A new look at hypnosis!
(Adam) I was recently talking to a friend of mine who has set up a hypnosis site in partnership with a hypnotist friend. Initially their model was reliant on paid for downloads, basically you choose what type of phobia/ habit that you want to change, then download and listen to it.
However what they found was that the market was swamped with this type of offering (admittedly of very variable quality), and as such they were struggling to come high enough in the search engine rankings to be able to make this viable.
So what they decided to do was make it all free. Every download is free and you can download all of them if you want. Now this may sound foolish as effectively they are giving away their product for nothing, however what they are thinking is if they can get the traffic high enough the advertising revenue will be higher than what they would have made selling the downloads.
When talking this through I mentioned that it might be worth considering a privelege area to upgrade their customers to, perhaps for longer hypnotherapy courses or new availability.
Now whether or not this is innovation is debatable, what do you think and any advice on what they could do to push the industry further?
If you are interested the site is here:
http://www.free-hypnosisdownloads.com/
However what they found was that the market was swamped with this type of offering (admittedly of very variable quality), and as such they were struggling to come high enough in the search engine rankings to be able to make this viable.
So what they decided to do was make it all free. Every download is free and you can download all of them if you want. Now this may sound foolish as effectively they are giving away their product for nothing, however what they are thinking is if they can get the traffic high enough the advertising revenue will be higher than what they would have made selling the downloads.
When talking this through I mentioned that it might be worth considering a privelege area to upgrade their customers to, perhaps for longer hypnotherapy courses or new availability.
Now whether or not this is innovation is debatable, what do you think and any advice on what they could do to push the industry further?
If you are interested the site is here:
http://www.free-hypnosisdownloads.com/
posted by Adam French at 2:50 AM
2 Comments:
I like the "and" approach as opposed to "or". Going with free downloads "and" some form of pay-for-premium-service makes sense. Let people taste test the hypnosis service and if they like it, they can pay for some 1:1 counseling sessions, weekly email advice / updates, etc.
That said, a couple of risks worth highlighting. I think it's getting harder to monetize a web service with advertising. My sense is that many web entrepreneurs think they can make a living off of ad revenue. With the proliferation of sites, I worry that eyeballs are spread across more content, and so sites without large installed bases will have a hard time building enough traffic. Free is a good start, but the site should pursue additional forms of differentiation to get publicity, notoriety, etc. We can knock around some ideas if it helps.
The other thing to watch with advertising is competitive advertising. For example, on the site, if I scroll down, the largest ad is for www.tomnicoli.com, a hypnotist who offers weight loss services. This is in direct competition with the 'top download" on your friend's site: weight loss. I was confused as to whether the free download site was run by Tom... and then I visited his site to learn about his service. So, while advertising generates revenue, we have to also watch that it doesn't divert potential customers.
Interesting business model warpmymind.com has a privileged area that you may suggest freehypnosis check out to get some ideas. Also another idea would be a pzizz.com which is basically they have a certain medium and need a specialized player($) to play the session.
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