QR Card Us–Business Cards with vCard in QR Code, Support a Student, Entrepreneur | Hacker News Reader

QR Card Us–Business Cards with vCard in QR Code, Support a Student, Entrepreneur

qrcard.us

I don't really understand why you're promoting yourself as a student entrepreneur. If anything it is a major deterrent from me using your service. For starters, I wouldn't really trust a service from someone who advertises themselves as a student entrepreneur as it sound unprofessional as if I should excuse bugs because you're a student. Also, I think this only used to be impressive... like in the 90s or even early 2000 but now it just seems like you're trying to hard to pitch yourself as a student. I think this works against you more than you think (especially considering that you're already in College).

Things like MindSnacks got attention because they were HighSchoolers but also that their product was actually relatively complicated and very polished. Tumblr's founder also started in HS but we rarely hear about that. Kiip's Brian Wong (aged 19) uses age 19 as just link bait and is only because he raised a lot of money AND graduated university already. My buddies who run one of the leading PPI networks is also just 19. Mark Bao is another impressive high school kid running threewordsme etc. etc.

When I was 18, I thought what I was doing was impressive (I'm 21 now), I tried to ride the "I'm a teen" buzz wave at my last startup Weels Corp when we launched at DEMO. I ran into the issues I'm speaking of above. Now, a little wiser, I launched my new site UpOut.com. I don't plan to use the "I'm young" buzz even though my cofounder is still 19... I plan to write some thoughtful blog articles on running a startup in college but that is definitely not part of my marketing plan.

This is something that I've gone back and forth on myself when thinking about such using "Student/Entrepreneur." These are excellent examples for your point, and something I'll take into account as I continue to debate with myself over this.

I certainly, at least, had not thought of it from the perspective that using this fact might imply I was saying to excuse imperfections. That's of course not my intention in it, so the fact that it came up at all gives definite reason to continue considering changing this.

Thanks!

I appreciate your guys' help in shaking this out and sharing it with your friends! I've tried to minimize the price as much as possible and will continue to do so as I can run across deals, but am hopeful I can both help some people with these cards while also supporting my education and bootstrap my next venture.

I also wouldn't feel right if I launched something without open sourcing something to keep the balance, so I've implemented vCard 3.0 (RFC 2426) in Haskell: http://mschade.me/announcing-hs-vcard (http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hs-vcard)

Thanks! Let me know what you think.

One thing I'd say -- there is too much information about you there. The first thing I read at the top was "Hi, I'm Michael, a student and entrepreneur, and I've created a business- and environmentally-friendly product I think you'll like." This isn't important to your product, and it just seems like a bunch of fluff. Then further down you have more information on the left side about you. To be frank, I came to your website to learn more about your product. Focus more on what you are offering and less about introductions.

Just my two cents.

Thanks, I'll take this into consideration as I look into better structuring my content. I was trying to find a nice balance between the personal appeal of why I'm doing this/who I am (so I'm not just some faceless organization putting out a product) and the product itself.

I appreciate your input!

I get the personal appeal, but the problem is you only get x seconds from a users attention before they move on to the next site. If the first words on the website are "Hi, I'm J and I have something great to show you", I think to myself "Great, that's why you have a website, why didn't you use that space to actually show me rather than talk about it?"

It also might go against you to mention things like you are 19 years old and a freshman at college. If I am a business and want to order cards from you, I do an analysis: would I pay a steep price ($36 for 250 cards) to get something from someone who may be less experienced in business practices (or in production in general) because they are still in college, or order from a known website that's cheaper?

There's nothing preventing you from having a separate link at the footer of the site for "About" describing the things you mentioned, but if you are trying to sell something, you don't want to include any unnecessary information to push people away from buying from you. If people have credit cards in hand, you don't want to keep talking about how much you love photography!

(I hope you don't take any offense to anything I said, I'm really just trying to tell it like it is)

No offense taken at all, certainly. I wouldn't have posted here if I didn't want feedback!

And to that point, I totally appreciate it, and plan on taking a hard look at how I present the information to look for more effective ways to get my message across without rambling about myself.

I guess I take a slightly different perspective, so it's nice to hear another point of view. I will typically buy from an individual before I will some larger organization, even if they have less experience, as long as they can show that they know what they're doing (and I've grown up in a print shop and have input from my mom who grew up and owned one herself, knowing the ins and outs of such production).

Although, I do want to add that I don't agree that $36 for 250 cards is terribly steep. Keep in mind that this includes any tax and shipping. I do admit it's not the best price, compared to some services, but it's not horrible either, and in all likelihood the price will be less than that when one's card is actually charged (as I can typically work out a deal with my printer, but those aren't consistent–I'm working on a standardized pricing plan).

That said, it's useless for me to have to explain that here, I should be looking into conveying that point on the website if necessary or removing the background information altogether ;)

I updated the header on the page–do you think that's better for a lead-in?

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