Here is the deal - we're building an instant answer portal. We're targeting to clients who need to get an instant multiple answers to their problem or a question (say, within 60 minutes time frame). This will cost money (client's budget), that will be split over the subscribers, who will answer the questions. One of the key points, that makes it interesting for market research groups, is that we'll be able to generate more then one answer for one question. So here comes the major question - while it's pretty transparent and kind of motivating for subscribers, how do you think this is interesting for clients? What target group of clients do you think we may be interesting for? What kind of a questions do we sound like a great niche? I have my own answers, but they're definitely not enough (one of the reasons why we're developing this portal :). Just give me any feedback, either positive or negative. Please, drop me a line if you see this either as a perspective startup or a looser. THANKS!
Here's two random data points for you:
1. I, coincidentally this morning, just asked my first question on LinkedIn. I had my first answer in 25 minutes. Done.<p>2. S&P runs a service called Vista Research. They've built a stable of experts in various vertical markets, and they've cultivated an advisory client list. So the clients come in with crazy questions about things impacting their business or investment decisions and S&P hooks them up with the Expert to answer. The Experts bill the client, and S&P also bills the client as a subscriber with access to all the experts. (I'm an 'expert' and get a question once a month or so. It's never turned into business for our company yet though.) Theirs is a super-premium service for people making $million decisions. It's also heavily manual. Recruiting experts, selling clients, matching clients to experts, etc. Maybe there's some web2.0 optimization of that niche to be had.<p>
Hey white,<p>This kind of idea is hard to evaluate up-front. Sometimes you just have to build it and see but I think you could be onto something.<p>If you do it, try to integrate visual ways of showing that the app is working, and spend effort on getting that key first answer incredibly fast. Another question to ask yourself is if you want someone to wait and watch the answers come in, or if they'll come back in an hour to see what came in. That decision is crucial to how you build the app.<p>This article might be of interest: <a href="http://www.seo24.org.uk/how-yahoo-or-facebook-could-really-kill-google.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.seo24.org.uk/how-yahoo-or-facebook-could-really-k...</a> Most isn't relevant, but skip down to the text "Think of it this way - today's search engines answer three basic questions:" <p>It's talking about <i>exactly</i> the problem you're solving, and the value you're providing. Hope that helps and all the best with the idea!<p>We built something similar, but our focus has been on gathering votes quickly rather than answers. Personally I think something magical that happens when an app crosses over into being truly (and visually) real-time.<p>- aaron
Maybe tech support? I don't know about the multiple answers bit, but perhaps there's a market for crowdsourced tech support, that works much faster than regular channels.
To me, off the top of my head, I'd say you need to first focus on the community that you'll be targeting. People want something better that makes their life easier. I think the bigger challenge you'll have is the credibility of responses. I'd almost suggest a way for people looking for an answer to evaluate the answers they've found. I'd take a look at www.qaboom.com. A similar idea, but it is targeted to students. The question I would ask myself, is, who are the early adopters. If you have some early adopters, what is going to make it worth while for them? What if the person tags their question with a category and another person subscribes to the RSS of that category...being able to see what others are asking and then seeing the real time responses is going to be powerful. Just some thoughts. I'd love to be a beta tester for you. Let me know. Honestly, you might want to look at a model like about.com. Find some experts who already belong to a community and give them a % of revenues. just some thoughts, I think it is a great idea! Good luck with it!
You mention 'market research groups' and maybe that's your differentiation niche. Some statistically sound methodology that Google and LinkedIn and Yahoo don't provide. Then you can build your audience by dealing with a professional groups of question askers. Consumer products, advertising, anything with a mass audience likes to base on market research.<p>
I am not a big fan of advertising-only business models but I think this is one idea that would be better off relying on ads than on paying users. To be frank, I just don't think that users will pay for answers. They will exhaust other avenues first and even then most won't be able to bring themselves to pay.<p>As I explained in a recent blog post (<a href="http://www.ideatagging.com/a-facebook-and-yahoo-partnership-that-could-trouble-google/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ideatagging.com/a-facebook-and-yahoo-partnership-...</a>), after search, questions are the next best thing for detecting users' intent and therefore are a good basis for tageted ads. So my advice, much as it pains me to say it, is to ditch the paying users idea and instead focus on ad revenues.<p>By the way, I have some interesting angles on the whole questions and answers thing. Contact me via my blog (link above) and I would be happy to share. Good luck.
What do you plan to do differently from the likes of Google Answers that would allow you to deliver on the 60-minute timeframe more often than they did?
Have you considered developing the technology and then licensing it to special interest groups? Somehow I get the feeling this would work well in vertical niches (i.e. trade associations).
>Please, drop me a line<p>The email address in your profile doesn't show up to the public, you've gotta reenter it in the about: field if you want other people to be able to see it.
site:answers.google.com<p>After the first page, it's basically a list of old questions and answers -- so reading over the first hundred or so might give you a good idea of what the market is for this service.