Good call. Maybe back off a little more than that, even. So I'm reading your page and liking what I see. I would like to know more. Here's a thing that might have more information, so I click it. Now I'm reading a surprisingly affecting comic about a kid who's been sexually abused and the fight against sex slavery. My mental and emotional associations with your brand are suddenly a great deal more complex, and quite a bit darker, than they were. Your app suddenly has a steeper hill to climb toward making me happy enough to feel that using it is worth my while. If it fails to do so, and I don't use it, your efforts toward your honorable cause are impaired thereby. Is telling me about it really as important as maybe getting me to contribute to it in a material way?
Don't get me wrong. I like why you're doing what you're doing. But maybe "not what you want to lead with" understates the case on that one just a hair, is what I'm trying to get across here.
Does anyone else agree with the above sentiment?
You didn't even tell us what happened to your friend! It seemed like you were just using her story to aggrandize yourself. What happened to her? How would she feel if she read this comic? Is she getting a slice of this pie too?
It just seemed kind of exploitative and in comic form...
If he is really so passionate about fighting sex trafficking, he should be building something that solves that problem, not just another social networking app and using that story to get attention.
I finished reading the cartoon and was like "wtf did i just read?" It felt like one of those viagra ad spam schemes you find in various comment sections on the internet where the commenter starts out writing something that sounds very relevant to the story, and in the end somehow segues the narrative into "buy viagra and cialis here https://blahblah"
Thanks for the feedback, I'm definitely taking everything into consideration as far as where that comic should go
On the other hand, I'm too old and not well enough socially connected to be your likely target market, and it's been a hell of a long day. I could be making more of this than it merits; take it for whatever you find it to be worth.
Would you consider that a good spot for it?
But I agree with other commenters that bringing up this whole story on a page that is normally reserved to try and sell your product feels a bit exploitative, takes us through a dark emotional journey and we don't even learn about the end of your friend's story (so she feels like a prop)
Why not keep this in an "about us" page that explains more about the philanthropic model behind the company? For example, Salesforce.com follows the 1/1/1 model and Marc is super committed to giving being ingrained in the company culture. But you would never know by looking at their frontpage, you have to dig deeper into it to find out [0]
Also, I feel very exposed now that you know about the 7DollarYear :P
For me I think it's a case of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. The first page sounded like you were doing the app because it was a cool idea that will make people's lives better so you wanted to see it turn real. That's easy to get on board with.
Then the second page says "and I'm doing it all because I want to make a lot of money." Which you plan to use for a great purpose, but it still makes the app itself less appealing, because it emphasizes that you're not doing the app for its own sake.
The story is a good one, I just think you should link it less prominently and frame it as "x% of profits go to X and here's why," rather than "here's why I built the app."
If there's no legal framework enforcing the donations, I'd keep it very unobtrusive for now, so it doesn't seem like you're using an unenforceable promise as a selling point. Later you'll have a donation history you can talk about.
My worry is that if I put it into a blog post, eventually no one will see it due to the short term nature of blog post discovery.
I think a more subtle way to go about this would be to say:
> We donate x% of our profits to Exodus Road. To find out more about who they are, and what this means to us, click HERE
