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The problem with Folyo is the upfront fee. If the intended market is startups, most projects are bootstrapped. They'd kill to get a great designer, but $100 pos

by capex 13y ago

The problem with Folyo is the upfront fee. If the intended market is startups, most projects are bootstrapped. They'd kill to get a great designer, but $100 posting fee is a huge psych barrier. IMHO, the proven formula of service providers shaving off their earning for you should work better. There are other innovations possible, like peer review for design, design critique from an expert, outsourced usability testing etc. Its always easier to swim downstream.

sgdesign 13y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "shaving off their earning for you"? Do you mean taking a cut of the project budget? I could do that, but A) it would end up being more expensive for customers (although maybe that's irrelevant if they don't perceive it that way?) and B) it would be more complex logistically. So I will probably stick with the current model at least for now, even though I know it has its flaws.
- brandnewlow 13y ago
  It won't be more expensive for customers because they'll do their best to negotiate a fair rate on the project. This leaves the service provider to pay your fee, but since you hooked them up with the work (and by extension payment for it) it's more natural.
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  I really like folyo.me, even though I ended up finding a designer off Behance, I certainly considered folyo.me for a while. However, I still disagree with your business model. At $100 a pop, you would need so much traffic from this niche to pay the salary of a full-time developer (or designer, in your case), unless you broadened the scope. Elance/oDesk/99Designs and other sites just have more room to monetize than a one-time $100 upfront fee. If designers get a lot more inbound from this, you're essentially giving them leads, so it makes sense for the startups to find great designers and the designers take a percentage cut for having much of the heavy early lifting done for them. I also don't think you're going to reach much scale with a domain like folyo.me -- it's just not good. I love your design work, but branding is key too, and while a domain like that might be good enough to validate your idea I don't think you can have a runaway hit with that.
  - sgdesign 13y ago
    I'll have to think about the business model thing. But what's wrong about the domain? Is it the .me you don't like? Or the name itself?
    - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
      I think there is a lot more upside in tweaking the business model. For example if you wanted a few employees working on a $1 million revenue business, that's 10,000 projects per year going to fruition in your current model. The reason people use .me is because all the good .com's are taken, but folyo.me isn't a very easy name to say out loud to someone and remember. Your competition scoutzie.com isn't the best domain in the world but it's a .com and it sounds more like a brand than folyo.me -- I know domains are expensive if they're good so not sure if it's worth the investment in something better.
- capex 13y ago
  But there's your opportunity. If you ignore it just because its more complex, you'll be having Schlep Blindness. http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
kirillzubovsky 13y ago
If you don't like to pay the upfront fee, you're welcome to try https://scoutzie.com https://scoutzie.com -- You get to connect directly with great designers and you only commit the payment once you know who you'd like to work with. Enjoy!

by capex 13y ago

sgdesign 13y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "shaving off their earning for you"? Do you mean taking a cut of the project budget? I could do that, but A) it would end up being more expensive for customers (although maybe that's irrelevant if they don't perceive it that way?) and B) it would be more complex logistically. So I will probably stick with the current model at least for now, even though I know it has its flaws.

brandnewlow 13y ago
It won't be more expensive for customers because they'll do their best to negotiate a fair rate on the project. This leaves the service provider to pay your fee, but since you hooked them up with the work (and by extension payment for it) it's more natural.
jonathanjaeger 13y ago
I really like folyo.me, even though I ended up finding a designer off Behance, I certainly considered folyo.me for a while. However, I still disagree with your business model. At $100 a pop, you would need so much traffic from this niche to pay the salary of a full-time developer (or designer, in your case), unless you broadened the scope. Elance/oDesk/99Designs and other sites just have more room to monetize than a one-time $100 upfront fee. If designers get a lot more inbound from this, you're essentially giving them leads, so it makes sense for the startups to find great designers and the designers take a percentage cut for having much of the heavy early lifting done for them. I also don't think you're going to reach much scale with a domain like folyo.me -- it's just not good. I love your design work, but branding is key too, and while a domain like that might be good enough to validate your idea I don't think you can have a runaway hit with that.
- sgdesign 13y ago
  I'll have to think about the business model thing. But what's wrong about the domain? Is it the .me you don't like? Or the name itself?
  - jonathanjaeger 13y ago
    I think there is a lot more upside in tweaking the business model. For example if you wanted a few employees working on a $1 million revenue business, that's 10,000 projects per year going to fruition in your current model. The reason people use .me is because all the good .com's are taken, but folyo.me isn't a very easy name to say out loud to someone and remember. Your competition scoutzie.com isn't the best domain in the world but it's a .com and it sounds more like a brand than folyo.me -- I know domains are expensive if they're good so not sure if it's worth the investment in something better.
capex 13y ago
But there's your opportunity. If you ignore it just because its more complex, you'll be having Schlep Blindness. http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

kirillzubovsky 13y ago

If you don't like to pay the upfront fee, you're welcome to try https://scoutzie.com https://scoutzie.com -- You get to connect directly with great designers and you only commit the payment once you know who you'd like to work with. Enjoy!