Ask HN: What do you think about my startup, scription.tk? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you think about my startup, scription.tk?

5 pointsHackingroelz14 comments

I'd like feedback on the website and tips for promoting it. Thanks for looking into it.

I am trying to understand what you do exactly. From your FAQ, here is how you describe yourself:

    Q: What is the scription service?
    A: scription allows anyone to create the software they need. While many companies
    and people will charge you a lot to write simple pieces of code, we provide a low-cost
    service. This allows anyone to get the software they want, even if there isn't enough
    demand for it.

So unless you managed to write a program that can write custom programs, you are something like a consultant, and a very cheap one. When you say that "most requests can be made" (unless projects that are too big or involving mobile app), what does it mean? Can you write some custom crypto modules? An excel plugin? You don't provide any example of things that you have already done, so why would I trust you? (In fact, I wouldn't trust you because your prices are very low, so I am suspecting something might not be right).

I see you're accepting PayPal. Keep in mind they're known to arbitrarily freeze accounts so this is a risk for you. Also businesses in Europe prefer wire transfer rather than anything which is rather a customer payment solution. I assume you're in Europe or targeting European clients since you're billing in Euros. You may want to register a company and open a bank account instead.

The largest problem however is that you're anonymous. While this may work in countries like Russia and Ukraine which are used to everyone hiding from everyone, this is unlikely to take off with German customers for example. They want to know your name, your official address, your phone number, the official registry number for your company, the bank account number and the location to settle legal disputes clearly stated. Your photo and the listing of your diplomas and certificates would be needed as well. The .tk domain name doesn't really help either. You GMail free email address makes no sense given that you already own a custom domain.

As it is, you appear to be just another guy from a freelancing site who's trying to stand out against the crowd. But since you're anonymous, I can't see why anyone would fall for you.

No offense intended, just a honest opinion of your offering.

P.S. Your copyright notice also makes little sense. It basically says that the domain name owns the copyright which is not possible. A natural person or a legal entity can hold the rights, a domain name is an object and cannot own anything. You may want to put in there your name or the name of your company, if you've got one registered.

The problem is: you are too cheap. A programmer in Europe can earn much more than 12 euros an hour, but you're not charging more. It makes me wonder why. The only reason I can think is that you're inexperienced, just starting out. That doesn't tally with the statement that you can do any kind of code. I've been programming for many many years and I would still be wary about saying I could do 'anything'. There are lots of hard problems in Computer Science. Mobile app development is not one of the hard problems, so I would wonder why you would exclude that and not, say, massively scalable cloud computing, 3D rendering, etc.

I would suggest you be a bit more specific about what tasks you want to do, and double or triple your prices. ;-)

I wish you very good luck with the company though!

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback! I'm certianly not trying to say I can code everything, but I thought making list of things I can do would exclude a lot of other stuff that I might still be able to do. I'm working on something of a porfolio right now, so I suppose that shows what I can do, but still doesn't really exclude everything else.

Is the .tk domain not considered unprofessional nowadays? It reminds me of the crappy websites we made back in, what, 2003?

That was exactly my first thought too. The site itself seems a little unprofessional, as do the services they seem to be providing. The scope is too big, I think.

Okay, here's my first feelings: for me it looks like regular company website, but with very specific kind of storytelling (a bit of gamification maybe) - the customer has a feeling that it is not just a regular company website, but in the end I think it is just like that :)

10$ per hour for a programmer? As a programmer (none of my contracts is below 65€ and i'm not that well-paid) myself i feel giving you any money would just aid the exploitation of decent programmers or get me really shitty results.

Outsource your job, this is a amazing money making opportunity.

Isn't your TLD one of these popular with scammers? Not such a huge deal but that was my first thought :-D

Anyways it looks like a consulting operation.

Without any examples or testimonials (that I can check) there's no way I'd use your service.

I've thinking of putting up examples, but since I've just started I don't really have examples of things requested and some of the other things I've developed I can't really post much more than screenshots of (which means it would be hard to know whether they were made by me). Would this still improve the chance of you using my service? Thanks for taking the time to give feedback on my website.

If you're in the position to be selling code to people then (presumably) you believe your code is good enough for people to buy. As such the examples need to be code. If you haven't got examples then you're going to have a tough time persuading people that you're capable of fulfilling their requests.

This is the same problem people have when they apply for development jobs. The solution is to write some code you can show people. Get a side project, or do some work for free (or cheap enough that people will pay even without seeing examples of previous work), or ask people you've worked for previously for permission to use what you wrote as examples of what you can do. Don't just say "I haven't got anything." That won't work.

I have a tip for promoting it, contact me: scription at myusername dot com

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