Critique this idea: Daily market updates via text message (and more!)

[Ivan]

I'm going to start testing this in a few days, and would really appreciate some input before I sink my lunch money into an Adwords campaign. I'm not emotionally attached to the idea, so fire away.

Short Story:

I'm starting a service that does 3 things for customers:

- text message market updates (Dow Jones, precious metals, crude oil prices, etc sent via SMS on a daily, biweekly, or weekly basis)
- email economic news summaries (biweekly or weekly)
- text message alerts of catastrophic economic events (ie, a currency collapse, market crash, etc)

I want to do it as a monthly subscription service (I'm thinking between $2-$5/month, processed through Paypal's micropayment system). I'm pretty sure this is being done already, but there's no "household name" that I know of. I want my company to be that name.

Long Story (details):

The basic idea is to help those people who WANT to keep up with the markets and current events, but feel like they "don't have time". I got the idea because I was constantly getting mad at myself for forgetting to check the spot price of silver and the Dow more often (even though I have the app). I thought: "I'd pay money for someone to text me this stuff so I can stay in the loop but not have to remember to look it all up every day".

I figured I'd see if enough other people have this need to build a decent business around it.

I fully realize that the info is available pretty much EVERYWHERE for free, but my customers wouldn't be buying the info, they'd be buying TIME. It takes time to check commodities prices and look up economic news (and filter it down to what really matters). If a company could save me 10 hours of my life over the course of every month by filtering down the economic news to the important stuff, I'd pay them $5 in a heartbeat.

They'd also be buying the ability to be the guy who says at a party "Well, I've been watching the price of crude oil climb all month, so it's no surprise that gas prices are going up." In other words, that feeling of superiority that comes from being "in the know". Planning to use those 2 emotional hooks.

Customers would be able to customize how often they wanted to receive updates - daily, bi-weekly, or weekly
They'd be able to customize which updates they get - gold spot, Dow Jones, Apple stock, etc.

I figure this would be pretty easy to automate: have someone write code that pulls the prices and sends them to phone numbers (or email addresses) via mass email or texting software. As for the economic news summaries and alerts, I have a friend who breathes economics (and has a degree in it). I'd pay him a certain percentage of the profits (he's too smart to go for the flat rate) and he would send out the updates. He keeps track of that stuff anyway, I'd just ask him to package it in layman-friendly terms.


Testing: PPC - target terms like "market update" (1000 local exact match searches, low competition) and "economic current events" (2400 LEMS, medium competition). Also visit forums where the target market might hang out (if the Adwords campaign feedback justifies putting time into forum marketing).

So far, I've spent around $25 on domain and hosting. Used a free theme and designed a logo using some free software. My goal is to keep startup costs under $100 (including testing. Going to use a few of those $100 adsense coupons and different accounts). If the market shows interest, I'll have someone work on the design.

.............

As a side note, I've noticed that when you sell to businesses, you're selling mostly to logic. When you're selling to consumers, you're selling mostly to emotion. Anybody else noticed this? I've structured this venture with that concept in mind, so I want to know if I'm wrong about it.

 

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[theag]

I like the general idea of market updates via sms, but I'm not sure if I would want to read all this stuff in a text message. What I would definitely WANT to read though are important ad-hoc news (incl. the catastrophic events you mentioned).

So what I would do is set up a website for this where users sign up and choose their preferences (which news, market updates, prices etc they see on their personalized page). Then send them a daily text message (or twice, morning and evening) to remind them to check their daily personalized market news out (with a link included of course, to your mobile optimized page). Plus weekly email. Plus an ad-hoc text message for each very important event thats in line with their preferences (e.g. they are interested in oil prices and get a message if a few tankers blow up or somebody starts a war etc). In the case of the ad-hoc news the content is right in the text message plus a link to more details.

What do you think?

I also agree with your side note! Business have ROI in mind when buying (logic), customers buy on impulse (emotion).

 

[DustinG]

Sounds like an antiquated business model. Who would want constant text messages instead of using an app that provides all that info? I would think the market for something like this would be very small.

 

[Jonleehacker]

Well, I have my charts set up to send me texts when any chart that I'm following reaches or is about to reach a key level. To me this takes away a lot of the noise that would come in receiving alerts on silver every hour or every .25c.

Maybe there is a market for the news though, that would be something that fundamental traders may value, getting that news FAST would be the key selling point for your app if you can deliver.

 

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[miked_d]

What country? In the US, I would believe someone already does this.

There may be a market for this in China with its explosive cell phone adoption. I believe feature phones (no apps) are most popular there.

 

[VinceT]

I also agree with your side note! Business have ROI in mind when buying (logic), customers buy on impulse (emotion).

In my sales experience, everyone buys on emotion and justify's with logic. Even business owners, if you can connect with their emotions then game on!

 

[Longshot]

I'm going to start testing this in a few days, and would really appreciate some input before I sink my lunch money into an Adwords campaign. I'm not emotionally attached to the idea, so fire away.

Short Story:

I'm starting a service that does 3 things for customers:

- text message market updates (Dow Jones, precious metals, crude oil prices, etc sent via SMS on a daily, biweekly, or weekly basis)
- email economic news summaries (biweekly or weekly)
- text message alerts of catastrophic economic events (ie, a currency collapse, market crash, etc)

I want to do it as a monthly subscription service (I'm thinking between $2-$5/month, processed through Paypal's micropayment system). I'm pretty sure this is being done already, but there's no "household name" that I know of. I want my company to be that name.

Long Story (details):

The basic idea is to help those people who WANT to keep up with the markets and current events, but feel like they "don't have time". I got the idea because I was constantly getting mad at myself for forgetting to check the spot price of silver and the Dow more often (even though I have the app). I thought: "I'd pay money for someone to text me this stuff so I can stay in the loop but not have to remember to look it all up every day".

I figured I'd see if enough other people have this need to build a decent business around it.

I fully realize that the info is available pretty much EVERYWHERE for free, but my customers wouldn't be buying the info, they'd be buying TIME. It takes time to check commodities prices and look up economic news (and filter it down to what really matters). If a company could save me 10 hours of my life over the course of every month by filtering down the economic news to the important stuff, I'd pay them $5 in a heartbeat.

They'd also be buying the ability to be the guy who says at a party "Well, I've been watching the price of crude oil climb all month, so it's no surprise that gas prices are going up." In other words, that feeling of superiority that comes from being "in the know". Planning to use those 2 emotional hooks.

Customers would be able to customize how often they wanted to receive updates - daily, bi-weekly, or weekly
They'd be able to customize which updates they get - gold spot, Dow Jones, Apple stock, etc.

I figure this would be pretty easy to automate: have someone write code that pulls the prices and sends them to phone numbers (or email addresses) via mass email or texting software. As for the economic news summaries and alerts, I have a friend who breathes economics (and has a degree in it). I'd pay him a certain percentage of the profits (he's too smart to go for the flat rate) and he would send out the updates. He keeps track of that stuff anyway, I'd just ask him to package it in layman-friendly terms.


Testing: PPC - target terms like "market update" (1000 local exact match searches, low competition) and "economic current events" (2400 LEMS, medium competition). Also visit forums where the target market might hang out (if the Adwords campaign feedback justifies putting time into forum marketing).

So far, I've spent around $25 on domain and hosting. Used a free theme and designed a logo using some free software. My goal is to keep startup costs under $100 (including testing. Going to use a few of those $100 adsense coupons and different accounts). If the market shows interest, I'll have someone work on the design.

.............

As a side note, I've noticed that when you sell to businesses, you're selling mostly to logic. When you're selling to consumers, you're selling mostly to emotion. Anybody else noticed this? I've structured this venture with that concept in mind, so I want to know if I'm wrong about it.

I suspect you're like I am. I like the financial markets, so many of my entrepeneural ideas revolve around them. However, there has to be a strong need/demand and ability to monetize for something like that to be successful.

My hunch: tech-savvy folks who follow the financial markets already have "Cliff Notes" sources like this for key news and data. That said, I rarely text and don't own a smart phone, so I'm not an expert...but I know there are plenty of market-related apps already...

 

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[Ivan]

Thanks for the input, guys (and girls?). Longshot, I think you hit the nail on the head.

Looks like I'll be shelving this idea for a while. I read through the comments, thought about it objectively, and decided this idea is better suited for the app market. I'm going to re-visit it when i have more capital to play with (to pay a programmer). I don't have time to learn programming and try to be a one-man band.

Thanks again

Ivan