So how is InvestEd going?

So how is InvestEd going?

Since the Site has now been going for about 6 months, I was wondering whether a bit of honest feedback from members that is intended to help may be useful?

As I said, let's be honest but also constructive in giving the sort of input that will help the Site to future growth.

Ok.......a few points that come to mind:

1. Firstly, I have no idea of the technical, behind-the-scenes effort required to start and setup a Site such as this, however I would assume it's been a lot of work and I congratulate all involved. It looks good and seems to work well.

2. To the Moderators, thank you for your time and commitment. It is greatly appreciated.

3. Personally, at this stage, I don't think the Site is getting anywhere near the number of Members/posts/contributions it needs to be charging hundreds of dollars a year membership when you look at the alternatives. Some days only a couple of posts are made. To be honest, it's 'quiet' to the extreme.

4. I would assume that a large proportion of existing 'Members' have taken advantage of the NFS Offer and haven't yet needed to 'pay' for membership.
As 'crunchtime' for many of these members will occur shortly it will be interesting to see how many decide to pay for membership and how many simply decide to become visiting, non-contributing Guests. This will also have a big impact on posts/contributions and hence resulting value of the Site.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if many passed on paid membership.

5. While I know there are others, I think the initial and constant posting effort of Jacquie, Nigel and Sim should be acknowledged. Getting a Site like this going needs some sort of critical mass of posts. People need to know it is likely there have even been posts made on that day to bother logging in. You guys have certainly done perhaps more than your fair share in this regard.

6. One of the Member Benefits has been the access to Articles. These have been setout well and by and large the content has been excellent.
One point of constructive feedback though would be that when you bother to put the day the article will be available, make sure it is available on that day. There were examples when you would go to access these articles days after the release date and they still hadn't become available.

7. Following on from Point 6, I think it's important for a site like this to always be active, current and informative. With regards to future articles, previously we had some idea of what and when articles would be released. There doesn't seem to be anything there now?

8. For whatever reasons, personal/business or other, I think Steve Navra's relative lack of regular input on the Site has been a major loss to the Site, especially in its first six months of operation. That's not a personal criticism of Steve as we all have to decide on what time we have available, but it is an observation. I think many would have expected Steve, NFS or NavraInvest to have had a more 'hand on' daily involvement however there initial sponsorship has been appreciated.

9. I hope some announcements will be made soon on future developments for the Site. To be honest, if the Site still intends to be fee based, these will need to be pretty good as there are certainly some other very good Sites out there that are free and provide some excellent information. I'm not at all sure that InvestEd has yet made a clear distinction of how it is different to some of these other Sites?


More feedback/comments?

I agree with all of your points Alan.
I too would like to see Steve here more often - if not then a rep (apart from Mark L who does his best but is fairly new to Navra) to answer some questions would be good.
Most people here will have their 6 month membership finish mid February (like me) as we joined straight away mid August. I think at that time it may be a good idea to perhaps extend the free membership another 2 months to coincide with the March quarter distribution. I for one (for monetary reasons) will probably not be posting between mid Feb and that time until that distribution comes in....
And one more thing - the work that Jacque, Sim, Nigel do on this site is outstanding and you guys should be given a big wrap for that - thank-you.

I too agree with your points Alan.

I actually waited a few months before i took up the 6 month NFS offer because i knew things would be slow at first. I had expected that the site would grow by this stage, however i was wrong. I have posted a few times with very little response, which is disappointing.

I think that the InvestEd concept is great, however i too would require convincing before i paid a few hundred dollars to renew my membership when the times comes.

Alan & Perky

Thanks for your support, feedback and constructive criticism.

I'm sure those members who have started a business from scratch will understand that much of the work you do is not "visible" to your clients or customers.

When chatting with the other founders I've often described InvestEd in these early days as like an iceberg. About 80% of it is "under the surface" and not immediately apparent to the casual viewer.

I won't bore you all with the details but there's been several hundred action items involved in bringing you this site, most of them far from trivial. Sim in particular has put in countless hours "tinkering under the bonnet" to get the site just right. But of course there's a lot more to do. And a lot more we want to do.

We don't discuss the financial side of InvestEd because that's our business but it's fair to say it has been a labour of love so far.

But to put the $275 in perspective...for a client to have an hour of my professional time is over $500. Likewise my fellow founders are all highly skilled in their fields and would cost similar amounts or more to tap into their skills and experience. I can assure you that we have all spent far more than a couple of hours producing the various articles. Similarly we've all spent time (certainly some more so than others) trying to give you the best answers we can in the various forums.

Now I don't say all that to bignote ourselves, or provide excuses. I just want to give you some context on the background work that has gone into this project so far and make some points about "value" and the "perception of value".

At the risk of philosphising for a moment, I think the easy and ready availability of information over the internet has to a large extent made us all expect "everything for nothing" and we want it right now!

I certainly believe, and I hope our members feel, that we've given them some value so far. But I can assure you though that there is a whole lot more that we want to do with InvestEd.

We're at the stage now where we've bedded down the "architecture" to make the site operational, delivered some initial content, had some valuable and insightful discussions on the forums and hopefully had a bit of fun along the way.

Informed by your and other's feedback we're gathering our strength to really get things going in 2006. We had to crawl and take our baby steps before we can really get running.

If I can ask your indulgence for a little while yet, I'm sure that you won't be disappointed!

Cheers
N.

I'm one of those who didn't qualify for a free intro period so I've paid for this membership. I'm not sure that I will renew it when the time comes because I feel out of place here. To me, at least, this forum feels like a NavraInvest/Steve fan site. Most of the dicussions seem to be centered around the Navra Fund and how much of a distribution it will be this quarter.

While I can understand the NavraFund is something that brings many of the posters together, it certainly not what I would pay $275 a year for. I guess I have another 6 months before I decide and I certainly hope things have changed a bit by then.

Hi Nigel.

Wish you all the best.

As I said, the post was meant to garner useful information that may help.

I guess these topics do dominate conversation, but you're right it's what many of us have in common. I'd love some of the technical traders here to start some threads explaining what they look for and where they get their market data and what sort of returns they expect and usually get etc.

On top of that, I'm suprised there hasn't been much talk in the way of Steve's "Optimised Investment Structure".

All in all whilst it's true there's only a handful of regular posters here, I'm sure there are alot of lurkers and things like this usually snowball.

Alan,
Thanks for raising this thread.I think it is very timely.I agree with most of what you have said.

To the founders of InvestEd ,thankyou and congratulations.It is a huge committment and no doubt is expensive in both human and capital cost to launch this product.At another time l would have been an investor in this company ;l am a true believer in the concept.

As a previous respondent stated ,this is a Steve Navra fan club site.I agree.
I am a member of that club and for good reason .Steve has done so much for a number of people over many years .He deserves the accolades.

The problem with this perception is that it DAMAGES / WEAKENS the forum.
There are other committed moderators who have much to offer as well and that is probably yet to be evidenced because of the bias and interest of a number of the original forum members.

To evaluate how the forum is performing is not about mixing up annual fees of $275 Versus $500 per hour charge out rates.

In my opinion Invested must

1.Be the best investment education site on the internet

2.Have at least 1000 members before charging fees.
This will ensure that there is a depth of opinions and
experiences that can consolidate people's learning.

3.Take the focus of Navra Invest in the sense that
Steve is not expected to report on a daily basis about
the events of the day.As Chairman of NI he obviously has
legal responsibilities to uphold.However,it is critical that
either Steve or an NI representative answer questions
immediately.An answer of "Not able to comment further
at this stage",is understandable and will be acceptable
to forum members.To not acknowledge threads and
comments is disrespectful and offensive to members.
There has been innuendo about moderators "lurking"
on the forum ,but ignoring questions or not seeing the
need to respond.This MUST STOP NOW or DEAL WITH
THE PERCEPTION THAT IT IS HAPPENING.

In my opinion,there is much support for the founders of this forum and members will tolerate a fair amount - and so we should ;most of us are not
paying for the service.However,this is not Somersoft or another such forum
so before we talk about fee charging ,members expectations are going to be
higher and must be met at some level.

Currently,other forums have much greater depth and have have a number of active and excellent discussions taking place.Our forum appears to be on holidays.

Due to past personality conflicts on other forums, l have no doubt there are some around that would wish for this forum to fail.It is critical that this does not happen.The rewards will be great in the long term for both the owners of this forum and us members ,but l think it is important to be delivering over and above expectations for a good while yet ,before looking to charge fees.

Thanks for taking the time to read this

Regards

Denis

Yes, there is no doubt about it, congratulations are due for the efforts put in so far. So thanks moderators and contributors, I've learn't some things and expanded my knowledge from the information on this site, and had a laugh and for me that's what it's all about.

With regard to the Steve fan club thing. I know it has been mentioned that this is not a NavraInvest website however, as Steve is a moderator and obviously has an interest in InvestEd (I don't care for the details thats his business) I was expecting to use this as a medium to tap into his brain a bit more.

Now I realise it's early days and Steve has been busy with all sorts of stuff as we all are, however I think he has dug himself a hole by not clearly informing the forum when he will contribute and when he can not. I'm sure a lot of people are continually checking the forum to see if Steve is contributing again. If he or someone on his behalf could as a coutesy just say look Steve will not be contributing until the end of March or whenever people could stop looking wasting time looking to see if he is contributing again.

Having said all that, while Steve is one of the anchors or hopefully will be, there is plenty of knowledge from the other moderators and contributors to make this a successful site by themselves. You know who you are whether you have a financial interest or not, thanks.

The Navra stuff seems mainly to be kept to the section on Navra funds so I don't think the criticism of this forum being too much biased toward that area is valid. I have a long term view on the funds so don't care too much about daily variances in fund prices and possible distributions. I still read that section and find it interesting though. Can there be too much discussed? Time to get through it all is the only problem.

As to the renewal of membership I will wait before making a decision and see what unfolds between now and then. I do tend to regard it as investment in the future journey and have no qualms about paying for that. A bit premature yet? Maybe!

Thanks to all for the honest feedback and support as well. We can only improve and seek to better this site by listening to our members and making this site a truly educational and interesting place for investors to visit.
Denis, I concur with no.1 on your list of suggestions- that is definitely our long term goal for InvestEd

I would like to reiterate what Nigel has stated about the upcoming new year (geez it's 2006 already!!!) as we do have other things planned for the site, which will add and enhance what is already here. I, for one, remain very excited about our future and know that, though we are still in the infancy stages, this site will take time to mature into what we have envisioned.

Thanks to all those members who've contributed to the discussions so far, especially in the Real Estate section- you may notice I have a slight bias towards hanging around in this particular part of the site