Looking for bargain? Welcome to the web

Christmas is a peak-time for retailers. But, everyone knows that this has not been a great year for them. Marks & Spencer, for example, had pre-Christmas sales to boost business. In the last month alone, many large high-street chains, including Woolworths, Zavvi, The Officers Club, and Whittard of Chelsea have collapsed into administration.

On the other hand, Amazon claims that this is their best holiday reason ever. ReadWriteWeb also has some data showing that online sales are going strong. Why has the recession yet to hit Amazon and
other online retailers?

This is the time that online retailers start to show their cost advantage, and grab market share from the traditional retailers.

Why is that? It is simple. We are in recession, and are much more cautious about spending. We want to stretch every penny further. We want bargains. Online retailers are in a perfect position to serve consumers well in the current economic climate.

Online shopping is an experience everyone is familar with now. Online retailers have improved their online shopping experiences dramatically. Now it is simple, hassle free and secure. Moreover, online deals tend to be better than those found on the highstreet. There is no reason why
online retailers can not continue to grow.

Although the recession is a major crisis, it can also be an opportunity to some businesses as well. Consumers always have needs but their purchasing behaviours change under difficult economic situations. Online retails are able to continue reducing prices in such conditions, and
therefore can continue grow.

I think this is a great opportunity for MinuteBox also. People are looking for bargains for tagible goods. They also want to get bargains for services, which is one of the benefits MinuteBox is aiming to create

for its users.

We are now in the last development and testing phase. I cannot wait to launch our site and offer our service to our users. If we can serve our users well and create bargains for you, we have a good business at a time of recession.

Sell your time Online or Offline

Last week a friend showed me a new website, HourVille. He thought that in them, I might have a direct competitor. I had a very quick look at the website, trying to find out what they are trying to do. It is quite interesting that they are advocating a very similar concept: "selling time", but they are not a direct competitor.

Basically, HourVille is a marketplace for users to sell their services by hour OFFLINE. Yes, that is the difference. Minute Box wants users to sell their time ONLINE.

You may ask if that makes big difference. I would say, yes, that we have similar model but in different markets.

I remember when I had just come up with the idea of creating a website for people to sell their spare time, I was thinking about the same issue; should I let users sell their time online, offline or both?

Before long, I chose online. But why? At that time I was thinking, 'what if a person is paid via Minutebox to clean a flat, and then ends up robbing the house?'. It seems a huge responsibility if our marketplace is for offline services. Even though you can disclaim this kind of responsibility in your terms and conditions, it still seems very troublesome to me.

HourVille is a cool website. You can easily arrange someone to offer services and pay for that on their website. Before HourVille came along, GenieTown is another similar marketplace that exists for users to offer offline services. They are both great websites. Since MinuteBox has a similar concept to HourVille, it will be interesting to see how they grow.

However, I still believe I made the right decision in choosing to focus on online services.

1. Geographical limitations:

If you are looking for offline services, you are probably looking for someone in your own city, town or somewhere close by. That is the reason why HourVille is now focusing on Texas, their home base. GenieTown has a similar strategy of focusing first on some specific locations such as Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, and then expanding to other areas.

Since services on Minutebox are delivered via online chat or e-mail, our users are not affected by these kinds of geographical limitations.

2. Barrier for users to sell their time:

Some users sell their services for living. They see these online marketplaces as an ideal channel to sell their services via, in addition to more traditional marketplaces.

Some users are just amateurs. They see these marketplaces a place to generate some extra cash. eBay is a great example. You can see a lot of professional sellers as well as amateur ones there.

To these time-trading marketplaces, the amateur sellers can be the magic Long Tail. Since they do not do this for living, the marketplace needs to make it very easy for them to sell their spare time or they simply will not bother. Furthermore, marketplaces for online services actually have many advantages, allowing them to attract such amateur sellers. Firstly, users do not need to travel. They sell their time from home with their PC, Internet connection, and maybe a mic or cam. Job done.

During the economic downturn, it is a great thing for users (be they professional or amateur), to have different ways to generate more income. We are now in the last stage of development, after which we can launch the new version of the site. We are targeting the 10th of January 2009 as our launch date. Hopefully we can offer users an even more easy and flexible way to monetise their time and skills. Let's beat the recession together.

P.S. I have created a group on Facebook called "Sell Expertise in Your Spare Time: MinuteBox.com" for MinuteBox. Join us if you are interested. Also, if you are a twitter user, follow us.

New MinuteBox is coming - 1. Customised marketplaces

We have been working on building the new MinuteBox for a while and it is almost ready. We think it is now the time to reveal the coming changes to our users.

We have spent a lot of effort on the new website and we are very excited about it. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding our upcoming changes, please let us know. We will definitely appreciate them.

The first big change is to our website structure. Currently, you can see various categories on MinuteBox. Our mission is to link seekers of support and advice with people who have the knowledge to solve their problems online, in an instant, easy and cost-efficient manner. However, building expert communities in various fields is 'mission impossible'. So, we came up a strategy to focus our resources, grow our expert community faster, keep the quality of the communities high, and offer better services.

What is our strategy?

We are planning to define MinuteBox as a hub of various marketplaces. Every marketplace is like a sub-website of MinuteBox. It has its own homepage, its expert community and customised functions for users of that particular marketplace. We will launch our Business Network (business.minutebox.com) first. We call the rest of the networks we are planning to launch "Upcoming networks". Our main homepage, www.minutebox.com, will become the gateway page for you to reach our different networks. You can view the upcoming networks there and show your interest in a certain categories.

We are also proactively looking for insiders in different fields to run the networks with us. Using the new partners' input, we will better understand the real needs of each community in terms of our pay-per-chat model, and how best to tailor the service to each comunity.

We have some exciting marketing plans for the new site launch, and we will keep you posted. The new website is planned to launch in mid-November.

Am I friendly enough to you?

"Earning some cash by selling my spare time to others online? Sounds great".

Yes, that is a great idea, and we believe in it strongly. That is why we do our best to create MinuteBox and realise this dream. We have taken care of all the details to make sure the billing process is well integrated. Using our bidding system you can easily settle a price and time for a chat session with one of our experts. Our chat application runs with any standard browser and requires no installation.

Enough? No.

I feel creating a website is a bit like making a movie. Maybe you have a good story to tell, but you need to make the movie easy to understand. Otherwise, it would be another self-indulgent piece of "art" which your audience may not appreciate.

With this in mind, we have come to question what our own audience thinks of MinuteBox.

We are proud of what we have done with MinuteBox, but it seems it may not yet be enough. What hurdles are stopping people using it? Thanks to my friend, Cathy (a pretty and smart girl), we have realised that MinuteBox is simply not user-friendly enough.

After considering her comments, I started to read books about web usability. As a non-technical person, that is a new world to me. I now realise that we have made some assumptions in our design which make the Minutebox experience less comfortable for our users. They do not want to have to think hard to use our website; if they find it difficult, they will simply leave.

It is now time to make MinuteBox friendly and welcoming to our users. Making friends with Minutebox should be effortless. Finding the benefits of MinuteBox should not be like digging at rocks to find gems. It should be a well-presented cuisine, served up for your enjoyment.

We have found a user interface expert who shares our vision, and will be helping to update our design to make MinuteBox all it should be for its users. We are all working hard on these changes, and will keep you updated.

We feel enthusiastic about the new and improved MinuteBox, and hope it will excite you also when you get a chance to see it.

"Naked Conversations" with users

Our blog has been quiet for a while. In all honesty, this is my fault; there are lots of things going on at MinuteBox. Also, I have been unsure of how to keep our users updated via a blog. Why is that? I am still new to the idea of blogging, particularly blogging for a company rather than personally. This must make me sound like an unevolved ape from a different century! But please bare with me - this ape is learning!

I understand perfectly that blogging is one of the important means of communication with customers/users in the 21st century. As far as MinuteBox is concerned, we are always keen to get feedback from users, with the aim of improving our service. Establishing good communication with users by blogging is a must to us.

We despearately want to know what our users want from Minutebox. However, I am just not so sure what is the right approach to write a blog that will interest them. Of course, I do not want to bore you with every trivial detail at MinuteBox! However, I do hope to keep you all well informed on what we are trying to achieve. I also want to give you the opportunity to have your voice heard, if you do not agree at our plans.

I have begun to read books whose aim is to teach an ape like me how to blog. I have come across a very useful book: Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble/Shel Israel. An important lesson I have learned is that blogs are a powerful and free tool for companies to advocate their services and products. If you think you can create a fake, "character blog" as part of your marketing campaign to fool blog readers, the blogsphere will show you who is the fool right away. The best approach is to have "naked" (frank, honest and open) conversations with your readers/users/customers.

Many of you might think that it is an such obvious thing. However, it is a simple but significant lesson to me. MinuteBox is young and new. In our Beta stage, the website is not perfect. We are trying our best to change this situation, but we are not yet there; we still have a long way to go. I feel I have misjudged in expecting we could improve MinuteBox to the high standard you expect, before showing our customers.

Don't get me wrong. We are very proud of what we have done with MinuteBox already. However, as 0ur users, you should be the judge. I now realise it is impossible for us to improve MinuteBox to meet your high standards, without your valuable input.

I think it is time for us to strip MinuteBox, expose its mysteries, and reveal its every aspect. You are our companions in this journey, and we want to share everything with you.

Minute Box: Chat with experts to get advice.

Have you tried our service? This is the great chance for you to find out what Minute Box can do for you.

We have invited 10 experts in different fields to offer you a free advisory session on MinuteBox. Please check our list of experts taking part in this promotion and see if you could get some advice from them. You can also forward this e-mail to your friends to see how our offer can benefit them.

Promotion Expert List Summary:

1. Career Advice from Top Investment Bank VP
2. Tarot Reading
3. Finance/Debt Expert Advice
4. Web Design Advice
5. Nutrition, Gym and Weight Training Advice
6. Web development Advice - PHP, Jave, Databases and more
7. Fashion/Beauty Advice from Fashion Design MA Graduate
8. PC Expert Helps You to Sort Out Your PC Problems
9. Mandarin Tutoring Session
10. California Travel Planning

Please check details of the promotion and our list of experts at: www.minutebox.com/promotion

Any publicity is good publicity? Yes, works in this case.

MinuteBox has got its first press coverage from TechCrunchUK. Unfortunately, Mike Butcher, the editor of TCUK, did not give us an altogether positive review. His points are: 1. Our service categories are too broad. We should have more focus or niches . 2. Online people tend to spend a longer time doing online searches. He is sceptical about the concept of people paying to consult experts. 3. It is too early to launch the site publicly. We do not have enough experts on board.

We really appreciate his comments. He has given me some advices privately and I have definitely learned a lot from him. Because of this coverage, we have also got comments and feedback from other TCUK readers. I am glad that many readers there are actually very supportive and the comments from them are very helpful too.

Actually, some websites in the US offer a similar online interactive advice service and they are doing very well. I am glad that they have proved that a need for online live advice exists. We have also identified the highly feasible service categories as our marketing targets. I do not know if this is too ideal. I think users play an extremely important role in the Web 2.0 era. The interesting part of MinuteBox is that this market is a free market. We are here to serve our users - to give you the best service and a good MinuteBox experience. We will certainly monitor user's behaviour closely to see what service categories are popular. Hence, we can modify our site to satisfy user's needs and enhance their satisfaction of our service. It is easy for us to tick some categories out of the list, but we would rather rely on our users to tell us what they want in this market space we created for them. Maybe users will help us to find some hidden gems?

I agree that we do not have a lot of sellers on board at this moment. Without a live website, it was not easy to promote MinuteBox and attract users. We were thinking it would be easier for us to promote MinuteBox when it is public. I do apologise if the empty website gives you a bad impression. This is where we start the MinuteBox journey and we are definitely growing. Now we are approaching different sources to find experts to join us. We will also have some promotional events to give users a free chance to enjoy our service. We will keep you posted. We are working our fingers to the bone and our passion and enthusiasm to MinuteBox is always the same.

We have have taken Mike's comments into consideration and will be viewing the platform before we make changes and launch it in full public beta

Josh

Minute Box Beta Launch: Create the Magic with Us

We have just launched our first beta version of Minute Box, on 15th of May and we would like to recommend it to you. Minute Box is a market space for online interactive advice and assistance. Users buy or sell advice or assistance on many topics via online chat or e-mail correspondence.

As long as you are willing to offer your spare time or know-how, you can be an online advisor on Minute Box. we have various categories to cover different areas and skills you might have. No matter if you are a professional, a homemaker, retired or a college student, you can easily find something to offer on Minute Box.

With professionals and experts in various areas, Minute Box is also the ideal place for buyers to get advice and assistance to solve any problems in a time and cost efficient way. When you find it difficult or time consuming to get the solutions you need from free online resources (search engine, Q&A websites or forums), a live chat session with an expert on MinuteBox could definitely help you to find guidance or a solution to your problem.

In the Beta trial period, we offer a free service to all users. The website is very easy to use and the whole time and knowledge-sharing experience can be fun and rewarding. I think this is a good opportunity for you to try it out and join this community with me.

If you like it too, tell your friends and invite them to join too. Many thanks.