I am an entrepreneur, and as such have good, average and terrible business ideas on a fairly regular basis….
Some work (some work well!) and some do not work at all
About 2 years ago, I designed and built a website which I thought would be the next big thing.. www.instantcvonline.co.uk
The basic concept was this, gain millions of users, constantly updating there cv/resume on a regular basis for the princely sum of £2 per month (about 4USD/EUR).
The volume concept is a simple one. the acquisition cost would be around £10 for each user, returning £2 per month on a constant renewal basis. After 5 months, the ROI has been met, and after about 1,000,000 registrations, so has my mortgage.
But it failed….
I believe the reason to be the fact that my time has been used up massively with other projects, and this was one that was not going to ‘run itself’. so it got shelved.
The shelving process
I could have given the services of the website away for free, giving a functional and very useful website away for any job-seeker to use for FREE, but then let’s face it..
Why would I give it away for free?
I had spent countless hours working on the project and probably £10,000 of my own money marketing, employing and developing the project, so there was no way I was going to give it away for nothing.
But then it dawned on me, WHY NOT? at the end of the day, all the time money and personnel was wasted anyway! so sod it, give it away, even if one person gets a job off the back of what I have developed and then in turn makes a better life for themselves then great stuff. Why should I be so greedy and obnoxious as to take the view that ‘If I can’t make money out of it, no one is going to use it!’
So that is what I have done. Given it away for free, so please knock yourselves out and register, do your CV, download it, send it with one of the included covering letters and get yourself a better job.
Just one thing…. Let me know how it goes!!
I am genuinely interested in people who have improved their life as a result of my tiresome work.
Tags: cv design templates, free cv design, free resume design, resume design templates
October 6, 2007 at 9:48 pm
You should notcharge for users to post their resume. You should charge companies to access those resume.
October 6, 2007 at 10:04 pm
True enough, perhaps that would be a good idea later on. I think for the meantime I will just allow people to create their resume’s online for free.
I dont think I will ever charge the end user for this service, it doesnt seem fair. Perhaps you are right, make the companies pay for it.
I know I pay for decent CV’s from potential employees