How would founders market a £5-a-month digital home manual service?

[jsecure]

So I had this idea to create the complete manual for your home, as written by you. Where is the stopcock for water, the shutoff for gas and electricity. What rooms do you have in your house and what items are in there, with PDF copies of the instruction manuals. An automatic home contents insurance report. Bills and utilities over time. Stuff like that. The wifi code. Basically your own complete guide to your house.

Everyone I've spoken to (friends and family) think it's a really useful from day one idea, and my wife is really impressed with how it's turned out. But I'm thinking, how do I go about marketing this now? I launched a career helping website which tracks applications for roles, and although that's really useful, it has been a lead balloon in the marketing phase. Clearly people need work, and some people are really struggling. But I have not managed to make contact with those people. We are on opposite sides of the hypothetical river.

This website about your home will only cost £5 a month, so I can't really look to spend £50+ per head acquiring customers. I learned with my last site, it's one thing to make a really amazing product, but it's quite another to market it.

Op doesn't actually want honest feedback, they want a magic solution (customers who want this and would pay the asking price)
Only your own time and effort you're wasting creating this so crack on.

I'm guessing this is the first time you've stepped outside the friends and family bubble and you've now had a bucket of cold water poured all over your idea. It's hard, I get it.

It sucks to get unvarnished feedback on what you thought was a genius idea. But if you're clever and really business minded you'll take the feedback on board and reflect on it.

The problem with using a niche approach as your central business model is you're going to spend a lot of money just trying to find that niche and may not even break even.

Realistically, what do you need in MRR to meet your OPEX ? How long can you operate at a deficit without causing major problems?

I'm actually trying to help you (although I'm starting to wonder why!?) because I've seen so many people just like you and I've mentored a few. It's a hard journey, I do get it but you need to be less head in the clouds and much more business focused. Don't result to sulking teenager mode. Come back with a plan even if it's revised.

Bloody hell, bet you wish you hadn't bothered @BigFootsBigSister

This all sounds like this to me
https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1n6g8p8/south_park_on_ai_sycophancy/

I assume this is vibe coded?

What are you using for hosting? Back end? Security?

Think it's funny you came here for answers, got them and are now mad people don't like your idea. Ask your AI how to market it.

Anyone can build anything these days. Hell I could take your post to my AI and build it for the exact specs I need, it has access to my pc and so I wouldn't need to upload half as much to it.

You need to add value, and I don't think your idea does.

Funnily enough, I was actually chuckling when I read that response because I envisioned the tantrum that went with it 😂😂😂

Just watched this, hilarious 😂😆

I'm sorry he treated you with such disdain after you have him genuine feedback.

💖 It's all good. Seen it before, many times. Reality bites.

Good thing it wasn't an investor pitch 😂

Kinda tells you all you need to know really.

I think it's better as a template people can pay a small fee to download and fill in and store themselves. No one wants another subscription and I don't want to pay £60 a year for something that might not change for years on end. When I add up my time and the subscription it's a no go. Don't rely on people who love you giving you actionable feedback or indicative buyer intent

.

And there’s your downfall I think. I hope not as you obviously are excited about your project, but you’re getting free marketing and product development advice here, and listening to very little of it.

‘Only’ £5 a month. What would you be offering for that that I do not get the word document which is where this is currently stored.

i have a local copy which is backed up via the cloud so I see any updates on any device in really time.

good luck with getting £5 per month. These ideas are notoriously difficult to monetise.

“Don’t like the kind of thinking where we question what value do we get from £5/month”.

sorry but this made me laugh out loud.

So you are going to rely on the consumer articulating the value case. Fair enough.

and, how do you keep your product competitive? If you offer a download everything what’s to stop someone else providing the same service as you just a few pence of even pounds cheaper.

How do you build and sustain competitive advantage?

TBH we have a shared email address that we use for anything household so have folders relating to utilities, insurances, cars, payslips and online receipts. It’s a completely free digital space so I absolutely wouldn’t pay to have it all hosted elsewhere. If it’s about UX I’m pretty sure I could ask CoPilot to collate it all into a manual for me. Instruction manuals are all in an expanding storage file. Although I’d normally troubleshoot via Google to get the answer I need rather than trying to find the right page.

FWIW I work in advertising, you need to market a solution not a product.

I wouldn’t approach it this way round as your comments will be flooded by people who don’t want it.

start by building some customer profiles of households who would want it. What are their characteristics? What is the use case?

i would build about 4-5 customer profiles. Then when you start talking about it on instagram, facebook groups, forums - you are speaking to your audience with messages that will resonate with them. The channels will depend on the target audience but always start with the value proposition first. Who is this really helpful to?

This is marketing 101 really.

Have you done any market research? This needs to be done before you do marketing. I think what you have done here is a good start in market research. Unfortunately for you the demographic that is MN does not like your product.

My data is already parked in other places.

I assume you’ve done plenty of competitor analysis so it might be helpful for people to understand what your service will do differently / better than the following brands that are already operating. As in what features have you already built and tested that do things differently / better / more than these, not just ‘I woudl make sure it could find savings’ - what is built into the model to make it stand out?

• Homer - arguably the closest match. It stores manuals, warranties, receipts, floor plans, home inventory, maintenance reminders, expenses, insurance documentation, and even automatically finds appliance manuals from model numbers. It now has AI search too.
• House Manual - literally called "House Manual". It's designed as a complete guide to your home for owners, guests, cleaners and family, including safety information, emergency details, insurance inventory and operating instructions.
• The Home App (UK) - stores manuals, insurance documents, certificates, service records, property documents and reminders all in one place.
• Home Hub - uploads appliance manuals automatically, stores maintenance information and appliance details.
• HomeNog and HomeWell both market themselves as a "second brain" for your house, storing warranties, manuals, maintenance history, appliance details and home information.

Wow, they all look good @throwawayimplantchat. Homer is very slick and has a free version for people who aren’t adding multiple properties.

I suspect OP is long gone, cursing all the mean haters here, but in case they're still reading...

Posters are being honest because, believe it or not, MN regulars want to help people (exceptions always exist). You've probably spent a lot of your time, and a fair bit of your money getting this far with your product. No-one on this thread who has read your op and subsequent posts would want to pay what you plan to charge for this, and many wouldn't use it at all. They've told you this, and maybe this might make you reconsider moving forward with this, because it will cost you more time and more money.

You need to identify the people who will pay for this, before you go any further. And if you can't find them, stop. The Sunk Costs Fallacy is a hard one to swallow, and the particular brand of plain speaking you get from MN can be even harder to accept, but we're not doing it just to be mean.

I’ve seen people with this rude attitude to feedback about their big idea before. Absolutely delusional that this is the “million dollar big idea” and that any advice or feedback (that they solicited) is just jealous haters. There’s no point wasting breath on people like this. It’s why I never tell people IRL about my publishing career, they want me to read their book and tell them it’s the Next Big Thing when in reality it’s almost certainly unpublishable by mainstream publishers. The tantrums that follow are really something. This guy came here in the hope that “mums” (bc we’re all the same 🤔) were his target audience and couldn’t cope with reality. He never wanted feedback he wanted us all to clamour to subscribe to the app and his fragile male ego is hurt. He couldn’t possibly listen to feedback from wimmin.

When I bought my house, the old owner had created this for me... a list of where everything was, links to instruction manuals, what paint colours were where, what lightbulbs everything took, what the neighbours were called and a little bit of info about them. The estate agent we bought from offers it, apparantly, and they also delivered us a printed copy with a bouquet of flowers and some toilet rolls/washing up liquid/coffee.

I'll be honest, I barely looked at it but my husband finds it useful, so he has it as a pinned email.

I'm not sure whether that helps you or not, though. It exists and my husband uses it so there's a use case; but it was "free" for us. If my husband told me he was going to pay a site to store all that info; I'd probably give it to AI and get that to track it all; plus our utility rates etc.

I mean, I wouldn't want to do that without removing neighbours names and passwords, because I don't really trust keeping that stuff online - but I also wouldn't trust a £5 a month website to keep that secure. I might trust a more expensive website, but then I wouldn't pay more for this service...

I think market research is the next step for you, not necessarily here; but to find what groups do like the idea, and would find it useful. Perhaps older people who don't really adopt AI; but then they are more likely to be cautious about passwords and things online. Landlord forums, definitely, but when I rented my home out, the agency had a similar sounding website and created a guide for tenants, and also tracked all monthly costs and changes, so it'd probably depend if that's unusual generally. Once you've understood who would use it and why, it'll be easier to choose where to market it.

I tend to agree with this assessment. I suspect we were seen as a bit soft and fluffy rather than actual business women, who might actually know what we are talking about. The OP got a shock when we asked pertinent questions, didn't just give sycophantic support and gave honest feedback. He clearly hadn't thought his plan through and was embarrassed, resulting in aggression, name calling and abuse.

I have seen a lot of this attitude in male developers starting out, who make exactly the same mistakes as the OP in terms of app design and development. They make the huge mistake in thinking their idea exists in a vacuum, that you just develop without real market research and whack a price on that they feel is justified rather than what the market will support.

Sadly a lot chase their idea over a cliff and end up in debt, when they could have taken a moment to really look objectively at what their idea was worth. I do sometimes wonder what their spouse/partner really thinks. Perhaps they also just see $$ signs. I knew one guy who boasted about being worth £30M but was always on the edge of bankruptcy. His wife didn't know how much they actually owed, he said she would leave him if she did. He tried to portray himself as a successful businessman but was really very much on the edge all the time.

That said, it's very gratifying to see so much collective expertise here. So much support for people to tap into. Here's to the collective businesswomen sisterhood 💪💪💪🥂

I’m not clear what the market is. I’d guess that elderly people who don’t trust technology would just keep a paper folder.