5 ms·

OverTrainer.com update, thanks HN

19 points by ejs 18y ago

I thought I would make this post after seeing mixmax's comment in the BreakkUp.com story post. His comment was “Thanks for the feedback. It would be great if other people that got feedback here posted their results.” Well, I posted here about a site I was working on (overtrainer.com) a few months ago in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=297054 looking for some feedback. I was pleasantly surprised at the feedback I had gotten at the time, thanks again to the people that provided comments. I figure I would give an update to how the whole thing is turning out, and some back story for those interested. When I started OverTrainer.com I was employed full time as an electrical engineer, it was a hobby. I had done several other web apps that either never really made it anywhere or I sold. I wanted to get away from doing sites only for money. So I started overtrainer as an idea I had to log my workouts. The idea was simple: design a workout plan on a PC, then log the results with a phone, or on paper. So I started plugging away at it starting earlier this year. At the time I was completing my masters thesis and working full time so it was only getting a few hours here and there. Then I left my job and headed back to school to pursue a PhD (this Sept). After thinking things over very hard, I decided this return to school was not in my best interests and I would not be returning next semester. In this time I put a good amount of effort and time into overtrainer as it was enjoyable to work on. So here I am unemployed but with some cash in the bank. So I have decided to do what any normal person advocates against and what the HN community embraces. I have decided not to get another job and just focus on overtrainer and some other ideas (web and electronics stuff). So with this I have decided to take the advice I read often on HN and release overtrainer without really feeling its ready. There are a great many features I plan on adding, along with subscription based services that several people have been very interested in. So it will be a full time endeavor for the current time. And I would love to hear what comments people have, I know there are still rough edges so let me know! It is all still beta, but getting it out there should help me understand what is most important to focus on. Since any links I put here will not be clickable I will follow this post with a link to the site (there are screen casts on the front page too). I wanted to again thank the community, this site has been one of (if not the most) helpful site I frequent.

ejs 18y ago
OverTrainer.com - http://overtrainer.com http://overtrainer.com
markessien 18y ago
I think your site is excellent, your idea is good, and you can easily build this into a real business. So I'll give it to you straight, mix and match what you like. If you are serious about turning this into a real business, there are some things you absolutely have to do: 1. "Dashboard", "routines" and "workout" show me the exact same page 2. Video is cool, but I'm not going to watch it because it's so linear. I just want one particular feature, and I don't have the time to sit and watch 10 minutes or whatever of video to find out if you have that feature. (I don't know how long the video really is, because it's not written till I push play, which I don't want to do) 3. Content is king. If you want to make a site, you need to struggle for every single user! Getting linked from techcrunch is an utter waste of time, because they are not your target user. Your target users searched google 40.000 times today for your site. If you had 5.000 pages of content, you'd get a percentage of those searchers. And easy way to start is by making your routines public 4. All you're interested in is one user. You need to continuously examine the flow of that one user - when he hit your page right up until when he signed up. Do you know EXACTLY where he clicked and what he was looking for? If you don't, it's like having a car factory, and you're not sure what steps the assembly line goes through to product a car 5. I have an iPhone, and your app actually sounds interesting to me. But there are no screenshots and no description of what this iphone app could do. So I'm going to close your site and forget about it instantly 6. Go to delicious.com/popular/fitness for inspiration 7. Categorize your users. I don't know the natural categories for fitness, but maybe something like "people who want to lose weight", "people who want to body build and are doing it regularly", "skinny guys who want become somewhat muscular". For each category, look at your site again. Does it seem attractive? Are this category of interest to you? Then examine each category - which is the most profitable? 8. Remember that any idea you have is just an idea, and you don't know if it works. If you implement it and it works, this does not mean it was right. For example, let's say you have the idea that green may be the best color to encourage people to sign up. You change the color to green, and you have 5% more sign-ups. You'll sit back and feel satisfied that your idea worked. Big mistake, because red may have caused 50% more sign-ups. So when you have an idea or hunch, make sure you test the alternatives, even if it seems to you that they won't work. That's all I got for now. Good luck!
- ejs 18y ago
snewe 18y ago
1. I know it is probably too late, but "overtraining" is a bad thing in training (at least triathlon) 2. I assume that you know about traingpeaks.com. They focus on cardio-sports, but still should give you an idea about business models. I use them for my Ironman workouts...they have great templates, but limited options for the free accounts.
Derrek 18y ago
You might want to consider a new name. "Overtraining" has a very negative connotation in fitness circles.
- symptic 18y ago
  It depends if he wants to focus on a more broad market or specifically at people looking to get bigger and weigh more. Overt-raining is a great way to build muscle fast without the use of drugs, focusing on a small amount of reps that make you over-exert yourself, lifting to "failure" on your last 2 sets.
mhp 18y ago
I'm sure you've seen the menshealth version of this: menshealth.genesant.com Could give you some ideas... I use it and it's $5 a month. They don't have an iphone version which is dumb, so you clearly rock their world there. But they also have prebuilt routines that you can just start with. That would be easy for you to add.
- ejs 18y ago
  Hi I agree that adding prebuilt routines is a big feature, it would be included very soon. Thanks
richtaur 18y ago
I signed up :) Good luck!
ibsulon 18y ago
Well, the bad news (for me) is that you beat me to a very similar idea that I was planning to do. :)
aschobel 18y ago
Looks good. Small thing, you want to put JavaScript on the bottom of your page so that the page gets displayed faster. YSlow is a great tool for this, http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ I also see that you are hosting prototype yourself. Why not use Google's copy to speed things up? http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/ http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/
- ejs 18y ago
  Hmm I am not usre why I never ran across this tool (yslow). Thanks for the tip it is very useful!

19 points by ejs 18y ago

ejs 18y ago

OverTrainer.com - http://overtrainer.com http://overtrainer.com

markessien 18y ago

I think your site is excellent, your idea is good, and you can easily build this into a real business. So I'll give it to you straight, mix and match what you like. If you are serious about turning this into a real business, there are some things you absolutely have to do: 1. "Dashboard", "routines" and "workout" show me the exact same page 2. Video is cool, but I'm not going to watch it because it's so linear. I just want one particular feature, and I don't have the time to sit and watch 10 minutes or whatever of video to find out if you have that feature. (I don't know how long the video really is, because it's not written till I push play, which I don't want to do) 3. Content is king. If you want to make a site, you need to struggle for every single user! Getting linked from techcrunch is an utter waste of time, because they are not your target user. Your target users searched google 40.000 times today for your site. If you had 5.000 pages of content, you'd get a percentage of those searchers. And easy way to start is by making your routines public 4. All you're interested in is one user. You need to continuously examine the flow of that one user - when he hit your page right up until when he signed up. Do you know EXACTLY where he clicked and what he was looking for? If you don't, it's like having a car factory, and you're not sure what steps the assembly line goes through to product a car 5. I have an iPhone, and your app actually sounds interesting to me. But there are no screenshots and no description of what this iphone app could do. So I'm going to close your site and forget about it instantly 6. Go to delicious.com/popular/fitness for inspiration 7. Categorize your users. I don't know the natural categories for fitness, but maybe something like "people who want to lose weight", "people who want to body build and are doing it regularly", "skinny guys who want become somewhat muscular". For each category, look at your site again. Does it seem attractive? Are this category of interest to you? Then examine each category - which is the most profitable? 8. Remember that any idea you have is just an idea, and you don't know if it works. If you implement it and it works, this does not mean it was right. For example, let's say you have the idea that green may be the best color to encourage people to sign up. You change the color to green, and you have 5% more sign-ups. You'll sit back and feel satisfied that your idea worked. Big mistake, because red may have caused 50% more sign-ups. So when you have an idea or hunch, make sure you test the alternatives, even if it seems to you that they won't work. That's all I got for now. Good luck!

ejs 18y ago

snewe 18y ago

1. I know it is probably too late, but "overtraining" is a bad thing in training (at least triathlon) 2. I assume that you know about traingpeaks.com. They focus on cardio-sports, but still should give you an idea about business models. I use them for my Ironman workouts...they have great templates, but limited options for the free accounts.

Derrek 18y ago

You might want to consider a new name. "Overtraining" has a very negative connotation in fitness circles.

symptic 18y ago
It depends if he wants to focus on a more broad market or specifically at people looking to get bigger and weigh more. Overt-raining is a great way to build muscle fast without the use of drugs, focusing on a small amount of reps that make you over-exert yourself, lifting to "failure" on your last 2 sets.

mhp 18y ago

I'm sure you've seen the menshealth version of this: menshealth.genesant.com Could give you some ideas... I use it and it's $5 a month. They don't have an iphone version which is dumb, so you clearly rock their world there. But they also have prebuilt routines that you can just start with. That would be easy for you to add.

ejs 18y ago
Hi I agree that adding prebuilt routines is a big feature, it would be included very soon. Thanks

richtaur 18y ago

I signed up :) Good luck!

ibsulon 18y ago

Well, the bad news (for me) is that you beat me to a very similar idea that I was planning to do. :)

aschobel 18y ago

Looks good. Small thing, you want to put JavaScript on the bottom of your page so that the page gets displayed faster. YSlow is a great tool for this, http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ I also see that you are hosting prototype yourself. Why not use Google's copy to speed things up? http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/ http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/

ejs 18y ago
Hmm I am not usre why I never ran across this tool (yslow). Thanks for the tip it is very useful!