

Show HN: Resumonk – a year after it was launched here - bharani_m
http://www.resumonk.com/?s=hn

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bharani_m
I did a Show HN [1] for Resumonk almost an year back and got some awesome
feedback & suggestions. I am about to finish college now and planning to work
full time on it along with a co-founder.

So far it has got 17000+ users and a small percentage of them purchased the
original $9 PRO plan. Based on all the user feedback, we have now revamped the
product and added some of the widely requested features like DOC format
support in the new Premium plan.

We would love to get feedback of the community on how we can improve the
offering and build a profitable business. Thanks!

[1] - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934370>

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rkaercher
Funny, although I'm only reading HN every once in a while I do remember your
post. My first thought was that you would never get a decent business from
that. Was very impressed after I had actually clicked the link and seen the
site. Today I'm even more impressed, your site looks professional and you've
found a pricing model that seems viable. Not talking about your 17k users
which in itself is an impressive number to achieve! I wish you success and a
sustainable business, you deserve it!

~~~
bharani_m
Yes, initially even I was a bit tentative about the product. I wasn't sure if
this could be a viable business model. But the response and reception was
simply amazing. Thanks to the HN community, I believe that we have had a good
start but we still have a long way to go. Thanks a lot for those kind words!
It means a lot!

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andrewljohnson
Maybe you could expand your market by doing other kinds of quick online
document design. Instead of resumes, businesses might like to be able to
generate attractive proposals, marketing, or fund-raising documents. They
would pay more than $9 for such a service too. When I looked at your site,
that was the first thing I decided you could possibly help me with.

It seems like you could have a pretty broad offering by replacing the
templating functionality of MS Word for various documents. You can compete
both on price and ease of use - I think Word ends up being pretty imposing for
a lot of people.

You probably should stay out of finance documents though (invoices), which
tend to get auto-generated by software. That would require integration effort,
as I don't think high-value businesses tend to do invoices by hand.

~~~
bharani_m
Thanks for your suggestions Andrew. Yes we would like to expand to other kind
of online document design. We will have to identify a few good niche(s) and
then take it from there.

Resume creation itself seems like a big market to us, and it would be great if
we can help people do it easily than the other alternatives, we agree that MS
Word has become quite imposing with each new version of Office and let's see
how much we can simplify it for the users.

~~~
pionar
I've used Resumonk in the past, and it's great. It's really surprising to me
that this kind of service isn't more prevalent.

~~~
bharani_m
Happy to know that you liked Resumonk. Made our day!

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LAMike
This helped me get a job last week!

I'll use the updated version when I'm job searching again

~~~
bharani_m
Wow! Congrats! Really glad that Resumonk could be of your help. How can we
reach you for a testimonial? We can't see your email address in the 'About'
section of your HN profile.

~~~
LAMike
mvg210@gmail.com :)

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momchenr
From a design standpoint, I think that your mix of flat-ui and non-flat
elements gives it a strange feel. For example, your headline has shadow and
depth to it, but other elements are strictly flat. It's just a design
inconsistency you might want to address as you mature.

~~~
bharani_m
Great suggestion. Actually, I started off trying to create a completely flat
UI like the current design trend but I love shadows and gradients so much that
I couldn't get myself to stop using them. I'll definitely keep your suggestion
in mind when I am doing the next design iteration.

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envex
Looks good but the stock Flat UI icons don't really fit in with the rest of
the design.

It seems like the two major "styles" don't work well together.

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adambard
I had this idea back in March 2011 with <http://resumatic.net/>, but I never
really ran with it and it has by any measure failed (it's still up, since it
costs me nothing to host). After testing the market, and my meagre design
abilities, I decided that it wasn't the business for me -- I just wasn't sure
job seekers would be willing to shell out.

So with that in mind, it's sort of cool and inspiring to read about someone
doing something quite similar and actually making it work. Have you ever
written about the process of building Resumonk as a business in detail? I'd
love to read more.

~~~
bharani_m
I do plan to write about my experiences as a student entrepreneur in India. I
hope Resumonk becomes a profitable business soon, and I'll be happy to share
my learning about it.

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Skoofoo
I tried this at some point and recommended it to a couple people in the past.
I liked the convenient interface, though I remember having an issue with my
address breaking at an inconvenient location and there was no apparent way to
fix it.

I eventually hacked together a solution using Handlebars and PhantomJS, which
isn't as convenient as Resumonk, but it gave me the stylistic control I wanted
without having to learn LaTeX. <https://github.com/skofo/resume>

~~~
bharani_m
Sorry about the issue you faced in the past. We have completely revamped the
interface now and Resumonk now uses an in-place editor. Would love to get your
feedback on it.

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websymphony
If anyone is looking for a completely free alternative, I have created HipCV
for online resumes. <https://hipcv.com>

~~~
bharani_m
HipCV looks great. I just wanted to point out that you can create still create
a beautiful resume with Resumonk's free plan. You would only need to upgrade
to the Premium plan if you want additional features like .DOC conversion.

Best of luck with HipCV. I hope it goes well.

~~~
websymphony
Thank you, resumonk looks pretty great as well. :)

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bergerb
The site is busted in Firefox

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bharani_m
I just checked it on Firefox and it looked fine to me. Could you please tell
me your Firefox version and your screen resolution?

~~~
bergerb
FF 20 - 1920x1080

It is fixed now. All text was black.

