Self-help is big business—just look at all the Tony Robbins and Dummies books at your local Barnes & Noble. As with all media businesses, the self-help industry is moving online in a massive way. The latest Website to organize itself around self-help is First 30 Days, which took the covers off its private beta this weekend. The new site is designed to take people through the first 30 days (and beyond) of major life changes, such as the first 30 days of finding your dream job, starting a new business, buying a home, being pregnant, or getting a divorce. Founder and CEO Ariane de Bonvoisin tells me, “We will help you through any change that life throws you and will help you get going on anything you want to get started.” The site is launching with 45 different life changes and will soon get up to 100.
Before founding First 30 Days, de Bonvoisin worked as a corporate strategist/VC at Bertelsmann, Sony, and Time Warner. At Time Warner, she worked directly for former CEO Dick Parsons, who personally put up the seed money for the business. The company recently closed a $5 million series A financing, led by Hearst Corporation (other investors included Parsons and the New York City Investment Fund). The site plans to make money with ads and sponsorships targeted at each life change—stroller ads for people looking at how to deal with pregnancy or being a new parent pages, banking ads for people contemplating starting a new business.
I suspect that First 30 Days will appeal more to the Oprah crowd than to readers of TechCrunch, but I also suspect it will have no problem finding its audience. The site will likely skew two-thirds towards women, predicts De Bonvoisin, (indeed, it’s the type of concept you’d expect to see on the cover of a woman’s magazine). But she hopes men who wouldn’t be caught dead reading a self-help book in public will flock to the site as well in search of answers.
After all, people going through major changes in their work or personal lives need a place to turn to when they cannot figure out what to do. Visitors are encouraged to sign up to get a daily e-mail with a different tip about the particular change they are going through. Each life change has its own section on the site, with Top 5 Things to Do, expert interviews, daily news and blog posts from across the Web on that topic, a daily tip, community Q&A, shared wisdom from readers, and links to relevant books, websites, magazines, movies, music, and more experts. There is also a weekly podcast called Change Nation that features interviews with celebrities about how they deal with change.
The site takes a positive approach to dealing with the changes in your life. Its overriding message is: change is inevitable, change is good, make the most from it. The whole approach reminds me of corporate change management techniques applied to people’s personal lives. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. Each change section on the site follows a familiar template, which provides easy entry points, but sometimes can make every life change sound the same. For instance, look at the two lists of Top 5 Things to Do below. One is for improving your sex life and the other is for switching to a Mac. You can tell which is which, but barely:
Dig deeper and you’ll find some actual advice,and maybe others going through the same change. That is potentially the most powerful aspect of the site, as a place to find other people who are going through the same twists in their lives as you are. Once you go through all the expert advice and check out the resources, that would be the biggest reason to go back.
The site is built on Ruby on Rails. And there are two viral widgets in the works. One is an Everyday Change tip that can bring some inspirational candy to people’s personal sites and pages. The other is a Facebook app due out in March where you can select which types of changes you are going through, get tips sent to your Facebook feed, and post a bar chart that shows how many people on Facebook (who have loaded the app) are going through breakups, starting a job, or going through some other change.
First 30 Days is starting on the Web, but it could easily expand into other media such as books and TV. In May, HarperOne will be publishing The First 30 Days by de Bonvoisin. And she plans many more books. “The idea in my head,” she says, “was to start it as a book series. Dick Parsons said start it online. With books, I have no relationship with you.” If she can make First 30 Days the first place people go to when they need help with life’s transition points, it could easily become more than a 30-day habit.
Interesting.. and more and more new services using 3-word domain names…
Assuming that this is an ad supported site, I’m wondering if there is a line of ethics that could eventually be crossed here. I’m all for the fuzzy side of self help (and the $9 Billion dollar business that it is…) but some of the programs being offered to the “Oprah Crowds” can be very revealing and in some cases compromising. Is this the next big ad channel for pharmaceuticals and insurance?
Really good stuff. Im tired of seeing Web 2.0 sites focused on the uber techie beta testing crowd. I dont remember what the numbers were but i remember reading how a seriously small percentage of the american people have heard of Google docs. I mean if you haven’t heard of Google Docs how in the world would you hear of Seesmic? I think the new focus will be on companies realizing there is a market outside of the beta testing crowd, like a freakin huge market, and will begin to get serious about bringing ordinary tech users on to the web 2.0 market.
The website sounds fantastic. A great idea, implemented well, with a solid management team who knows what they are doing.
Nice looking site. I like the colors and design. And while not all their stuff will apply to techcrunch readers, I am sure things like advice on life after college
will help out the young readers of TC!
http://www.first30days.com/gra.....llege.html
-D
This is great investment for Hearst, Parsons and the NYC Investment Fund. The fund was profiled on our site and could offer real opportunities to startups like First30Days who have a good idea without all the clutter.
The founder is a good friend of Parsons and is extremely well respected.
Should do very well.
Very nice site and the colors and design give the look and feel of being in a “help” zone…
I just signed up to test the service. Warning: You get an email for every “life change” thing you check. My inbox just got flooded. Ummm, unsubscribe.
Let’s hope people don’t try to use this site to help themselves eat healthier with the big Papa Johns ads all over it.
Site seems pretty content light at the moment.
Each of the “top 5 tips” in each section are just a paragraph long that describe everything you should do. Problem is, there’s nowhere that says HOW to do these things, thats why im reading, i know what to do but want advise on HOW to do it. None of this explains how or gives any examples.
For $5million investment they should have spent more time writing the guides rather than getting as many written as possible. It looks like they’ve been written by people that did a bit of googling around each topic and cobbled together what they found.
Good concept, just needs better content to get people coming back.
yeah I agree those guides seem very generic, should add more info.
Seems interesting…maybe a more targeted version of what was happening at squidoo.
The real question to me is if, in their ‘first 30 days’ they can develop a community within each life change, because otherwise they’ll have to hire a lot of writers to keep producing content, one can only have so many new ‘life changes’ at a given time.
I agree that it’s nice to see a decent website not built targeting the del.icio.us, digg, and (sorry) TechCrunch user.
Problem is, there’s nowhere that says HOW to do these things, thats why im reading, i know what to do but want advise on HOW to do it. None of this explains how or gives any examples.
Great looking site, indeed. Their model reminds me of a mass targeted RealAge.com with a stronger community focus.
Great posts! After toiling for the past several months to build the site, it’s great to have some feedback from those who haven’t been swimming in the kool-aid w/us.
As for the comments re: the content being light/generic, please don’t look at the Getting Started and Top 5 features and think “that’s all there is to it”.
These two features exist along with the Expert Interviews and the directory of Trusted Resources for the purpose of providing you with the base knowledge you need to start your journey through a change.
As for the journey - well, as our name implies - it lasts 30 days.
Sign-up for help w/a change, and let us send you 30 tips - one each day - for 30 days. They’re very specific/how-to oriented. (BTW - in addition to delivering the tips via email, we also archive them for you on the site.)
Along the way, interact with others going through the change. Ask/answer questions. Share any wisdom you gain along the way. Leave comments.
Also, stop in from time to time to check out the news updates. We employ a team of scouts who scour the net for the latest news and info re: all the changes we cover, and they post daily. (Think gawker/weblogs, only about change.)
When you’re done, I think you’ll find that there’s method to our madness. Most folks find it much easier to tackle changes in steps over time, and they tend to stick with those changes, when they make them with others.
Most important - keep rippin’. Stop by the site and hit the Make us Better button. Tell us how we need to change…
Lacks content. The look-and-feel made me feel like I was looking at a Paid Advertisement
Perhaps it will appeal to some…
The site’s anything but light I think if you take a deep look into it. Sure if you stick to the home page or the change welcome page, then you could see it that way…It’s probably meant as such so as not to overwhelm you from dealing with your change upfront. I don’t think their objective is about change instantly- or here is everything you need now. And the email tips are quite interesting…..they build you up over time.
I looked into the Finding Your Dream Job which I am currently interested in. The interviews were with pretty big people and very specific questions. And the daily blogfeed has some good stories. I think if you are really in a change, and not just curious, this is v helpful to keep you on track. And they kind of have done the work for me with all the resources up there(links, books, even films and music!)….i have no time to go look around, figure out the top stuff… it’s just neat to have it all in one place.
I signed up, clicked on one of thier banner ads in the email (for Pandora) and it took me to a site other then the one advertised and then that site promted me to download spyware with a popup that looked very much like a windows error message. (Be careful when clicking on ads in thier emails!)
However, I should ad the the advise they are giving in thier columns is very good!
One of best sites I have ever seen. Great Job!