Presentation Feedback

 Feedback

I was lucky enough to receive primarily positive feedback from my presentation, and was further lucky to have one of the members of the panel be involved with a writing/publishing company. I was told that my business idea was generally good and well thought out, with the market clearly there. One of the investors mentioned that she agreed the main reason people didn't write stories was due to a lack of time/resources, giving me the perfect gap in the market to hit. Additionally, I was told that my branding was a subjective matter, as a few of the investors liked it while others (such as Carl) deemed it as looking aimed towards kids. One of the investors said that as long as I liked the branding, it wasn't too much of a concern how others felt about it. While this is somewhat true, I am considering what Carl said about the childish nature of the branding and how I could deal with this, perhaps by using a different font (one that's still rounded and soft to look at, but not as much as DK Lemon Yellow Sun). I was also told that, due to my low start-up costs, I could reasonably start this business now if I wanted to. 

In terms of negative feedback, the vast majority of it was aimed towards my finances. I was told repeatedly that I was undercharging, and that my rates ended up with me earning less than minimum wage. This went so far as to have one of the investors suggest that I "add another 0" to my prices. I did projections with this pricing range, as it turns out, but found that I was significantly overcharging in my opinion. I'll have to consider a potential middle-range, such as doubling my prices to see where that leaves me.

Another piece of feedback I received was that my demographic age range was a little too small, and that I could (and probably should) target older demographics. This is something that, in retrospect, I 100% should have considered. I'll be taking this feedback fully into account. One way I could incorporate this feedback into my business would be to add a Facebook account to the list of my social media accounts, as I believe the main demographics for Facebook are older adults. Producing a Facebook account would give me a good place to target this older demographic, as well as another place to advertise.

The investor involved with the writing/publishing company told me that I could consider adding another pricing option to my business; publishing the stories. While this is certainly something that would give me more income and extend how far I can help my clients with producing their stories, it's not something I know very much about and would require a lot of research and learning. Publishing is a far more complex area of literature than just writing, and so I feel that I will not be doing this (unless I'm eventually able to learn how publishing works).

I was also given the suggestion of adjusting my word counts for my pricing, in one key area; my most expensive option. My most expensive option for stories was listed as '5000+'. This is somewhat vague, and as Carl suggested, could lead to someone asking for a 30,000 word story for the ridiculously low price of £750. I'm taking this suggestion into account for my business, and will therefore be incorporating a 10,000 word cap on my business. This feels like a reasonable amount for me to be able to write whilst still receiving a fair income. As my business grows, I may increase this word cap slightly to 15,000 to account for larger stories being requested, but I doubt I'll go any further than this. An increase in my word cap would also have to come with an increase in my prices as to avoid underselling myself.

To conclude, the majority of the feedback I received was positive in nature. The bits of negative feedback I did receive are things I'm taking into consideration for my business including: the addition of a facebook social media account to widen my demographic range, putting a 10,000 word cap on the length of my stories to prevent ridiculously long stories, increasing my prices to avoid underselling myself, and the possibility of changing my branding to appear slightly less aimed towards children.