[paullinder]

Hello

My name is Paul Linder and I am the Vice President of ClipsID Video Streaming, an online web system that we have developed from scratch based on the seed of an idea. ClipsID development is over and the system is deployed.

Now we are at the cross roads of the next stage, where in we should test the developed system for its functionalities, professionalism and ease of use. Since we are the developers, the large amount of testing we have done cannot be justified as the best efforts that we could give the system. We feel that if we could form a small community of users/enthusiasts who would actively involve in this testing phase, we are sure the system could be made completly robust and could be taken to the market.

All the leading contributors would be getting an one-time share of the profits of this online system, after the marketing campaign is launched in January 2007. We would be allocating 10% of the profits for this purpose alone. The profits will be calculated on a half yearly basis and pay-out will be through PayPal. We can enter into an agreement with each contributor based on the same.

We have already started a Yahoo Groups community whose link is provided in my signature. We invite you to join ClipsID Community.

If you review the system, you will see the highly potential features that will be a revolutionary concept in the online advertisement arena like Self Video Banner creation, Video Newsletter creation etc.

I urge you to join this community and help in whatever way you can to make the ClipsID system much more professional and user-friendly.

I appreciate the time you have invested in reading this long mail and I am sure that every minute of this will be worth it.

[Outta Hand]

Hello Paul,

I am just interested in a few things about your business. Definitely a unique idea (I haven't seen anything like this around)

While i do believe testing is important on an ongoing basis the question i've got first is... does the business make any money? (revenue or profit)

I guess the other thing i should ask is... what are you looking for in writing this post? it sounds like you are looking for testers but i am not completely sure if thats the case. I am confused

Talk soon

[paullinder]

Hello Luc

Thanks for your message.

Your inference in correct. The basic concept has been developed. The system is now a reality from the idea board. That is just about it. We have not yet started marketing because we need to be confident that the system is stable and error-free. Hence no revenue at the moment.

I am not looking testers exactly, but real non-technical people who will be interested in using this system once we launch the marketing. All they will have to do is go through the site and suggest improvement/changes considering the user friendliness, or speedier results.

So, the bottom line is we want to create an advisory board of our own for the site, to make it grow.

Best Regards
Paul

[Outta Hand]

Hello Paul,

Well i love the idea... remember no application will ever be error free and while you are testing the app someone somewhere is going to release a similar app and they are focusing on marketing. If your app is stable i say "pull the trigger and shoot" but thats what i'd do. It's very hard to develop in a vaccum. I wrote a post about this recently check it out at...

http://commercecubes.com/publication...2%80%99-minds/

What is the compensation you are offering to this advisory board if any? Basically i am asking is "Why should people help you"? Also what is your marketing plan? If you don't have one or an idea of how you are going to attract attention it could the greatest service to never see the light of day, so to speak. Pardon the bluntness, just trying to understand where you are at. Talk soon

Lucas

Originally Posted by paullinder

Hello Luc

Thanks for your message.

Your inference in correct. The basic concept has been developed. The system is now a reality from the idea board. That is just about it. We have not yet started marketing because we need to be confident that the system is stable and error-free. Hence no revenue at the moment.

I am not looking testers exactly, but real non-technical people who will be interested in using this system once we launch the marketing. All they will have to do is go through the site and suggest improvement/changes considering the user friendliness, or speedier results.

So, the bottom line is we want to create an advisory board of our own for the site, to make it grow.

Best Regards
Paul

[paullinder]

Hi Luc

Thanks for your reply and that wonderful link to your blog site. To put it in a single word, AWESOME!! I congratulate you to putting together an excellent site with great ideas.

I think you are partly right about "pull the trigger and shoot". However, when a set of guys have invested around 18 months of time in developing the system, it wouldnt be right to start shooting without checking how many bullets you have got. Techies have developed it with limited vision of the user's point of view. Taking it to the market now would be disaster in waiting and here I am, looking for a team of rainmakers to put things in the right prespective.

We do have a strong marketing plan in place and an allocated marketing budget of 35,000 USD for the first quarter of 2007.

The Advisory Board members who contributes to make the pillars and bricks strong will be offered 10% first year profit share (sharing basis). The hard questions here are, how do you know whether profits are coming in and how can you beleive these are actual values? The only answer I can offer here is TRUST.

Luc, I would like to ask you a question. Is there any other better way for a startup idea like this to pull in a strong advisory panel to make the system better.

Best Regards
Jay

[Outta Hand]

Hello Jay and Paul,

Your welcome on the link. The site is more of a "notebook" of ideas and a place for me to interact with others.

It's kind of like the eternal question of the chicken and the egg or in this case the application and the investors. Mind sharing even the basic aspects of your marketing plan? Thats a sizable bit of money to allocate to an unproven application... in my opinion. Don't mind me being so blunt.

As for being able to measure the profits... if you have one person that controls the flow of money and oversees that (A CFO type) you should know the health of your business. Trust is overrated... i'd be looking for something factual personally.

To be honest and akula aka daniel will most probably have a different opinion about this. I would say that the advisory panel should partly be made up of the original stakeholders in the project... the developers. Why because they see value in it and will help look out for the best interests of the project. That's my opinion. Outside of this you might want to put thought into a "money-manager/CFO" type to control the funds and monitor the health of the business.

Let me know what you think,

[paullinder]

Hello Luc

The marketing budget we have here is the consolidated savings of the founding members as well as investment grouped from couple of well wishers or should we say investors. Luc, you are right that it an unproven application, but Hotmail/Google/eBay were like that once upon a time. It is a genuine idea that is not there in the market, but doesnt come without risks and taking it and making it right the first time and everytime would be the key for success here. What do you think..?

I can give a very brief of the marketing plan that we have envisioned.

-> We will be employing a team of two marketing staff to launch a permission marketing scheme through emails. We already have identified few sources that would provide us with necessary contact information of a fairly large chunk of prospects.

-> We are on the final stages of setting up a video based affliate marketing program on ClipsID. This would be a different version since the affliate will be showing a small video clip of ClipsID that would generate much more response.

-> The technicalities for launching a Viral Marketing Campaign is already completed and this will be based on the internal video mailing/invitation tool.

-> A major chunk of money will go got launching an advertising campaign through Google Adwords as well as setting up a Paid Advertising campaign on Yahoo

-> Banner Exchange marketing campaign is already set to be launched on end of December 2006.

We already have an accounting person whose job is tracking the outflow and inflow, though the outflow is what he comes across..!!

As I told you, the Advisory Board will be having the developers of course, but we are more into the technical side of it. How about experts like you, who have the experience and can see the functional aspects of it. What we are more in need is someone who can look from the user prespective and suggest improvements.

Am I asking too much here..?

Best Regards
Paul

[paullinder]

Hello

Is there any way to change the text that is displayed as the starting thread name. I think I should change it to "Inviting members for Advisory Board".

Best Regards
Paul

[The Stealthy One]

Paul,

I hope you do not mind a bit of constructive criticism. Your posts in this thread leave me very confused. You must learn how to talk concisely - I believe you spend too much time beating around the bush. I am still not at all clear on what your company does, and why you are posting here.

Having said that, exactly what do you need folks for? Again, I am just not clear.