New blogging platform — would you use this?
Hey all!
I've been building a new blogging platform these past few months called Imprint (imprint.to). Only now have I realized that I've been doing a ton of development without having done the idea validation/user research before hand...hoping some of you can help me out with that now!
The goal of Imprint is to...
- Be a community driven blogging platform like Medium that lets writers publish their work and instantly have an audience.
- Community entails a reddit style feed, where readers can subscribe to certain topic groups (like subreddits) that writers can publish into.
- Allow writers to host blogs on their own custom domains, so their content directly promotes their brand.
- Have a simple writing, editing, blog creation process. Writers should be able to start writing in 2 minutes.
- A focus on content/data ownership. What you write is yours.
- Content accessibility. Imprint is a place for readers to learn from writers, and for writers to share knowledge with a vast audience. That means no paywall, an emphasis on ranking quality/helpful content first, etc.
There are a ton of blogging platforms out there. I'm interested in hearing if you think what I'm building has enough differentiating features, and if you'd personally be interested in using it/moving an existing blog to Imprint.
Thanks so much!
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Hey Roland. I'm going to follow the design thinking process for feedback (like, wish, wonder).
What I Like: the minimal navigation bar, simple colors of black and white, the amount of whitespace, the simple scrolling 'like' button at the bottom.
What I Wish: that the mobile view didn't have that spacing thing (the nav-bar button is pushing things out), that the person's blog menu had more purpose besides personal website and photography (most blogs have goals like building a following or driving conversion).
What I Wonder: Are there opportunities to make the content more interactive? Is there an opportunity to make this very mobile-friendly and make it a micro-blog? Will people be able to build a significant following on this platform? What sort of goals would someone have for posting here versus medium, a Facebook note, LinkedIn article, or Wordpress blog.
I enjoy blogging and have been doing it across a few different places for a number of years now. I'm happy to share insights if/where needed!
Thanks so much for the feedback Colin! Am definitely working on fixing the issues you've mentioned, and will definitely reach out for more insight on blogging generally down the road.
Hey good job completing the platform, in and out in functionality!
I recently started writing on Medium/LinkedIn for my startup, hosts Ghost on my own server for a hobby blog, and used to run a Wordpress hobby. I'm not at all a pro writer, but here's my takes.
Hope it helps!
I'd appreciate if you can fill out my user discovery survey. About 3min:) https://forms.gle/RJ7Mhpy2mt1zRUKh6
Wow, thanks for the insightful feedback. Just filled out your survey!
Thanks!
Let me know if you have a question for me of your writing platform and to what I wrote!
Hi, I’m actually working on a similar project as yours and I think we are on a same situation. If you would like to discuss more you can let me know. We both can share some thoughts.
I think I like the idea and can see the benefit. It's good feature to be able to link custom domains. Blogging is used to bring traffic to a particular website; do you have the ability to customise the blog to be able to theme it and create Calls to Action?
Hey Dan! I haven't built in all the customization features that I've wanted to so far. Now, writers can theme their blog using a custom logo and cover photo, but that's about it. However, customization is huge on my priority list, since I do think that's a large part of the appeal of people self hosting blogs and not using platforms like Medium.
My goal is to build a Tumblr-esque theming system where there are tons of premade themes, but it'd also be friendly for developers to inject their own HTML/CSS and style however they'd like to.
First of all, good job, Ask yourself this question: why customers (Writers) will choose my product (Platform)?
Honestly, not really. You need a stronger hook. I'm not sure what platforms are all out there. I just use Medium and would still use Medium over this.
Maybe giving writers the ability to crowdfund their research and articles. For example you can subscribe to an influencer writer for $1/month and the money will give them time and funding to fuel their research. For example I might pay $1/month to access private articles from Graham Stephan on Youtube
Hey Ryan, appreciate the insightful feedback, and for the awesome suggestion. I think what I'm going for primarily is to address many of the issues that Medium users/writers are having with the platform, for example not being able to put content on their own domain, medium heavily promoting only paywalled posts, and therefore peoples' content being inaccessible to readers.
Do you think these particular aspects I'm trying to address are suited to a pretty niche audience? And that most people are content staying on Medium? Thanks again for the feedback.
I think it’s hard for me to answer because I don’t have a ton of knowledge on all the players in the space and what their differentiating factors are. But I guess in short, yes I think these issues cater to a niche audience, which is a good thing if it’s a real pain point (not minor). I personally like medium because users trust it so if I post and share the link, the link won’t turn users off from clicking, everyone knows what it is. Unless there is something seriously annoying about medium like it censors my work i’m fine with using it.
From the website, i Can't really tell what makes your product so different?
also perhaps showcase how it looks in the admin?
Totally agree with you, my landing page is pretty rough and doesn't convey the message too clearly. Planning on replacing the landing page with a feed once I get that built out. I'm tackling bloggers' pain points with Medium, namely not being able to put content on their own domain and Medium pushing heavily to turn all posts into paywalled content.
How do you plan on breaking the chicken and egg problem?
Do you have writers with huge audiences?
Do you have a lot of readers?
Hey Volkan, I actually don't have any massive writers on the platform, nor do I have a ton of readers right now. The product's totally new.
I'm looking to acquire writers first, since I believe Imprint does provide value to writers right out of the box, even if there isn't an audience yet. They can set up a blog really quickly, host it on their own custom domain, and just focus on producing great content — all for free.
I think writers will promote their own content, and once there's enough content on the platform itself, I'll start working to acquire readers.
After reading the features not sure how you're better than current solutions.
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's hard because any monetization model will force me to compromise in some ways. One route would be to let people pay for sponsored posts on the main feed. That would clutter the experience a bit, but would keep content free/accessible to people. The other route would be to charge $5/mo per blog, which would create a more premium network of sorts. It would naturally filter for writing quality, but would also make it harder for people to write on the platform.
Things are still up in the air right now, but it's totally free for now. Any thoughts? Would love to hear them.
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago.