Ideas

I think it should also be a secret club - so the wives do not catch on!!

I love the idea... but you would need to make the same type of web site for the guys.

With wonderfull suggestions like...

Let him whatch the game once in wile.

Let him win an argument once every 2 weeks.

Bring him his favorite drink once a month with just your underwear on.

You know just to make thing equal.
I think we guys like to be spoiled too.

Love it

What a great simple concept. If the web has showed us anything it is the simple concepts last the longest.

Good Work

This is a great idea for all those guys who get their heads so far up there...oops...so far into the computer they forget to breathe! Excellent idea Techguy!!!

The only addition that I would make is a direct tie-in to Prezzles! That could be the start of a "wonderful friendship" between the two programs. YEAH!!!!

Moogy just described exactly why crowdsourcing the ideas is the best way to create a list of different things you can do for your spouse. Crowds can come up with all sorts of ideas.

I think that this could apply to more than wives, but I think the initial focus should be wives and then it could expand from there.

Eventually I think you could take the ideas and stories of people applying these principles and write a book about it. Once it's up and running you could probably get quite a bit of free advertising by going on Dr. Phil, Oprah, Today show and other media. That is looking a ways out though. However, I think an idea like this is something the media would eat up.

It could be a social network and then we could all start hanging out and have good beer and talk about how impredictible, but pragmatically machievalistic our wives are. ;-)

I wonder what do the girls think? Isn't this a wonderful idea? Are there any girls here at all? :)

It sounds great! I think there should also be a coommunity aspect that allows the community to submit their own ideas that could randomly or by maybe a rating system that sends the ideas to be via SMS.

It could also be cool to have ideas that are bound by time or seasons. It wouldn't make sense to get an idea about making a snow man with your wife if it is, let's say, August.

Love it!!

Its a nice simple idea that could work.

Do you see this as a subscription service for the main revenue stream?

It would be good to be 'geo-random' in suggestions because you might lose the browny points if all the wives in your suburb got a 'unique gift' that wasn't so unique on Mothers Day, for example.

And i think PsychSplash hit the nail on the head .. it should be a secret club where you can claim your sensitivity badge and rewards without being discovered:)

Ok, this is getting too far... I tried to comment in a way that is kind of subtle/ironic, throw in a mention of a beer or two, a beverage i adore consuming as a male or whatever... but that does not seem to work! Nobody has condemned this idea, yet!

Do i really have to report from the borders of the civilized world about how lousily shovinistic this idea is?! Hell, why not calling the idea "pimp my wife", people?

This doesn't convince you? Let me try and reason with the mob, on the merits of the idea.. are you going to spend more time online (on this so-called system) to learn more about your wife?! Is it all the wives, are they all the same? They are, as far as the idea goes, ain't that the truth. Well, let me tell you, guys, my wive is different! Otherwise, why would she be my wife?

Oh no, you say, this is going to be personalized of course! Ok, so you're going to enter your wife's characteristics into the system. Are you then going to discuss with an automated system about what you should do to make your wive happier? Is in an automated system (like babycenter.com is for the little babies)? Are you going to discuss with a bot what to do with your unhappy wife? No it's not like that? It's a community? Are you going to discuss with other d***heads what frustrates you about your better half and vice versa? No problem, find a usenet group for that!

If you insist to have a whole resource for this...idea.. for god's sake... can you please change the title into "Spoil my spouse"? Please?!?!

Oh, i'm sorry i was a little harsh, i had a beer.. or two :)

There certainly are a lot of books on this topic and websites too. Allowing on your site user submitted ideas with the ability for users to rank the ideas is an interesting feature additive. I really don't know how many people you could get there though just with that or whether the revenue potential is very big.

Deckard,
Thanks for your candid comments. I can only imagine you drunk at a Cambrian House party. Would be a lot of fun.

To appease the shovinistic comments, I've adjusted the idea to spouse. I still personally think it should be developed for wives first. I just know as a husband I would personally appreciate a daily reminder of nice things I could do for my wife.

It's not about learning more about your wife, but about reminding you or "inspiring" you to do more for your wife(or spouse). I'm interested to see the ideas that will be created by the crowds.

Speaking as a wife I think it is a great concept. Wives know you men want to be spontaneous and wonderful but a bit of a reminder (unknown to the women folk) would work wonders! We know you love us but a bunch of flowers without the hints is a real pick me up when the kids have been going crazy all day. Surely any woman would appreciate this no matter how "different" a person she may be.

This makes me want to call my girlfriend.

An alternative would be to call it SPONSOR MY SPOUSE -)

It's one thing to recieve an idea to buy a new gift for your wife ( and pay for the service ).
Instead of just sending a SMS, I would support sending Mobile coupons ( e-coupons for mobile phone ! ) that are delivered by sponsors giving reduction eg. on a new ring, flowers, .... Of course, the mobile coupon must match the idea that is sent out and send a coupon near your location ( see the profile )

I think this idea has lots of merit regardless of Deck's rant!

I personally need a reminder of important events such as Mothers day, birthdays, anniversaries. Something that will remind me and keep reminding me until I act would be very useful.

Two ideas:
The marketing should be focused on women because I think they'll be the true customers. I say that because something like 70% of greeting cards are purchased by women. I think this is very similar to that.

I've often had a good gift idea pop into my head well before my wife's birthday. But I invariably forget it. Being able to record the idea for future recall would be a useful feature to me.

this is a slightly modified version of savemyass.com

savemyass.com is similar to this idea, but it only applies to flowers. My wife hates getting flowers. She's rather have a box of chocolates. That is why crowdsourcing the list is what makes this concept unique. Plus, with the cambrian house model we can really attack this idea on an international scale better than savemyass.com

Savemyass.com proves that the concept works and that people will pay for this type of service.

Well, as a gf. I will really appreciate that my bf can go online and look for new ideas to make me happy. e.g. learning to sing a song for me. some joke etc..
However, it will even better if that is think out of his mind.

yep, it could work but I guess that the name and concept need to be changed to meet a more "unisex" approach

http://www.thedoghouse.co.uk/

Good idea.

Not only do I love it, but I have a feeling my client would be an early sponsor as well: http://www.ediblearrangements.com

-nfo

Just another angle on this otherwise great idea. My girlfriends have always loved it when I have made an effort on myself (e.g., bought nice clothes, fragrances, essentially spruced myself up a bit). Essentially they were saying "if you show that you respect yourself, then that means you respect me as well". For example, if I get myself a nice suit and haircut, well I am far more likely to take my partner out for a nice dinner at a nice restaurant. This concept was very elegantly leveraged on Queer Eye. When those blokes were pampered by the fab five, they generally passed that pampering on to their partners. My idea "queer eye for the online guy" received a lot of positive comments when it first came out (pity it has not reflected in the votes). I think my idea would subsume nicely under Tech-guy's idea.

To make a long story short.........The site does not just need to focus on nice things you can do for your spouse, it should actually focus on the bigger picture. Pamper yourself and your spouse. This way it moves away from just being guys visiting a website and picking a nice gesture for their partners to guys actually making lifestyle changes for themselves and their partner.

This sounds just like my Online reminder service only with better packaging.

I like this idea, but wanted to point out the following company as a similar biz.
This doesn't have a "Crowd-Sourced" element, but the software does feature a reminder tool for relationship management.
http://www.girlfriendx.com
(Fair disclosure, I work as a marketing officer for this company. A female version: girlfriendy, is in the works.)

mswayne,
girlfriendx.com seems to really be satisfying a different market. It's more about managing the creation of relationships whereas Spoil My Spouse is about preserving an existing relationship.

I can see how the reminder tool for relationship management could be very similar and could possibly be a model that is used to help develop Spoil My Spouse. I could see many of the concepts applying from girlfriendx to SMS(Spoil My Spouse - the new SMS) There could be some interesting marketing tie-ins there too.

Sweet

The idea of memory joggers linked to appropriate actions/gifts is good and I think has been done.

As a stay at home husband, though, I'm fed up with magazines, websites, literature etc that perpetuates men do this/women do that stereotypes (e.g. magazines purporting to be advice for "moms" as if "dads" don't care about all that girly stuff).

If you get this off the ground please don't stereotype men - or women.

i like ur idea and if u implement it will add so great of u

a hole to put whole

experiments once done criminal punishment for whole life

Well, it sounds very good, but.... The nice thing about spoiling your wife is taking care oneself, and being original. I would not like to have some WebPage telling me how to make my wife happy...

Well, I know a lot of sites giving a service like this and never heard any of them making a profit actually because with all the handheld comps, you can barely forget anything today.
The Idea is nice but it has already been done.

I think this a great idea.
I wonder, could it be in some way linked to the notion of providing 'Personal Assistant' services via SMS? So, in addition to reminding me about my spouse's birthday etc, it could advise that my suit needs drycleaning after certain event triggers in my calendar.
That way, I could just outsource my entire diary to be crowdsourced for references about all kinds of stuff from where to eat to what to do about car hire in Bangkok...And, it would all come through at the right time.

I love this idea and I flower companies and other advertisers would jump all over people volunteering to receive ads.

So, your idea is a prompting calendar, with free suggestions about good stuff to do, and links to places to buy nice & appropriate gifts?

So far, so good.

The Prezzle tie-in was a good idea by someone up-thread.

What would it take to give this some juice? Frequent buyer points? AirMiles? Discounts? Celeb endorsements? Random prizes?

Maybe it offers first crack at stuff - early sales of concert tickets, tunes, gadgets, books, etc.?

OR can it succeed on cool content generated by the crowd?

I guess those are questions for the next level.

Dr. Phil would probably suggest... asking her ;-)

To echo Abi's comments, I am also a wife and would love if my husband signed up for this service. Flowers are nice to get regardless of what prompted the idea. I also imagine that my husband would add his own touch to ideas that are sent to him.

I'd love to have this for me to get ideas also. I can always use other creative ideas.

Great idea! I'm ready for my hubby to spoil me! Everyone needs a little help sometimes and this is a good way to get some really good yet simple ideas

It's 'chauvinistic', not 'shovinistic'.

I would really like to see meself use this service, but I think that's mostly because I'm single...

Self pity aside, it's a really great idea. Women all over the world deserve husbands aware of this service.

I had some serious suggestions for this, so much so that I went ahead and submitted my own idea sticky rather than hijack here. If it'll help develop this idea, PLEASE use it! :)

http://www.cambrianh...ter/ideas-id/NI4INBr

i take personal offence at the assumption that "...the simple fact that men are insensitive and don't remember to do nice things for their wife".

this is a good idea, but based on an assumption that is both wrong and insulting.

mike1138,
I'm sorry to offend you. I've changed the phrasing to not group all men into this. I went overboard on the description and I apologize. I shouldn't have classified men in this way. I initially said all to include myself needing this product as much as anyone else.

I hope you'll accept my apology and I appreciate your feedback on my idea.

no worries, thanks for understanding. when it comes to my lady, i'm a spoiler par excellence! drop me a line if you want to know what i consider the 4 essentials for a good gift!

I said much earlier this was a simple and nice idea and probably very quick to put together. But equally so it would be very much easier for the many competitors in your market (a few already mentioned in the thread) and others providing reminder services to add your particular niche flavor to their service and they don't have to build any market share.

I also now think this would be very much a fad type of service which would die away quickly.

Several people in the thread including myself much earlier in the day asked about how this makes money but I still don't see anywhere in the thread where you define the revenue streams or attempt to give any scope or pricing.

Have you given this crucial aspect of evaluation any detailed thought?

Or is the model just a build it and see concept?

Doymarn,
I'm glad you can see that this is a simple concept that can be easily developed. In fact, I believe that this is exactly the type of idea that is perfect for Cambrian House to develop. It can be developed and put into production in their request 6 week time frame. It's main costs are hosting and marketing and so it would be able to turn a profit for those participating in it very quickly. Others might try to develop something similar, but many of the competitors listed focus on different niches and spouses wouldn't work as well in their niche. Also, I think the crowd sourcing aspect of this idea will set it apart from the competition. You understand the benefits of the crowd sourcing the concept since your idea VBU focuses on using this same method. I believe that crowd sourcing can develop some extraordinary results and Spoil My Spouse is the perfect platform for a crowd. Take a look at Jill's comments to see a simple example of what one person's contribution can make.

I don't believe Spoil My Spouse will be a fad service since it will combine unique concepts with old standbys that keep people interested to what it will suggest next week(or month or day). Plus, with a reminder service you are never going to stop needing to know about important dates. I'll always need a reminder about my wife's birthday and anniversary. If the ideas we send are good then people will continue using our service and it won't just be a fad.

There are a number of revenue streams discussed throughout the thread. In fact, one comment suggested their client would likely be an early sponsor of the idea. There are certainly hundreds of other companies like the one described above that would be interested in advertising to a captive audience of people wanting to spoil their spouse.

Revenue could be generated from these "sponsors" in 3 ways. First, CH could charge a flat fee to advertise. Second, CH could retain a commission on each sale that is made (similar to an affiliate program). Third (and my favorite), CH could charge a smaller flat fee to the advertiser along with a small commission on each sale that is made.

As mentioned in a number of previous comments, Prezzle and Spoil My Spouse could work great together and be another source of revenue.

Revenue could also be increased by offering an automated purchasing system. This could also include some sort of m-commerce solution where people can purchase something for their spouse directly from their phone. It could also include a subscription service for so many gifts a year distributed randomly throughout the year.

I don't pretend to have all the ideas on revenue that could be generated from having the type of captive market this would create. However, I believe that the market that Spoil My Spouse attracts is the exact type of market that advertisers want to capture.

I have not gone over any detailed pricing models. I expect this to be done during the market test when advertisers are contacted and better revenue models could be created. I will point out that the only major costs of Spoil My Spouse have to do with bandwidth/infrastructure and marketing. The cost structure for sending out emails or SMS messages is very small relative to the amount of revenue that can be generated from the various sources listed above.

Just to give a general idea of how much money people spend on their loved ones, take a look at the following market number. $13.70 billion was spent on Valentine's day. Sure, not all of them are spouses, but a good portion of them are. Of course, we wouldn't just be capturing a small portion of Valentine's day, but also Anniversaries, Birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, the occasional I love you gift, etc.

I find this a great idea!

In terms of business, it has a massive approach and a lot of potential. Be sure to offer multilingual

Congratulations Techguy!

I'd really like the specific service of "nice thing" reminders to be under the umbrella of a service that allows people to create abstract reminder groups. A group for reminding people to do nice things for their spouse, another for employees (you touch on this so far), another for todo/task lists, college coursework, etc.

This detracts from the whole concept a bit, but creating an open framework to facilitate these reminders seems like the big winner. Other websites could use it to connect with users periodically, much like a newsletter.

Sweet & simple idea, I know it would at least be moderately successful, and the best of luck.

Hey, hey.

Wonderful idea.

Actually we should hook up on this.

I have two products in this arena, http://www.102nicethings.com and http://www.MakeHerAppreciateYou.com

Best of luck and contact me! Let's talk.

Dr. Max

Coulda saved some marriages had this been around!

techguy:
Congratulations on making it to the finals.

We now have to choose between two very different ideas to indicate which one should get the money and resource, so i would like to pose two questions to you:

Why in your belief would it be more attractive for CH to develop and market your idea as opposed to Film Funder?

What do you see as your ideas strengths and what do you see as its weaknesses?

Good luck

Great Idea!!!!

I would keep it unisex (i.e. Spoil My Spouse). That way you get more eyes for the advertisers. If it is driven by ad dollars it would be free to belong and you would have more eyes this way also. You would not need to worry about the spouse knowing about the site as they would not tell the other they belong.

So after you join you put in the dates of interest for example wife's birthday, wedding date, and mom's birthday mom's wedding date etc... You basically put everyone's important dates in and the system starts to send you ideas coupons etc. via email ahead of
time. Don't forget the holidays. If you logon to the site you get extra savings (and see more ads) as opposed to just using the email side.

You could also have an auto mode for the really crazy busy people. You give it a credit card and a budget and category and country of origin (for people who travel over seas or have an interest in the exotic) for each important event and it makes a selection and emails you for a go/no go decision.

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