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Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

Very good analyst. Marketers will say "you can market based on sex, fear or greed - and sex sell the best."

Here's my dilemma: My startup (https://fpvracing.tv) users are literally 98% male so it would seem obvious to target this demographic with images of sexy female models, but I'm concerned about the ethics of doing so. I don't want to perpetuate the gender disparity.

If you don't dilute your content... why is this an issue? 98% of your users are male. (You're also assuming they would respond favorably to the models) Your goal is to serve your customer, not someone else's ideas of what your customers should be.

If being decent--and "not sticking pandering eye-candy on there for clicks" sure sounds like being decent to me--and serving the customer are in opposition, doing the latter is real problematic.

There's a lot of ways to appeal to a mostly-male demographic without resorting to sex, even if sex sells best.

BTW, I love the sharp video on the landing page.

Why not contact some of your 2% female users and ask them to be in normal, non-sexualized advertising for your site? It will help you attract both male and female users to show that FPV racing can be enjoyed by everyone, and it's not duplicitous because you're using real FPV racing enthusiasts.

Couldn't agree more, 'selling' how much fun being in the community is, will be much better at building a brand.

I'd seriously avoid going down the sexy models route, if you're site featured girls in tight tops holding RC 'stuff' on the front page I would have clicked away almost immediately, it cheapens what you're promoting.

Simply using professional photo/video people for imagery will help more than slapping on some tacky model shots.

No help on the advertising, but I must say your front page video is amazing. I desperately was looking for a link like "Fly now!", "How to race!", or something similar. Join is a big fat wall to make an account. Might be worth AB testing the main page. Pilots and Photos were not what I wanted to see, I wanted more videos and a big fat link to the guide section. Maybe worth AB testing the order of the links with the Guild and Video on the far left too.

In the guide it would be worth mentioning that the Hubsan X4 only records video from what it looks like, it doesn't transmit. It also mentions that there are ready-to-fly quadcopter, but doesn't have any links. While it isn't much, having a good resource center with affiliate links can bring in some extra cash while you get your startup off the ground while at the same time teaching the user base.

Edit: After thinking about it what was missing was a call to action page that showed if I followed steps A-G I could fly in a race too. Along the way I would need to make an account to find others in my area, start a local group, learn about regional races, etc. I am guessing that guiding new players is your primary challenge for long term growth?

Edit2: The events page should have a form so you can be notified when there are local events. I am guessing your larger market will be those that want to watch/goto the events so providing them with a way to get involved is funnel #2.

This is very useful feedback. Much appreciated!

The front page is also broken on Safari (7.1.5). The video won't run and when I right click it my browser crashes.

I don't see what your site has to do with sexy female models, so I would be concerned how you expect that kind of advertising to result in "conversions"

> I don't see what your site has to do with sexy female models, so I would be concerned how you expect that kind of advertising to result in "conversions"

Then I think you might have missed the context of this discussion. The parent comments were talking about the fact that sex sells. Motor racing, especially, has a long tradition of employing sexy female models in marketing. Do a Google search of "Formula One promo girls" to see what I'm talking about. And several of our users have suggested putting "babes" on the site.

Having said that, I'm not comfortable with it. Which is why it's a dilemma.

And the umbrella girls are not without controversy in racing either.

A world championship level rider in Moto3 is Ana Carrasco - female. She came to the races recently with an umbrella boy. Not sure if it was a protest or a PR opportunity. http://i.imgur.com/xu25bOM.jpg

Have any of your teams experimented with machine learning navigation?

Not to my knowledge. Flight controllers will undoubtedly get to the point where a completely autonomous quadcopter can beat any human pilot, even through an unfamiliar course. At that point we'll need to impose regulations on the level of autonomy that people can use in races. I've got no idea when we'll reach that point though.

This is cool! It's like the perfect nerd fantasy in concentrate form.

Cool!

PS: I'm usually a cynic.

Thanks! Sign up if you like. We'll be adding more content for beginner pilots and spectators very shortly.

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