On November 16th I launched a website called Lose It or Lose It. The basic premise is you lose the weight or you lose your money. You choose dollars per lb and lb per week and you must weigh in every week for 10 weeks at or below your weekly goal. Hopefully by the end you will be 10-30 lb lighter and get all your money back! We make our money when people don’t make their goals, an optional tip at the end if they appreciate our service, and the held money in an interest bearing account.
I have had some interest about how Lose It or Lose It was built. I want to start with why, then go into how, then on to how much.
Why?
Me on the Scale at 282.2 lb!
Over the summer I took the time to close the door on past projects and archive them. While I was going through them, I realized how much time, effort, and money I had spent building junk that never made any money. I decided the next project I worked on would have a way to make money from the start and would not be based on advertising. I hate advertising.
Around the same time, my wife Rebecca and I spent ten days traveling through Arizona and California. We had a blast and I wanted to be able to do more of it. I realized there is only one way to be able to do that, I need to get serious about building some of my own products.
A few months later, around September, I was thinking about how I am always trying to lose weight but never make any progress. I realized I needed an outside motivator where I would be punished if I didn’t stick to my goals, and it needed to be public. I was thinking other people probably needed the same thing and so I put two and two together and realized I came up with a project that fit all of my criteria! I decided to go all-in and build this for real.
How?
Wireframes Spread Out on the Table
I ran the idea past a few trusted people (you know who you are, thank you!) and they thought it was worthwhile so I started. I kicked it off by getting my thoughts onto something concrete as quickly as possible in the form of wireframes hand-drawn on paper. I like doing this for every project because they are easy to throw away if needed and force you to think of the website from the outside-in, the way your customers will see it. Many developers start with what makes them comfortable, the back-end, but your customers don’t care about that… so cut it out!
I sent the wireframes over to Chris Nagele at Wildbit to review and estimate. They thought it would take three weeks to design the entire site so I gave them the money and they started. They did a fantastic job and delivered all the HTML, CSS, Javascript, and images required to make the site work. They even stubbed out the AJAX responses! This was a great way to do it because I knew how the site would work before I did any significant development. I had started some of the message passing work but I didn’t develop the part of the site that powered the front-end until they were completely done the design!
During design I went back to doing client work to try to free up some extended free time to develop the site once the design was done. I also went in search of a good lawyer to review the site and prepare the necessary documents to ensure our safety and that we would keep the money we actually make. I ended up choosing Andrew Baer of Baer Business Law. It was my first experience involving a lawyer in one of my own projects and a little nerve racking to spend that much money, but it was valuable. I have a kick-ass Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and How It Works documents and he helped me think through how the business was going to work. I ended up simplifying some of it because of his advice.
Around the middle of October I started development. The first step took about three weeks and up to today I have probably spent close to four solid weeks of development. I am not sure if that seems like a long or short time, but I feel like that is pretty quick. I also started using Cucumber for the first time. It slowed down the development process but I now have a rock solid set of integration tests I can use to make sure I haven’t screwed up anything in a major way. Starting design-first was also nice because I was easily able to write Cucumber tests and make them pass to make the site work. I used Rspec for the gritty details and all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes to make the site work.
I launched with eight AWEsome beta users. My goal was 15 users by the holidays and I have reached that goal, I now have 16 users! I have found it is a little difficult to convert visitors into users. This could be for a number of reasons including
- They are waiting until after the holidays to sign up
- They may not be sure if it works
- They may not have the money to invest
- It isn’t clear to them how it works
I think all of these can be overcome but it is going to take experimentation and patience.
How much?
People said they were interested in numbers, so I’m going to put them out there.
- Design by Wildbit: $14,000 – it was less than that due to a friend discount, but this is the full retail price. Finding a great designer (you rock Gilbert!) is key because they are responsible for the public facing side of your product. This purchased the design, HTML, CSS, images, and Javascript required to make the entire site work.
- Legal by Baer Business Law: $4,725 – this paid for the incorporation, privacy policy, terms of use, how it works document, and 2 hours of “discussion” about using the word “penalty”.
- Promotions: $3,210 – I’ve promoted the site through a Barcamp Philly sponsorship (yay cupcakes!), Refresh Philly sponsorship, Reddit self-serve advertising, and on January 4th, a Daring Fireball feed sponsorship. Word of mouth has worked the best but that has only gone so far. I’m trying to see if getting the site in people’s minds will lead to a signup sometime in the future.
- Development by Forge38 (me): I have no idea because I did it myself, but many many hours! I didn’t keep track of hours because I do that every day with my client work and don’t like it.
- Misc: $500 – This includes having a friend do some market research and hosting costs.
I probably could have done this cheaper, but part of spending the money was making sure I stuck to the idea until the end; that I don’t build it then move on to the next thing. I currently have $450 on the line to lose 20 lb which I will get either way, but really, this $16k website is what is on the line. If I don’t lose weight, then others won’t want to sign up!
So far I have 16 users with a combined investment of $5,500. They have lost $115 (yay revenue!) and 141.6 lb!
Next!
Lose It or Lose It iPhone Application
So, what’s next? I’m looking for an angel investor or similar to help me grow the business. I believe I have proven the concept to be valid in that it helps people lose weight and can actually make money. I would like to build “Keep It Off or Lose It” to help those people trying not to gain weight as well as pay Will Ronco of Awesome Software to finish the AWEsome iPhone app he prototyped for me. The app would make the weekly weigh-ins even easier!
That is pretty much it, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I would be interested in presenting this material to user groups if they would find value in it. You can also follow Lose It or Lose It’s progress via the blog or twitter!
Randy, thanks for taking the plunge and letting us know all the whys and wherefores (and how-much-fors.) Information like this is really scarce, and it really helps to see how a small outfit puts together a site.
By the way, if anyone reading this is considering signing up for LIOLI, I’ve lost twelve pounds so far. This program really happens to work well for folks that know _how_ to lose weight, they just need the _motivation_.
Randy, congratulations on an awesome, well-designed, and performant website!
Yikes on legal fees! Thanks for the very frank writeup, Randy. Really helps me for estimating what the costs might be for my product idea!
JP, I don’t think they need to be that high for most sites. Unless your site does anything “weird”, I think you can get away with a more standard Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. I was just paranoid that someone would find a loophole to get their money back or get sued because they twisted their ankle exercising.
Randy, that’s a fair point. You’ve got the “don’t start any exercise without consulting a physician” problem. And the money loophole problem.
Hey Randy,
This is a great idea, and I hope you’re successful with it! One thing strikes me on the homepage, after recently viewing a Tim Ferriss talk about web businesses (http://is.gd/5xsoc). He said they greatly increased conversion rates for DailyBurn.com by drastically simplifying the homepage. Check out his ideas – your home page has a lot of good info on it, but maybe it could be jostled around and simplified to make it brain-dead easy to get started?
Good luck with it!
Thanks Brian! I will check it out since I am always looking for ways to improve it!
Thanks for this very open piece on loseitorloseit. For the last few months I have been toying with ideas that I could put out for end users and see if any of them caught on but I havent even looked into costs there. So seeing the numbers here really helps.
Of late I have gotten to know a few people in marketing and have read a few books on it as well, and have come to appreciate that domain a lot more than I used to. On that note, check out this video from the FOWA conference with Kevin Rose talking about growing a site. Not everything may be relevant but some could be.
http://vimeo.com/6905398
Good luck.
Randy, LIOLI is a site and system that should get some attention from researchers regarding the psychological affects of putting your money where your mouth is. I also think that you are incredible for building the ShareUrMeal.com site and creating LIOLI…especially with all of the food glamour shots on SUM
PS I think that you can tap into the New Years resolution desire to lose weight – many weight lose companies say “New Year, New You” – it may be trademarked though :-/
Happy and healthy!
I found out about your site through twitter. Let’s just say I’m a friend of a friend. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna sign up AFTER the holidays. I’m also going to try to get some other folks to join me as a friendly competition. Seems like everyone I know could handle losing at least 10 pounds.
I’ve been mentally debating whether I like the whole notion of penalizing myself for failing – and you profiting from ones failure -
which is what your site really does. On principle, it feels a little icky. But the incremental approach with weigh ins and targets makes for a happy medium. It’s not an all or nothing proposition. I think I’m okay if I achieve my weight loss goal AND maybe you score a few bucks along the way. But truth be told, my goal will be to get all my money back at the end.
It may be too late, but this could make a good xmas gift or even a new year’s gift. Rather than signing oneself up, perhaps signing someone else up. The recipient would then ‘earn’ the money fronted by the giver. Though you’d need to know the person pretty well to do it, otherwise they may be a little offended.
Best of luck to you. It’s good to see a new idea that benefits people, seems viable once you scale up, has lots of future options for growth in functionality, doesn’t rely on advertising, and doesn’t just deal with digital content. I think you’ve got something here.
This is great insight, thanks, Randy! I’d love to know more about the design process. Was it rather iterative and/or were there several different concepts presented? I’d be curious to know how it was working with a competent, knowledgeable designer who can actually put together all pieces of the art/html/css puzzle.
I can probably do a better job describing the design process in person, maybe at a Phillyrb meeting?
But, I’ll give a little more info here! I could have probably gone through iterations if I wanted but my feeling has been that unless there is something I hate, I just let Gilbert do what he does best. The end user most likely won’t care one way or the other so in the end the design just gets worse with more iterations. I trust Gilbert/Wildbit.
I think the wireframes went a long way to prevent the need for iterations and helped keep the cost down. That may be different depending on the quality of the wireframes. Maybe Gilbert or Chris from Wildbit could weigh in (no pun intended) on this some.
Randy, thanks for the description. Really helpful to have some real world case studies from which to learn. Not sure if you’ve seen it before, but Thaler & Sunstein’s book Nudges describes a number of situations where people make poor decisions that can be improved by better decision architectures. Might be worthwhile mentioning your site on their blog.
I’m so impressed by how open you are about your thought process, your spending and your traction. This is rare and extremely refreshing. The openness you are role modeling is inspiring to me (as is your courage in making a real commitment and investment in this new startup).
I’m a big fan of you and this concept. I can’t wait to see the buzz this will attract. Even you keeping the lost money, because it’s interesting and a little controversial, should be good for buzz.
Thanks Blake. I’m actually a little surprised that the concept of the site keeping the money if you don’t make your goals is controversial. Look at Weight Watchers, they keep your money even if you DO lose the weight.
Hey Randy,
Thanks for sharing the details and background about Lose It or Lose Its development. The costs were especially interesting, and not something you see often enough.
I have a bit of experience developing products few people wanted and have learned the hard way the importance of customer development and iteration but even now with my current project I find it’s difficult to boil it down to a minimum viable product and go from there.
This might be the topic of a future blog post, but what steps have you taken to validate your hypothesis that people will pay for Lose It or Lose It? Is there competition?
Im curious about the legal process too. Did you start from scratch with a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service or did you start with a template and tailor it to your site?
Best of luck and again, thanks for sharing. Look forward to hearing you talk about it at a future meetup.
Thanks for the article. Your openness will help a lot of people.
Regarding the lawyer’s fees, I think there is a natural tendency to over-communicate with your attorney at first. As time goes on you get more conscious that the meter is running every time you have your attorney’s attention.
I look forward to hearing more!
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I’ll try to answer Colin regarding the design process.
I think the most important thing to understand is that Randy provided extremely detailed wireframes of each page in a single PDF document. Since LIOLI is very conditional, this was the most important step before handing off to Gilbert for design. I am pretty sure the design would have taken twice the amount of time if this was not the case.
Randy and I did some up front review and analysis of the wireframes together. I made some suggestions and we prepared the final wireframes for Gilbert. At Wildbit, we work in weekly iterations, so Gilbert had a full three weeks to work on it. The first step was to create the visual design. We usually choose one page (homepage, landing page, dashboard, etc) and create a mockup in Photoshop. We like to submit one mockup instead of many to avoid confusion and feedback overload. In the case of LIOLI, Randy was happy on the first shot aside from some small tweaks. It took about a week for fist mockup, but after that things moved fast.
Once the mockup was approved, we jumped right into HTML/CSS/JS. This allowed us to create a design architecture that could be used for all other pages. From that point, all other pages were designed in html, so the deliverable was pretty much how it would end up in app.
For the remaining weeks, we created a small chunk of tasks (pages – in weekly iterations) and knocked them down one by one. When something was ready, it was sent to Randy for instant feedback and revisions. We iterate a lot in the design, but make sure to stick to priorities and move on when possible (Randy is good at this). The usual practice is to not move on until the current task is complete, otherwise things pile up in the end.
Wow, this is much longer than I thought. By the time we were done, we had most pages finished as a clickable prototype. We added some time at the end for small clean up and adjustments. This always happens when you start playing with it.
Chris
Great post on a topic I always wanted to read about!
Unrelated and possibly not helpful but every time I saw LIOLI I kept reading LOLI … not what you want. I read too much manga.
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Great post. Thanks for sharing.
You mind updating us on new revenue? I’m interested if the New Year has brought you any more customers.
Thanks!