A startup for social begging

[rafski]

This is an interesting concept for a social game site, even if I am not so sure what its business model is.

Being the first person to have just won something on it I feel I owe them a plug in (I have no stakes in it, just happy to have won, trying to give back).

The site has its quirks and it is still in beta, there is loads of work to be done on it to get some traction. Improvements to the UX are being made all the time, would you have any suggestions as to what they could do better?

The site url: http://begfor.it

[bobwebb]

It sounds kind of fun. How does the company intend to fund the giving away of these items though? It looks to me like they're overestimating just how much money a visiting user brings to the site. This kind of site would need a large number of users to become profitable, that's for sure.

Could be an interesting marketing exercise, though. Even if you don't receive the product in question, you may end up wanting to buy one for yourself anyway.

Also, the 4-step diagram showing people 'how it works' has two steps saying how one signs up, one saying 'Beg & Vote' and then 'WINNING!'. It doesn't explain that well what the site's actually about. Something like "Tell us why you should get this prize","Vote for other users", "Win!" could work better.

Or I might be wrong. I guess feedback is (usually) better than silence, so there you go. :)

EDIT: Aesthetically, the site looks really nice. The scrolling sidebar's annoying, though. Using the scrollwheel or scrollbar makes it lag behind. It distracts from the items on show, which should probably be the focus of the user's attention.

[tparsons → bobwebb]

Thx for the feedback. The 4 step graphic will be updated.

We will be updating with multiple revenue channels. None of them include basic traffic, click ads, make a few pennies.

[cyborganics]

Possible answer: Promotion for the merchandise. The promoters get tons of videos and commentary floating around talking about their products. As for the site making any kind of money, maybe in direct advertising for page views relating to the promoter.

The more 'ads' of people begging, the more it seems like people really really want the product and the more funny / entertaining it is the more views it will gets further reinforcing the popularity of the product... well, that's how I'd do it. I can't imagine more than a few weeks of lots of cold calls to get tracking with a few companies that have plenty of product to use for promotion to kick things off.

[venturebros]

Love the idea but I am not really liking the design. The background color is off putting to me for some reason and I don't like the side menu. If you want the menu to be there when the user scrolls down just have it fixed.

The video is way longer then it needs to be. Make it shorter and more straight forward.

[tparsons → venturebros]

Yes the video is too long. It was just an interim for the beta. Once we get out of beta we'll have a better video that is much shorter.

The color of the background for now stays. Still studying data in regards to the usage of side menu.

Thx for taking the time to give us some feedback.

[tparsons]

Hey just found this in my refers. Thx for the feedback I appreciate it and am working on improving the system daily. We have a few options for monetization that I'm working on now. Legal counsel didn't let us go live with it so that is why you don't see that side of the site at the moment.

[rafski]

As cyborganics says, having companies sponsor it to virally launch products might be the thing…

[mtogo]

http://begfor.it

[csmeder]

hmm, this could be very viral: smart idea.