The Ask Shap Project.... Need feedback, ideas, questions, advice
 

Hi Everyone!

Over the past few weeks I've been giving feedback and advice to a bunch of sites and it sparked an idea for a little project.

The Ask Shap Project

The idea would be to put together a blog/site that answers questions, gives advices, critiques sites/designs, gives pointers etc. I don't know of anyone that's done that in the industry so hopefully it's something that could be of interest.

I need your help to launch this. Any feedback you can provide on the following would help!

1. Most important question do you have any interest in something like this? Yes or No?

2. I have the domain AskShap.com. What platform do you think would be best for this type of site. Tumblr? Wordpress? Something else? Let me know.

3. What would make this site valuable and useful for you? What can I provide that would make you want to check it out?

4. I need sites, businesses, designs to review, critique and comment on. If you want my feedback please post in them in this Thread. My goal is to give feedback that you haven't heard before, is actionable and will help make you more money :winkwink:

Any other ideas, thoughts, advice please fire away. I want to hear your thoughts and feedback :winkwink:

With enough feedback I'll try to launch this week :)

Maybe you should Ask Shap for help!

Oh and a complete overhaul of Tainster - Home is coming up! Launch next Monday!

http://i.imgur.com/12GoP2C.jpg

:thumbsup:thumbsup

My advice: don't.

1. I think it`s a really cool idea. Would it be targeted to adult in the main or all business markets? Online and/or offline?
2. WP is a nice easy CMS to use and I believe it has plenty of Q & A type plug-ins.
3. Lots of good questions and informative answers would certainly make me want to read it.
4. This isn`t related to #4 but you should include an about me type page as some people particularly newbies won`t know who you are. :)

Cool. Fair advice. Why? Waste of time?

I think it would be very interesting. I'm a WP fan.

Thanks Selena :)

I'd say you will get a shitton of half-baked ideas, crappy sites, biz-less businesses peppering your site with garbage, that would truly be a waste of time to review/critique. No different than any other 80/20 rule, but I'd guess it'll become very tiresome/mundane after a while, and you'll be forced to wade through the crap and giving feedback on every minute detail, in order to get to the worthwhile ones that show/have promise.

As it goes on, it'll seem the ones you are now bored with you are just ignoring (which most likely you will be), and create the image of disinterest by the owner to the audience. That leads to inactivity which obviously leads to death.

It might not go like that at all of course, and there'll always be a thousand reasons of 'why not', people are always quick to see the negatives and point them out, so take this post as trying to maybe point out a pitfall, and not as a 'don't do it' (which I'm sure you will anyway having been where you have been and heard all the naysaying before) :thumbsup

GL :)

Hey Shap,

I like the idea. A few questions that come to mind:

- What's the goal? Paid, private community or free-for-all?
- B2B or B2C?
- Are you going to drive traffic yourself or are you going to tap into the traffic of something like reddit?

Good points. But what if it's not limited to what is submitted. What about commenting on things that would help people who aren't submitting?
i.e. stuff like this
- thoughts on what I would do if I owned FreeOnes.
- discussion on top 15 videos on tube site A and what they are doing that you can learn from
- what design changes I would make if I owned Twistys.com today.

Stuff like that.

I would look forward to reading it Shap. :thumbsup

You should just turn into Gary Vaynerchuk :)

I like his Ask Gary Vee show, I haven't seen you do anything to get on his show yet though?...

I've got some adult related questions for when this occurs.

:thumbsup

It's still a rough idea i haven't flushed out all the pros and cons yet. But to answer your questions...
The goal of the site would be to help people out and share information and ideas in an industry that rarely does so. I have a lot of feedback and ideas to share. If I launch the site and one person takes the advice and it helps expand their business to new heights then it would be a success.

Paid/Private/Free? Definitely free. No interest in ever directly making money from the idea. If it happened great. But the idea is to give this information for free to build up for something bigger and better.

b2b or b2c? Definitely B2B. Probably nothing for the C in this project.

Traffic? I wouldn't drive traffic to it as I have none LOL. I'd probably use GFY and Xbiz as platforms to get the word out and then see how it spreads. If I have good information to give then I imagine it would build a following.

Clearly all those replies still beg the question WHY? My thinking is if this is done right it could lead to something bigger. Who knows what that may be. Running something? Consulting? Joining something. I have no idea. I figure start small with this and see where it leads.

Thanks Dready :thumbsup

LOL I knew this would come up eventually. Though I watch every show I didn't think up of this because of the show. I sent out a bunch of feedback to a few sites recently. Got 2 emails this weekend asking for feedback and ideas. Just got me thinking I'm pretty good at ideas and how to improve things. I get overwhelmed by the idea of building things up from scratch but existing products/sites I can always find ways to improve. So I thought maybe there could be some value in it for someone :)

Fair feedback as was his. But instead of just saying that any reasons why?

I think that format would be excellent and well worth reading, with lots to learn from. Top sites and what you would tweak and do differently, but maybe also a few lesser known sites you stumble upon that you see have it close, but how you would change to rocket them up.

Something that would definitely be cool for adult biz is something like kickofflabs do for mainstream : KickoffLabs Live Marketing Chats

Live site reviews and comments by 2 guys. Hell add an SEO expert and you're WINNING!

I think you'd be great at this and would surely submit some sites to you for sure ;)

Exactly!

Wow live is the next level :) I'd definitely start with it not being live. Would love to set it up so that any comments I make can be commented and questioned so it isn't "This is what I think" and that's it but more of a here are my thoughts.... any comments or questions. I don't know everything so by having it turn into a conversation could bring about other ideas that I haven't even thought of.

are you bored ? :winkwink:

Actually everything I said is pretty much solved by just having a submit process, and using eg wordpress or some other non-forum type CMS would ensure no new sites could just be subbed right out in the open. And yeah great ideas there.

Mickey already asked my other thoughts about whether it's meant to be monetized directly/off the bat or just giving back/forward, and a :thumbsup to your reply to that also :)

Hey Shap, what is your email? I want to ask you about something that I don't want to post here.

Cheers :)

I don't give my ideas away for free, sorry.

And as for 'advice': It's worth what you pay for it. I wonder how many people would appreciate your ideas (and be in a position to implement them).

You are a very helpful guy Shap and it's great - but how many are left in this Industry who could benefit from your insights? You are great at large projects that sell for millions of dollars, how would you help the small time webmaster?

:)

Good luck either way!

Pornexec at gmail

There are a lot of people not in a position to implement changes. That is true. BUT.... there are even more people who don't want to make changes. I've met so many askholes who want to hear what they are doing is right and when you give any feedback that isn't 100% positive they dismiss you as being wrong.

Look at Mark Cuban's blog. He does some similar things in mainstream.
The one thing I'd want is frequent updates. A column every couple days would hold my interest. A new post once every three months would get stale quickly.

Now that's something I would read :thumbsup

I would give you a guest post on my blog to spread the word. Good luck.

anyone that has a new idea would be crazy to ask for feedback on a public site/forum

oops i mean pornshap at gmail

I agree with you!

Chris Sacca on What Twitter could be
What Twitter Can Be. | LOWERCASE capital

I definitely would do something like the FreeOnes one.

That's fair enough but I wouldn't expect to be discussing new ideas. The truth is there isn't much new in the industry.

Question for WP and Tumblr experts. What pros and cons would there be of being on either platform. For ease of speed I imagine going with Tumblr would be fastest? What do you think? Both have the option of equally good commenting system right?

The idea is sound and I think with the right execution, almost all of the negatives mentioned by "that Spurs fan" can be negated.

Don't allow submissions to be made public - instead, have them emailed to you and YOU pick the interesting stuff and add your commentary and advice to it. This way, you stay motivated and your users don't have to wade through garbage.

Oli Gardener did something quite neat here:
35 Beautiful Landing Page Design Examples to Drool Over [With Critiques]

Perhaps you can do something similar with say:
- Choose home pages of a few sites and give your pros and cons on them
- Choose join pages of a few sites and give your pros and cons on them

This will obviously be very generic to the point where anyone with a site can apply your best practices feedback and come away with something worthwhile.

For those saying the don't or won't give their ideas away; fair enough. I think the point here should be getting already realized ideas critiqued so that you can squeeze more out of it. Or taking existing concepts and re-conceptualizing them so they become fresh and current.

LOVE that idea!!!!