Progress Thread: (Broxholm) Study Nutty

**broxholm** · Sep 3rd, 2011, 08:12 PM

Ok, so I have started my first venture into a fastlane internet solution. My idea is a free homework help/study forum where students visit the site to ask questions in subjects they need help in and offer solutions to others in need. Conceptually, the site should be self-sustaining once members hit a critical mass. There are other sites out there like this already, but usually they require some sort of payment for a "guaranteed answer" that is not always the best quality or correct. Therefore, I'm making my site free to use to create an incentive for people to ask questions, and am trying to work on a reputation system for people to post helpful answers. I started this forum because I noticed that there is no single destination online where students go to get help like "hey facebook me". Some use social media, some schools have their own portals, some use yahoo questions. However, it still seems scattered to me, and I want to work on making an online homework help destination that is more universal. Since I'm not a coder, I wanted to take an evolution approach to the website as opposed to a waterfall style, which tries to make the site perfect before launch. I placed a "beta" banner on the page to help display the fact that it's in progress.

Ok, time for some NECST discussion:
Need:
-Students get stuck with homework and need help.
-Students want to make studying easier/less of a hassle
-Students want to connect with others who are in the same curriculum
-Students want to get better grades
-Learning from/teaching peers is more effective than learning from teachers/books

Entry:
-Many online forums, no strong performer
-*need something to be exceptional/different*
-*new to internet business, so don't really know what the process is*

Control:
-Using wordpress theme right now. So not really in control of how site looks, however it is pretty close to what I imagined in my notebook.
-Wordpress etc. are tools that are fairly reliable platforms and provide me enough control to get off the ground, especially without huge time or money sink

Scale:
-Being online destination, can reach out to all students
-Can go international
-Can touch all subjects of study
-Even though students graduate college every year, more students are born, keeping population of students growing
-Non-students can ask questions too if stuck on a problem for work, etc. This can open doors to many more users

Time:
-Once hit critical mass, should be fairly self-sustaining. Until then, I may need to do some work to help answer people's questions or ask questions and have people come in to answer them.

1July2011-3Sep2011 Progress:
KK, so this is what I've done so far

Website:
-have domain
-have hosting provider
-have platforms for design (wordpress + plugins)
-have ability for people to post, reply, use formulas, etc.

Online marketing:
-used free google adwords money for a few weeks (noob @seo... didn't provide many conversions)
-twitter/facebook pages up ~ 70 twitter followers in 3 weeks. Participate in an education chat weekly
-youtube page (only 1 video on there though, and not skinned like twitter page yet)
-flickr page for promo pics or future pictures
-guest blog post on a tutoring network website

Physical marketing:
-made a few iron-on tshirts to wear during promotion
-over 100 spiral notebooks promoted in 3 different local universities during orientation week. Given in exchange for signing up.
-couple hundred "business cards" made for quick handouts at schools.
-flyers posted on public posting boards at schools
-offered free 1GB usb hard drive for US-based registered users...only gave away 3 so far

Email marketing:
-weekly university community classified ad distributed to undergrads
-started monthly newsletter, but 2nd newsletter will not have much to talk about if no one starts posting

Other platforms:
-mailchimp for newsletters/thank you letters/etc
-unbounce for promotional landing page/conversion tracking of landing page
-basecamp for personally keeping track of progress/project management

Results:
-initial version of website is up..
~100 signups
-no questions posted yet

~$1200 spent so far
-some visibility

So.....

What am I doing wrong? What can I do to make students post homework questions on the site? Can I get a critique? This is my first internet venture and I'm kind of concerned about there being no traffic on my site. I'd appreciate any input and I will continue to post my progress here on the Fastlane.

---
-Broxholm

**broxholm** · Sep 4th, 2011, 01:34 PM

Just went out to try to do some on-campus marketing at a local university. Much respect goes out to folks who are able to sell stuff on the street. People treat you like you're trying to sell them aluminum siding or something. Well, hopefully it all pays off in the end, but my back to school promotional materials are about to run out, so I guess I need to try something else now.

**naushad1289** · Sep 4th, 2011, 02:28 PM

Props on action. Good thing that you went out and tried and did something.
Your concept has potential, but you need to offer a WAYYY better product. I see some people are using your site (hopefully they are actual users and not your friends/family)

Brutal Honest truth (It might hurt):
-Still see no competitive advantage for your site
-You are wasting money on promotional products when your site is not that good in the first place.
-There are sites 100x better than yours that are out there
-A wordpress is not enough as it makes it like a message board. Just imagine if there were 10,000 people actively using your website...do you see the problem now...not scalable. My question will be down at the bottom of the page by the time I refresh if 10,000 people were using the website.
-Design is dull/not professional (students care about the ease-of-use a lot and the Graphical interface).

You need either learn to make a new website instead of relying on word press or you need to find/hire someone to make a new website for you.

**advancedyn** · Sep 4th, 2011, 02:56 PM

I respectfully disagree. Have you seen Craigslist?

**advancedyn** · Sep 4th, 2011, 06:29 PM

@Broxholm:

Perhaps this link may have something of benefit to you: SEOmoz | Social Media Marketing Guide, Directory, & Resources

**broxholm** · Sep 5th, 2011, 08:41 AM

Hey thanks for the advice. Some of the things you mentioned @naushad were already on my mind and I'm trying to come up with solutions to a few of those problems. @advancedyn great guide, I will definitely look into SEO to help with marketing.

I found a person who has connections to a school overseas. She might be able to help me market my site to students in her country. Though I don't know at what level.

Happy Labor Day!!!