
16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese people name their babies - pmuk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37255033/a-16-year-old-british-girl-earns-48000-helping-chinese-people-name-their-babies
======
galfarragem
Interesting points to think about:

\- It's just a wordpress website. You don't need nothing fancy to be
successful.

\- Unknown niche market instead of 'going with the flow'.

\- A 16 year old is capable of making a 'good enough' algorithm for a new
market.

\- Her (amateur?) pricing strategy/conversion funnel seems more balanced than
some made by professionals.

~~~
joshaidan
> It's just a wordpress website. You don't need nothing fancy to be
> successful.

I've observed similar products myself, often ones that are more successful
versions of my own creations. I've seen stuff built with spaghetti PHP code,
yet it was marketed well and more people were paying money to use it than my
own. Yet when I looked at it, the first thing I saw was an SQL injection
vulnerability that would allow me to drop the entire database.

It makes me wonder though, if instead of looking at entrepreneurship from the
software development side of things, maybe instead I should be trying to build
a marketing and advertising agency that builds software. These types of
companies seem to make more money than I do.

Yet at the same time, in the marketing companies that come to my mind, the
weaknesses in their products tend to be sustainability. I think overtime
customers are going to become frustrated with their lack of good support and
ability to maintain code and add new features.

Just my thoughts when reflecting on all of this. :)

~~~
ensiferum
As an engineer I find it an appalling when you realize that quality
engineering means nothing in terms of financial success. I used to think that
if you build a quality product the users will pick it up and it will become
successful when in fact it couldn't be further away from reality.

Thus, bugs and quality are secondary. Why spend $ on engineering and fixing
bugs when you can spend that on marketing for much better ROI.

~~~
vasilipupkin
I encourage you to stop thinking about the world in binary terms. how much
engineering matters for financial success is a continuous function of several
parameters. It's never about either not mattering at all or mattering 100%

~~~
gumby
I agree, and to carry it a little further: the essence of engineering is good
tradeoffs (can I build an adequate bridge for the needed cost? If I can carry
more cargo in this plane, can I make the fuel requirement grow linearly or
better? zip we cut the range 10% we can cut the op ex 20% -- will that still
work? Do I really need to spec precision resistors or can I compensate
somewhere else?

The trade off skills apply outside the engineering domain as well.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Except with engineering you're often dealing with non-monetary tradeoffs. The
plane serves a valuable purpose _outside_ of making someone some money. The
quality work/better marketing tradeoff is all about making someone money by
providing negative real-world value to others.

~~~
gumby
You're making a false dichotomy.

Engineering tradeoffs are very much about costs. I could (well once upon a
time I could :-) design a bridge that's stable up to a (not very) nearby
atomic blast; more stable than the bedrock it's built on. But that would
require an unnecessary level of resources (unless atomic resistance is in fact
a design requirement). I could design the most super-awesome web site that
scales to 40 billion unique visitors...but it's _unlikely_ to be needed
(though if some of the uniques are robotic, perhaps it is). Simply choosing an
alloy that's simpler to work with the tools on hand is a rescue tradeoff, and
those resources are time and money.

Likewise, the plane (I assume you mean airplane) has only one valuable purpose
(transport people or goods that someone wants transported) and that is
denominated in money. Make it cheaper and more people can fly, or pay less for
their gadgets or fresh shellfish.

It's incredibly naive to to say that marketing is some zero-sum game. If you
have an amazing bandage that is cheap and saves lives you still have to get
the word out.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If you have an amazing bandage that is cheap and saves lives you still have
> to get the word out._

The core topic in this subthread is focusing work on marketing the bandage
instead of making it cheaper/save more lives, because marketing has much
better ROI than actually providing value to people.

And the word can get out fine by itself, actually. The word of mouth is a
pretty effective thing - and a lot of marketing is trying to game it, getting
increased profits by destroying its usefulness.

~~~
aidenn0
Here's an example with the metaphor where marketing is _not_ zero-sum:

1) Person A makes a crappy bandage (Y units of quality) with X units of budget
and markets with 9X units of budget

2) Person B makes a decent bandage (5Y units of quality) with 5X units of
budget.

If person B were to also market the bandage with 5X units of budget, they will
take a larger fraction of person A's market share than if they don't, thus
providing more value to people. Yes you can argue that if person A didn't
exist, then they wouldn't need to spend this money and the bandage could be
cheaper, but this is clearly an example where adding marginal marketing can be
a net benefit to society.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes, I agree that adding a marginal marketing can be a net benefit to society.
But the problem is, in the real world, the person A wins - marketing has much
better ROI than investing in quality. I argue against the marketing precisely
because of its power to paper over the problems with the actual good/service.

------
tvanantwerp
My wife is Chinese and has told me many of the ridiculous English names people
have. We've heard Cinderella before. My favorite that we've encountered was a
young woman named Pancake.

It's not just a problem of limited access to information, but also limited
knowledge of what qualifies as a good English name. All of the people we've
encountered were from Hong Kong, which has no Great Firewall to contend with.
We've also seen many people using names that haven't been popular in the West
in a long time, like Eugene or Doris.

~~~
dilemma
I have friends named Dolphin, Fish and Shadow and they know perfectly well
that their names are funny. I'm certain that Pancake does too. Having an
English name is a bit unreal for them just as it would be for you and me
getting a Chinese name, so why not get a funny one?

Also, naming in another language is difficult. Microsoft knows that, as "Bing"
means disease in mandarin.

~~~
mediumdeviation
"Bing" as it is commonly pronounced in English doesn't exist in the Chinese
language. Words with the pinyin 'bing' does, but saying it means 'disease' in
mandarin is somewhat disingenuous, because it could refer to any of the four
inflection and the very large number of words under each of those, like the
word for ice, soldier, sideburns, guests, etc.

~~~
verroq
Bing's pronunciation in English is exactly the downward inflection used for 病

~~~
smallnamespace
Not quite:

\- B- in Chinese is unvoiced, whereas it's voiced in English

\- the -ing in Chinese and English are pronounced slightly differently

\- Bing in English is usually inflected somewhere between 1st and 4th tone --
病, properly pronounced, has a much more noticeable downward pitch slide

It's fair to say though that if you say 'Bing' when you mean 病, a Mandarin
speaker will probably understand you.

Source: am native English and Chinese speaker

~~~
verroq
It is close enough pronouncation wise. Downward inflection is stronger in 病.

------
mobiuscog
If only the full 'background' was mentioned:

[http://www.cotswoldlife.co.uk/people/celebrity-
interviews/li...](http://www.cotswoldlife.co.uk/people/celebrity-
interviews/lisa_maxwell_s_life_in_the_cotswolds_1_4122389)

~~~
planetjones
Ok so her dad is Paul Jessup:

 _who owns the Great British Teddy Bear Company and Big Red Bus English,
offering language tuition to children in China._

so not quite a rags to riches story, but she's still got a website that fills
a need and is able to monetise. A lot more successful than many silicon valley
start-ups :)

~~~
deong
More successful by my standards (and yours, I guess), but not by the standards
silicon valley uses. I assume lots of objectively stupid businesses are run by
people who are capable of doing something profitable, but profitable isn't the
goal.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
In anywhere else where people don't throw billions into moonshots it is the
goal. Nobody forces you to work on your small business all the time, you
create it, you hire someone to do it, you collect money. If your only goal is
to lose as much money as possible, as that means "pre-profit", then good luck.

------
verroq
The site is [http://specialname.cn](http://specialname.cn)

Judging by the amount of well written Chinese text on the page this girl is
either a native speaker or she had help.

Nowhere does the page indicate the names are paid. However clicking though the
flow takes us several seconds and requires us to agonise over five different
qualities. By this time we are now sufficiently invested in this site. We are
now so invested and curious we consider paying the 68 RMB price anchor.
Luckily there is an ongoing "promotion" that allows you to buy your name for
only 9 RMB, what a deal!

This is the work of a genius.

------
imron
I had a look at the website (specialname.cn for those interested), and one
thing that stood out is that she's definitely trying to hide the fact that it
was founded by a 16 year old girl.

Normally, I'd say there's nothing wrong with that and also absolutely no need
to mention it, but in this case she's specifically misleading people who visit
the site.

Scroll down to the bottom (or view the about-us page -
[http://www.specialname.cn/about-us/](http://www.specialname.cn/about-us/))
and compare the picture there to picture in the bbc article. One of those
pictures is not like the other.

The blurb is then even more misleading - saying she's been visiting China
regularly for the last 12 years and is often asked by colleagues to give
English names for Chinese babies.

Now, given her father's business, I'm sure it's quite likely that she's been
visiting China for 12 years, but I'm pretty sure she didn't have many
colleagues when she was 4 years old.

Mad props to her for setting up a site like this, and I can see the reasons
for wanting to bend the truth with her background, but it just rankles a
little to see this being done.

~~~
kirubakaran
Why does that rankle you? People are biased and you have to work with that.
This is no different than one person companies using the royal "we" in the
website copy.

~~~
bshimmin
I think there's a difference between a solo freelancer saying "we" and said
freelancer presenting a picture of some random people in a random office as
"his team".

~~~
ksk
How have you established that they're random people?

~~~
bshimmin
In this specific case? Well, it's a stock photo:
[https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-
female-...](https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-female-
mature-student-holding-her-tablet-posing-stairs-smiling-camera-image35781709)

~~~
ksk
Ah, I see, yeah that is pretty dishonest.

------
dTal
>But Beau doesn't know which names are the most popular on her website, and
she's "happy about that".

This could go hilariously wrong. Her algorithm attempts to match names with
personality traits. Some personality traits will be more popular than others,
therefore some names will be more popular. Depending on exactly how it's all
weighted, some names may be heavily biased towards or against. Without
feedback and adjustment to maintain a sensible distribution she could well end
up naming every third baby the same thing. Without anyone ever noticing until
the next census.

Which gives me an idea for a website! "namemybabyaliceorbob.com"

~~~
macintux
The names she's selling aren't used for official names, more like nicknames.

See
[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2009/04/the_na...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2009/04/the_names_du_xiao_hua_but_call_me_steve.html)

------
rajadigopula
A bit of reflection - If I were in the same situation as the girl was, I would
have named the baby and left it there. Hmm.. No wonder how many opportunities
I am missing every day.

------
cheng1
This is a fake marketing story. I guess her mother is the website owner, at
least the website's about page suggests so in Chinese.

~~~
imron
No, I think the about page is just trying to hide the fact it was started by a
16 year old.

The image is just a stock image:
[http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-160492445/stock-photo-
portra...](http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-160492445/stock-photo-portrait-of-
a-smiling-mature-female-student-at-desk-against-bookshelves-in-the-
library.html?src=fAN1L3wX9vKY63BAa-9O6g-1-14)

Yes, the text is also misleading, but again it seems more to hide the fact
that she's 16. Her father has businesses in China so it's likely that she
_has_ been visiting China for 12 years. I doubt she's been giving English
names to Chinese babies for that long though.

------
uhtred
Now if I could just think of something to sell to the Chinese, and find a
partner in China to help me set up hosting over there.

~~~
tmikaeld
Go for it!

1\. You can find good translators on UpWork

2\. Use Alibaba Cloud (www.aliyun.com) to setup a server anywhere in China.

------
skizm
I'm confused, how did her website get around the restricted internet in China?
The article mentions there are other similar baby naming websites, but China
does not have access to them . What makes her site special?

~~~
tantalor
GFoC does not block sites by default; it functions as a blacklist.

[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/quickly-check-site-visible-
grea...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/quickly-check-site-visible-great-
firewall-china/)

You can check any site here:
[http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org](http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org)

However, I could not find the website for "Special Name" to check; does it
exist?

Edit: Address is [http://www.specialname.cn/;](http://www.specialname.cn/;) it
was very hard to find on Google.

~~~
vxNsr
Its actually in the top of the op article

~~~
leephillips
I don't see it there.

~~~
tantalor
Oh, I see it now; ridiculous bold dark purple anchor style on bold text is
impossible to notice.

------
craigbarber
The article makes out that the girl built and designed it herself. This is not
the case, it's a slick, locally designed site ( Chinese language etc ) even
the link at the bottom is for a parent company of some sort. It's a highly
developed and tested site, this is no one person, overnight success.

------
XparXnoiAx
The big difficulty here is letting people know that the project even exists.
Most people here could build it, but figuring out how to bring in customers is
the hard part.

------
XparXnoiAx
It's kind of a problem. I knew a Chinese girl who chose the English name
"Squirrel." When I told her it wasn't a real name, she didn't quite
understand.

~~~
caf
I dunno, that's definitely on the verge of working as a name. You can
certainly imagine that as a nickname.

~~~
blowski
Yep - Douglas Squirrel
([http://douglassquirrel.com/](http://douglassquirrel.com/)) is a guy in
London who does a lot of work with startups, and he is mostly known just as
'Squirrel'. Really cool guy, by the way, if you get the chance to talk to him
at a meetup.

------
p333347
Two things I wonder about.

1\. does the money legally go to the girl or her parents/guardians (I guess a
16 y/o is still a minor), and how much of this is taxable?

2\. how exactly is the tonality established for the English names?

~~~
Symbiote
The minimum age to register a company in the UK is 16.

The minimum age for part-time work in the UK is 13, with exceptions for
modelling and acting. Age 13-14, the most common job is delivering newspapers,
since at this age there are big restrictions on working hours. At 15, it's
more common to work in a small supermarket, but I think it's become a lot less
common than 10 years ago. (Of course, there are unofficial jobs, like
gardening and cleaning cars.)

If this girl pays herself the whole £48,000 as a salary, the tax would be
£12,693.20 leaving £35,306.80. Under 16s don't pay National Insurance
(healthcare + unemployment etc tax), they would take home £39,600.00 from the
same salary. The first £11,000 of salary is tax free, regardless of age.

[https://listentotaxman.com/](https://listentotaxman.com/) will calculate
this.

[https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/minimum-ages-children-
ca...](https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/minimum-ages-children-can-work)

~~~
p333347
Thanks for a constructive reply.

~~~
Symbiote
In general, 16 is actually the more important age in the UK in practical
terms.

At that point, one can move out from their parents, no longer attend school,
have sex, marry, join the army, consent to your own medical treatment, and
apply for a passport without your parents' consent.

Though it's generally not considered good life choices to be doing most of
these this young.

------
brianbreslin
How is she accepting payments in china? Does AliPay have a good system for
that? I'm more interested in how one sells into china easily from the outside.
Does paypal work ?

~~~
germanier
She uses Alipay Cross Border
[https://global.alipay.com/ospay/home.htm](https://global.alipay.com/ospay/home.htm)
which converts every transaction to GBP and remits the value to a GBP bank
account.

(Try going through to the payment page and you see the conversion to GBP
happening.)

------
richardkeller
The concept of marketing to an international audience fascinates me. I head up
a small web design + development agency in South Africa, and recently I've set
my sights on finding international clients, specifically in the US. How do
people generally go about this?

What kind of marketing went into this girl's business to do so well in a
country that she doesn't even live in?

------
deadfish
I used to live in China and met some students with very unusual English names.
My favourite of which was 'Finger'. When I asked him why he chose the name he
answered 'I like Kurt Cobain and he played the guitar with his finger'. Not
sure what was wrong with Kurt.

------
lorenzo20002
I would like to know how she assigned personality traits to each English name

Elegant, Motion, Sensitive, Insistent, Confident, Honest, Clever, Creative,
Optimistic, Reliable, Keen, Have empa

And how many names there are in the DB? between 1320=PERMUT(12;3) and
95040=PERMUT(12;5)

ty

------
kalsk
Is it common for Chinese people to give their children English names, or is
the intended audience native-english-speakers who are living in China?

------
zizzles
The website isn't even loading. The influx of HN readers must be overloading
the low-bandwith servers.

Edit: Finally made it on.

Clicked a few icons (for which I believe represented personality traits) and
then I was asked to pay money. Who would actually purchase this unintuitive
random name generator? Chinese are absolutely delusional for using this, then
again they'll eat anything up that comes from the Western World.

Imagine if your son or daughter asked you how you came up with their name.
Your response, "bought it for $11.99 on the internet".

------
brass9
Googling "special name" turns up the BBC article. What is the FQDN of the
actual website?

~~~
rince
It's [http://www.specialname.cn/](http://www.specialname.cn/) I think it's
getting hammered at the moment

------
z3t4
stock image of a woman : "Hi I'm the CEO ..."

"please wait until our experts choose a special name for your baby ..."

Where goes the line of white lies?

Reminds me of "Catch Me If You Can" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" movies.

------
brianbreslin
Why didn't I think of this? HMMM could this work for other asian languages?

~~~
amgin3
Maybe, but I know in Vietnam, all citizens are required by law to have a
traditional Vietnamese name.

------
billconan
kinda unrelated, if I want to start an online business similar to this one to
charge oversea users, how can I implement the payment system?

what payment system would be available globally?

------
pessimizer
Three guesses at what inspired Beau Jessup's passion for helping parents to
not give terrible names to their children.

~~~
petercooper
;-) Both Beau and Jessup are far more common names in England than the US
(249th vs 1580th for Beau).

~~~
tantalor
It's very unusual for girls, probably because it literally means "male"
([http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beau](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/beau)).

1 in 1,589 boys ([http://www.babynamescience.com/baby-name/Beau-
boy](http://www.babynamescience.com/baby-name/Beau-boy))

1 in 235,542 girls ([http://www.babynamescience.com/baby-name/Beau-
girl](http://www.babynamescience.com/baby-name/Beau-girl))

~~~
goodcanadian
_It 's very unusual for girls, probably because it literally means "male"_

No, it is from French: literally, "handsome," or the masculine form of
"beautiful." Still an odd choice for a girl. The definition you quote is what
it has come to mean in English, but it is really a shorthand.

~~~
logfromblammo
Technically, the girls named "Beau" should have been named "Belle".

