Interesting points to think about:<p>- It's just a wordpress website. You don't need nothing fancy to be successful.<p>- Unknown niche market instead of 'going with the flow'.<p>- A 16 year old is capable of making a 'good enough' algorithm for a new market.<p>- Her (amateur?) pricing strategy/conversion funnel seems more balanced than some made by professionals.
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.<p>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.
If only the full 'background' was mentioned:<p><a href="http://www.cotswoldlife.co.uk/people/celebrity-interviews/lisa_maxwell_s_life_in_the_cotswolds_1_4122389" rel="nofollow">http://www.cotswoldlife.co.uk/people/celebrity-interviews/li...</a>
The site is <a href="http://specialname.cn" rel="nofollow">http://specialname.cn</a><p>Judging by the amount of well written Chinese text on the page this girl is either a native speaker or she had help.<p>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!<p>This is the work of a genius.
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.<p>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.<p>Scroll down to the bottom (or view the about-us page - <a href="http://www.specialname.cn/about-us/" rel="nofollow">http://www.specialname.cn/about-us/</a>) and compare the picture there to picture in the bbc article. One of those pictures is not like the other.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
>But Beau doesn't know which names are the most popular on her website, and she's "happy about that".<p>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.<p>Which gives me an idea for a website! "namemybabyaliceorbob.com"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Two things I wonder about.<p>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?<p>2. how exactly is the tonality established for the English names?
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 ?
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?<p>What kind of marketing went into this girl's business to do so well in a country that she doesn't even live in?
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.
I would like to know how she assigned personality traits to each English name<p>Elegant, Motion, Sensitive, Insistent, Confident, Honest,
Clever, Creative, Optimistic, Reliable, Keen, Have empa<p>And how many names there are in the DB?
between 1320=PERMUT(12;3) and 95040=PERMUT(12;5)<p>ty
The website isn't even loading. The influx of HN readers must be overloading the low-bandwith servers.<p>Edit: Finally made it on.<p>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.<p>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".
stock image of a woman : "Hi I'm the CEO ..."<p>"please wait until our experts choose a special name for your baby ..."<p>Where goes the line of white lies?<p>Reminds me of "Catch Me If You Can" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" movies.
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?<p>what payment system would be available globally?