As reported on TechCrunch.
by CATHERINE SHU
An industry has blossomed around people hungry for a quick hit of motivation.TED talks, Do Lectures and sites like Brainy Quote all exist to provide inspirational content for the time-strapped. GetInspired365 wants to draw visitors by showcasing upbeat videos sourced from around the Internet. Its founders hope that users will not only be inspired to achieve their own goals, but also to order a similar site from GetInspired’s Web design and hosting service.
GetInspired365 was self-funded and launched at the beginning of February by Steve Whyley and Mike Doyle, who had previously collaborated on projects like 11K, an online community for volunteers aged 25 and under.
While preparing to run along every Tube line in the London Underground for a charity challenge, Whyley motivated himself by watching inspiring videos online. He also edited a video of his own runs to share on Facebook. Gratified by the positive response he got, Whyley approached Doyle about putting together a simple site to showcase a new video each day. GetInspired365 now has 1,000 inspirational videos and quotes.
GetInspired365′s design features a full-bleed presentation of a video with a highlighted quote and unobtrusive social-sharing and discovery features. Each day’s video is sourced from sites like Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Users can also submit videos through GetInspired 365′s Social Page.
Since launching six months ago, GetInspired365′s traffic has grown organically to about 2,000 unique visitors each day, with 3,000 readers subscribed to its daily e-mail newsletter. Doyle says the site’s next step is building an SEO strategy with the target of hitting 20,000 unique visitors each day.
The site’s main competition for traffic is the GetMotivated subreddit, which has over 200,000 subscribers, as well as Brainy Quote, GoodReads and Quote Garden. Doyle says GetInspired365 stands out because of its design, ease of use and curated content. Changemakrs, which we profiled last October, also presents quotes in a visually-appealing way. Doyle says GetInspired365′s advantage over Changemakrs in terms of growing a user base is that it does not require people to sign up before exploring the site.
GetInspired365 plans to monetize through two channels: affiliate programs (like linking to books and other products related to each video on Amazon) and building, supporting and hosting similar sites for clients. Doyle says the service’s target customers range from hobbyists to companies that want to build daily traffic to their sites and services. For example, a gaming company can set up a GetInspired site with a “play of the day.”
“As far as scaling up, we hope that we can turn this aspect of GetInspired into a Weebly-type site where people can grab their ‘daily’ site from us and immediately start using it,” says Doyle.