile?

