3Luxe.com is a product search engine with a difference…other search engines use algorithms, numbers and fractions as the cogs and wheels to regurgitate a whole string of very near misses to everyone that plugs in a search phrase. 3Luxe uses no algorithms or numbers…it more relies on the taste and interpretive skills of its founder and pooled review site results to determine the top 3 products currently available.

Like Flash floor cleaner and hundreds of P&G commercials, draw a line down the middle of your computer screen and compare and contrast – on one side you have a big complicated machine delivering a homogenized gloop of product results to anyone that asks and on the other side of the screen, the three best products in any given category according to the 3Luxe founders.

Business Model:

• Advertising from key manufacturers who are ultimately lucky enough to have their product/s in one of the top three results
• Affiliate links with Amazon or Shopzilla et al when people take the next step after the search and review and treacle forward towards purchase
• Google ads (ugh!)

Some Core Functionality/Elements:

• Um…Search!
• 3 Results only of perhaps the most expensive but kick butt products you can find in any given category
• Thumbs up or thumbs down vote for any of the items returned
• A very cool drop down of review results from cnet and others, along with consumer reviews from other sites
• Bookmarking
• Send to friend
• Comment posting for all items

Likes:
Like, Like, Like.  This site is well built, thoughtful, intuitive and not surprising the Worple Brothers have got it right…I say not surprising because Doug Worple, the CEO is another former proctoid that went on to create what looks to be a very cool creative / advertising agency called Barefoot.  Like it or not, the great advertising agencies are helping to shape the tastes and desires of us all…so it is not a shock that by combining their own tastes for items with consumer reviews from multiple sites they are delivering product results that actually seem to be the best 3 luxury items.  I guess my original concern was “What makes these guys able to choose the best three items that I’m going to like?” – but in a sense, better to combine the science of review sites such as cnet with some degree of taste than relying upon the Google number crunchers. This business model opens up a number of now obvious business opportunities i.e. segmented product search engines according to demographics – so now we have the ‘A’ search engine, anyone up for creating the ‘B1′ product search engine?

Dislikes/Suggestions:

• The home page has more of a ‘website’ than a search engine feel.  You could argue that this is so different that going for the minimalist search format is wrong – but the current look and feel of the home page is almost of a templated website.
• Taking a note from P&G brand training – too many fonts, and no clear obvious focus for the eye causes confusion in terms of what are the priorities on the page.  We have caps competing with flowing scripts with more modern fonts, moving photos and all in all its a great concept which, from a design perspective, needs some tweaks.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would consider it a luxury if I were able to make a $500K virtual investment in 3Luxe. Good luck Guys!

http://www.3Luxe.com

Interested in other articles about Its Our Movie?

• http://www.coolbusinessideas.com/archives/consumers_seach_engine.html

Andrew

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I can’t tell you how much I love this business concept!  I’m not 110% convinced about the capability to make significant amounts of investor revenues but frankly…that’s just not the point of this neat new business.  So, let me tell you about “It’s Your Movie”.  The basic idea is for the online community to fund, audition and vote for characters in a movie called “The Flirting Club”.  It’s a complete mashup of a number of popular ideas…think “The Producers meets American Idol” and you are some of the way there!

Business Model:

• Members of the public can buy a ‘stake’ in the movie of $10, $100, $100.  What’s not clear on the site is what stakeholders get for their stake although the site does say the higher the stake the more ‘say’ in the movie.
• Advertising is another revenue stream for “Its Our Movie” although as the site currently has a 4,000,000 Alexa ranking the revenue is likely to minimal at this point.
• Movie Rights and Sale:  I could find no reference to movie rights or sale as it relates to stakeholders but it is a new business so that may appear in their FAQs.

Some Core Functionality/Elements:

• Auditioning:  To audition for a part, members download the script, choose a character and video themselves. After uploading the Audition to http://www.youtube.com / http://www.metacafe.com / http://www.dailymotion.com the code is then re-pasted within the “Its Our Movie” Website so the community can review and vote on the auditions
• Characters: A summary of each character is included in the site and video auditions can be added against each character
• Voting: Members can vote on a 1-10 scale for each audition.  They will also be adding the ability for people to vote via text message/SMS
• Photos/Videos: Photos and videos of each person auditioning
• Member blogs
• Member forums (Is this a Drupal site with a skin? Hummm)

Likes:
Sometimes new business are not about money…OK, rarely new businesses are not about money because money is oxygen for startups but in this case, its about the excitement of being involved in creating a movie. Doesn’t EVERYONE want to be involved in creating a movie? Even if it’s a bad movie for goodness sake.  Now here’s a little prediction, as momentum grows for this new site then it won’t be long before Simon Cowell and the rest get wind of it.  Before you can say “Teletubbies” I’m guessing that this process may move from the web to other mediums.  When that happens then this could become a significant opportunity for the founders.  If I was a stakeholder, I’d be looking for some reassurances that I’m buying a tiny piece of that potential success.

Dislikes/Suggestions:

• Be explicit about what stakeholders are getting!  It’s great that you’ve raised $100K but if you want to hit the $1M target then I would outline what those folks were getting…really clearly!
• My understanding is that the Director is Alex Jovy. Is it THE Alex Jovy that received an Oscar-nomination for his film Holiday Romance who also went on to produce and direct the thriller Sorted starring Matthew Rhys and Jason Donovan? If so, let us know people! At the moment it looks like some obscure guys idea that is absolutely exciting but we need to know it’s legitimate and this isn’t paying for someone’s extended vacation in the South of Spain.

Additional Opportunities:

• Plug this into the TV machine and turn it into a show.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would personally stake a virtual $500K providing someone gave me virtual percentages of the revenue.

http://www.itsourmovie.com/

Interested in other articles about Its Our Movie?

• http://www.crowdwisdom.de/2007/08/15/crowd-casting-fuer-einen-spielfilm-itsyoumovie/
• http://www.klhagen.com/provokingthought/2007/08/using-creative-new-ideas-crowdsourcing.html

Andrew – Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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Farecast is a new way of approaching online travel purchasing that could change how we all shop for online travel. This could be a real winner if they can get the average consumer to buy into the concept. 

It’s about time that there was some real innovation in the online travel space.  My personal experience when jumping between Expedia, Travelocity, Opodo and others is the difference is often marginal (a few bucks) and often a few bucks more expensive than going to the airline directly.  My established habit is to find the best flight using these online services and then to go direct to the airlines and buy the flight. Am I the norm here?

Anyway, Farecast analyses fare changes of airlines over a significant period to ‘predict’ what will happen with ticket prices between 75 airports and makes a 75% accurate (?) recommendation regarding what is likely to happen with that ticket price.  i.e. wait, or all time low – buy etc.

There are a number of elements and value adds to this site that I wouldn’t do justice to here. I recommend you check it out. But a few key points, Farecast covers the top airlines, can save you money, you book directly so keep frequent flyer miles that other sites take and there is no booking fee.  I good deal no?

Business Model:
As there are no FAQs within the Farecast site, it’s a little challenging to determine the exact long term business model.  What’s noticeable is there is a shortage of ‘advertising’ and there is no margin added to the purchase of airlines tickets as consumers buy them directly from the airline.

They may have relationships with the airlines which give them some kind of monetary benefits for tickets purchased , such as through an affiliate program but that is unclear. 

One neat and obvious revenue stream is what Farecast is calling Fare Guard – with Fare Guard you basically lock in the lowest price of an airline ticket between two locations for a week.  This pricing ‘hedging’ costs you $9.95.  Book your ticket with any airline at any price within the week and if there is a price increase against your locked in lowest rate, Farecast will give you a refund of the difference between the lowest price and your ‘guarded’ price.

Given many could purchase this ‘option’ and not exercise and many could purchase and the price may not increase, this is money for peace of mind and involves no outlay that I can see from Farecast.  Great business model no?  They may decide to take out ‘insurance’ which will cost a fee but I would be surprised given the quantity of deals they will be involved with…my guess is they have just run the numbers and believe they can make a decent margin.  They may well be right.

Some Core Functionality:

• Fare Prediction
• Arrow: An indicator showing the price ‘trend’ for the flights you are interested in.
• Confidence: A percentage based on Farecasts accuracy of predictions for flights of the kind you are evaluating.
• Average Fare Change.
• Buying Tip: Farecast’s recommendation which is supposedly 75% accurate.
• Fare Guard: The ability to pay $9.95 to lock in the price of the lowest priced ticket for this flight against a guarded rate.  This hedge mechanism will give you a check refund. See below for more details. 

Likes:
Any site which can give me some indication that I can wait 24 hours and save money is worth using.  It’s annoying to purchase a ticket to find the price has halved two weeks later, this may be the answer to that consumer frustration.

Fare Guard is also a great idea and I would even use it, especially for personal travel.

It’s nice and simple which is especially good given how complex it could be. 

Dislikes:
A few little dislikes:

1. Will the average ‘Joe’ or ‘Joanne’ use this site?  Given the average is often a pretty low common denominator – I still wonder if its a little complex for the ‘average’. (Hopefully they don’t read this blog ‘cos I’m not sure I could cope with the hate mail)
2. Business travelers are often price insensitive – they would prefer to buy the darn ticket then focus on the key business issues and emergencies.  If this is the case, Farecast may have to rely upon the occasional personal travel of the business user that has suddenly become more price sensitive, or the Joe’s and Joanne’s outlined above.  But, if they are regular business travelers, they will likely have significant air miles and may not be in the market for waiting around for price shifts.
3. Farecast has something special here – I almost expected the site to look quite different to get the message home…but it looks similar to all the rest.  I guess there’s a fine line to be walked between being and looking too different.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would use $500K to predict Farecast’s success.

http://www.farecast.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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Auction Ads is a company which has just launched some new technology which places items within eBay auctions within blogs according to the blogs content. I LOVE this business in terms of the potential win/win for customers and the company and the potential revenue stream for the investors.

Business Model:
Auction Ads business model is compelling:
1)  EBay has an affliate marketing channel which pays affiliates when they refer customers to their site
2) The eBay affiliate program is tiered.  As the affiliates monthly revenue increases, so too does the percentage of revenue. It begins at 40% of the fees ebay earns and caps out at 65%.  But to hit 65% you need to refer at least $1M to eBay.

Ebay Tiers:

Some Core Functionality:

• Cut and paste ad codes straight into your blog
• Customized ads based on blog subject matter
• All ads include a referral link so if anyone signs up you get credit 

Likes:
There is so much to like even though its such a headslappingly obvious business model:

• By consolidating the monthly revenue made across multiple blogs and sites it should not take took long to hit and pass the $1M monthly revenue number.  It should therefore be possible for Auction Ads to give their blogging channel a higher monthly payment than they could capture directly through eBay.
• As all ads have a referral link their channel partners (the blogs) can also gain revenue from other blogs who sign up via their ads. Another incentive to stay with the Auction Ads program
• There are viral marketing elements to the business model which should spread the Auction Ads program quickly and ensure the highest monthly tier rate is achieved within eBay.
• In a previous article I mentioned how I believe people are mentally blanking out adsense ads on the web.  This is an alternative that will not be instantly categorized as ‘adsense ignorable’ and should have better click through rates.

Auction Ads in Action:

Dislikes:
The only concern I have is eBay sells alot of stuff, but how much of it is absolutely relevant to the breadth and depth of subjects covered by blogs and are the blog readers in the market for whatever is being sold?

For example, let’s say there’s a blog about cars…easy to have an eBay ad.  No problems at all to imagine.  What about a blog on cat neutering – I know, perhaps one of my more obscure examples but that’s the point.  Yes you could sell eBay books on the subject, but are cat neutering readers going to be interested in bidding on an eBay book on the subject? So, a great model for obvious and mainstream’ish blogs and sites…maybe not so for quite a few blogs out there and even if they do place ads, will they generate any volume?

Saying that which blogs have most traffic?  Are there 100 blogs out there that have the lions share?  If so a)  this ad program makes sense especially for the top 100 b)  but why would they use Auction Ads rather than just having their own affiliate links?  Because its easier than doing it themselves it probably the answer but what’s the difference in revenue for them to go with Auction Ads rather than direct?  If I was Auction Ads, I’d be striking some low margin deals with the top 100 which would also give them further exposure to the wider market.

Another question that makes me hesitate a few seconds is what are the barriers to entry for a company doing the same thing?  The barriers will get higher as Auction Ads gains more and more market penetration but they had better hope an exact competitor does not come out of the woodwork very soon.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would hope my bid to invest $500K would be accepted by Auction Ads.

http://www.auctionads.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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Ning is a new’ish company with some recently released technology that will skyrocket this company into the stratosphere. 

It’s the first company that I’m aware of that has created an easy to use, drag and drop, easy configuration site for users to create their own Social Networking site.  Literally within minutes you can have your own Social networking site with video & picture functionality, forums and a host of other features that allow the non-tech savvy out there to potentially get in on the Social networking action.

Business Model:
Ning’s business model is simple:
1)  They add ‘Adsense’ to the right hand column of every Social networking site so as people promote their new networking site, it should, in principle create a multiple effect Ning’s ad revenue
2)  People who want to get the benefit of the Adsense on their own site can pay a monthly fee, currently standing at $19.95.  They can obviously stratify that later so the more popular sites have a rev share and the less popular pay the fee or take Ning’s ads and just get on with running their site

Some Core Functionality:

• Social Networking:  Invite, meet new people, privacy settings, address book importing
• Full Customization of Theme or take existing template and configure.  Add your own logos, photos and branding
• Photo sharing, video sharing, forums
• …and the list goes on. Not bad for FREE! 

Likes:
There are a number of reasons why Ning will sing from an investment perspective:

The user interface is VERY easy to use and intuitive, I set up a social networking site in under five minutes and was…with a shy smile…relatively happy with how my very own social networking site looked (Check out the results:  http://amateurs.ning.com/)

With a couple of hours – it would be possible to make the site really work as some of the existing sites within Ning show.

As people promote their site, they promote Ning, this gives them the magic fairy dust needed for companies like this to go from 2, 200, 200K in months.  Their adsense revenue should be pretty obscene soon. 

I am starting to wonder if people are starting to mentally phase out adsense and these ads become a almost invisible to the human eye. What do you think?

As members of Ning can seach the different Social Networks there’s the potential to pick up stray but interested members…not bad!

Dislikes:
OK, so I used Ning and built my site based on a crazy little idea I had a while ago.  Thanks guys…I have finally seen my idea live. 

I know Ning has done one side of the hard work for me…the tech side, but I still have alot of the hard work ahead.  How to get people onboard, especially the first few users.  With these kinds of sites, you need a few active members so that the shy and reticent don’t worry about joining too.  The more people onboard the more valuable the system, so you really do need those first few.

That works if the Social networking site is in an area that already relates to a space with which I’m involved…so for me, Startups.  But what if I’ve set up a site because of an idea I’ve had but where I have few contacts?  That is a big stumbling block for this to go viral with all social networking sites created.

I would imagine that 10% of the users sites will hit the volume big time, 20% will do pretty well and the rest will perhaps exist but in name only.  Just a guess! But if the 80/20 rule works here…the majority of adsense revenue will come from the large volumed 20% and those will be the ones that convert to the $19.95 monthly fee. They would be mad not too and where does the revenue come from then?

Also, if I do create a site that really starts to rock and roll…iId like to port it to my own server and do it for myself.  Arguably if I did that then I couldn’t take advantange of Ning’s new functionality releases but it would still be mine.  Ning does not seem to have that on their roadmap.  If they don’t someone will come along who will offer that.

It would be good if Ning could figure out a business model to allow that to happen and keep some of the revenue. Perhaps a premium service would be to host the site under a separate URL but share the revenue or charge a higher monthly fee.

Last point – how long until the Social networking site market is completely saturated?  When the point arrives (if it hasn’t already) then this functionality becomes a glorified Yahoo Group type service.  I guess that still gives them the potential to be acquired by Yahoo or Google sometime ahead so another reason for a big virtual investment.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would stop inviting all my friends to http://amateurs.ning.com/ to invest $500K in Ning.

http://www.ning.com/

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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Just after the last post ‘Geni: A $500K Virtual Investment’, Geni were kind enough to respond with the following:

“Geni JoAnne Feb 26th, 2007 at 4:46 pm Edit

Hi Andrew. Excellent blog. We are considering adding premium services to our site in the future–the basic service will remain free.”

JoAnne – Thank you for letting us know. It would be great to understand what Premium services Geni will be offering – but I’m sure they will be as value add and innovative as the core site itself.

Have your say here: http://www.andrewive.com/mdsg-forum/

Great job Geni!

Andrew
Founder
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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