Show HN: Spoffer – Not just another deals site | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Spoffer – Not just another deals site

spoffer.net

16 pointsvaitko18 comments

Some more links for those are interested:

http://www.spoffer.net/help/about - short explainer how it works

http://www.spoffer.net/help/business - explainer how it works for business

http://editor.spoffer.net/edit (user: demo, pwd: demo123) - see drag&drop offers editor in action

Don't want to describe this project anymore there and i hope that links above are quite explanatory, but if you have some question - welcome, I'll gladly answer.

This is one-man-army project. Idea born in my head few years ago and I started brainstorming and developing at odd moments. It took so long because I was creating it alone, and in case that I'm developer some parts took quite much time like layouting and creating design, I had a feeling "how it should look" but didn't have desire to hire expensive designer or so, in case that it was not designed to "earn money" from the start and was more like hobby :) So finally it looks more or less how I imagined it, but... I understand that not everything is fine... I understand that i need solve chicken-egg problem: no business wants to publish offers if there is no quite big community, and how to get community when there is no bussiness publishing offers... I have a plan how to solve it, but i think I'll need some cooworkers/coofounders for that at least marketing expert and designer at first - if you feel that you would like to take a part there please contact me gintaras[eta]spoffer.net

And of course I'm waiting for any kind of response, please write what is your first impression when visiting this website? What do you think about such approach in general? How does desing look for you? Whats is missing, what are the main drawbacks from the first sight?

Thank you very much!

Is it possible to view the about / business pages without registering?

Ups sorry I see... looks like a bug, i'm on it already, could you please use username: demo and password: demo123 at meantime? Thanks!

Looks like fixed, should be fine now :)

Cool, looks fixed over here.

Looks like a great site and well executed. Im left with the impression though that the layout/design could do with some extra polish. Im not a designer myself so cant really make useful suggestions. Perhaps submit your site to :-

http://www.reddit.com/r/design_critiques/

to get some feedback.

I didn't really understand the 'how it works' video, I 'subscribe to a business' and then what? Do I get emailed with offers or do I need to go back to the website to see new offers? How are you going to get people back to the site after the first viewing if you're not going to email or connect with them on social media?

Yes the main idea is that after you subscribe to businesses you're interested in you are able to access your offers stream in several ways: of course you get notification emails about new offers from businesses you're subscribed if you want to get it (there will be settings for that because idea behind of that is that EMAIL IS NOT FOR SUCH THINGS LIKE SPECIAL OFFERS:) ) also there will be push notifications in mobile apps about new offers you're interested in (subscribed) and maybe you want to visit spoffer directly to see "whats new" like you do with your Facebook social news stream? :)

>Push notifications in mobile apps

There's no way this could get annoying. Push notifications are great for things like SMS, voicemail, email, and emergency management alerts (such as amber alerts, or if there is a fire nearby), but coupled with anything resembling advertising -- even if the user claims they want to see it -- I would wager heavily that it will cause a service to hemorrhage users. Is this an opt-in only "feature"?

Agree. The idea is to have all notifications configurable, only "silent" notification which is visibile when you connect to website or app, email notification on/off, mobile app notification on/off - for example if you're preparing for your new skying season and want to buy some new equipment, maybe its not so annoying to get push notifications from www.dickssportinggoods.com about great sale of winter goods?

So you want to be yet another place I need to check in with to get these offers and provide the tracking, analytics and subscriber numbers to sell to businesses?

In addition to Facebook, Twitter and my regular email.

In fact yes. But its the same with every new service or? Also "sell to businessess" is not really correct wording... why? Because after you register on spoffer and subscribe to some channels (businesses) spoffer itself is the only one "entry point" to you for businesses. They don't get your email or social network access and you don't risk to get spam there later on.

Would a good description of this be Red Flag Deals with a way better UI? Looks awesome.

RedFlagDeals like others (slickdeals.net, dealspl.us and etc.) are quite different - there are community found and posted deals with some

"premium/partners" ads mixed. Spoffer works in a different way - people get deals and offers directly from businesses. Business channel on

spoffer is smth like business Facebook fan page, but entire solution is dedicated to special offers without any noise and with all necessary

tools for businesses (offers editor, analytics) and for people who want to discover offers as well. Also it could be treated as new generation

marketing channel which is a bit similar to email marketing, but businesses are collecting spoffer subscribers instead of email addresses and

other side - people, are getting these offers to their offers stream instead of email box.

Just out of curiosity... How are you planning on monetizing this?

Well in case that its advertising platform there are a lot of different monetizing ways like pay per click (pays business), "staff recommended"

offers which pops to the top and are "more visible" than others, or some pricing scheme with "pay as you go", "monthly subscription" and etc.

Is this for me? I'm in Australia.

Not yet. The idea is to have it globally, but for now only some well known US brand names are covered. But your question is about different markets, its impossible to launch such kind (business to people) of website in all over the World at once :) But theoretically - yes, of course its for you in case there will be a lot of Australian retailers, service providers and etc. publishing their offers.

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