

Rate My Startup: webapp Exercise-Motivation helps you get up and exercise - angkec

Disclaimer: I know there were concerns about RMS posts a few days ago, but I promise you this webapp is a legitimate startup: domain name bought about a week ago and was redirected to my server at Google App Engine yesterday.  It took me at least half a year developing for it (more on that later) but never released before, and today I guess is its first day. It is at: http://www.exercise-motivation.com<p>So what does my new webapp do? It gives users more incentive to go and exercise by using peer pressures from their friends. It works like this: when a user signs up, the site asks the user a few of his friends' emails. Any time the user misses a scheduled workout, his chosen friends will be notified by email and are asked to talk to the user personally. On the other hand, when the user did workout according to schedule, his Facebook and Twitter status can be configured to reflect the fact, creating some kind of positive snow ball effect. The system judges whether or not the user works out by making them post a brief update every workout day.<p>This project started about a year ago when I was reading the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini in which he talked about how some chronic smokers quit smoking by telling everyone they are quitting. That intrigues me and lead me make a preliminary site called http://www.plansticker.com that supposedly helps you accomplish any long term plans by using social pressure from Twitter and Facebook. I almost forget about this site after it is done for about half a year during which I learnt how to find niches, how to marketing and all that kind of business stuff. Recently after much thought, I decided to make plansticker.com into a webapp to specifically help people who have problems sticking to their long term exercising plans (me being one of them). So I did a ton of UI work and copywriting and some code modifications to make exercise-motivation.com.<p>Exercise-motivation.com has a private beta waiting list partly because I want to stay close to Google App Engine's quota before it could support itself. Also I'd like to hear suggestions from active users to improve the webapp before going public in order to deliver a truly useful product that really helps its users.<p>Hope you find my startup helpful, and again, here is its address: http://www.exercise-motivation.com<p>Best Regards,
Angke
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qbproger
"Sounds good? Sign up for our private beta below and receive 20% discount when
we go public"

So you're charging me to have my friends encourage me to work out? I don't
understand what I'd be paying for. I could simply ask my friends to encourage
me.

That said, I don't think it's a bad idea, but a subscription might not be the
right way to monetize it. Gyms might have affiliate programs of some kind, or
be willing to pay for leads.

One more thought, a free iphone/android app that lets people easily and
quickly let you know they worked out would probably be good marketing.

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angkec
Thanks for the feedback.

Charging for the service had two reasons. First I wanted users to be serious
when they sign up, or the program will probably gonna fail. Also I didn't how
to monetize on the site so it could support itself.

Maybe I can make the pricing plan to be $1 which makes users serious about the
program and don't feel like they are being robbed.

