An up close look at FunAdvice.com.
So sometimes the Admin feels a little more like Dr. Ruth or Dear Abbey (Edit: Does she still exist?) then The Admin… So when things get a little strange I point people to FunAdvice.com Thats right I get questions about midget sex, how to keep to keep your girl from cheating and even the proper way to engage in S & M… Some of them have to be gags but then again have you ever seen some of peoples key word searches? We got a hint today off of the term “Monkey Balls Support…” I mean come on! But I digress.
Jeremy Goodrich from FunAdvice.com stopped by to chat with us for a little while on Friday. FunAdvice.com, Which is a question and answer site (like AskTheAdmin for tech questions and Mosio.com for text messaging Q & A’s). This site is geared towards personal questions and I found a lot of interesting content.
I glanced at the site and chatted with Jeremy a little more and I found a lot of what he had to say very intriguing.
- They have over 40,000 members and have been growing at a rate of more than 4K / month.
- They generate more than a million world wide visitors monthly.
- To date more than 100,000 answers have been posted to the site.
- FunAdvice launched in March, 2003.
- The three founders of the site are Jeremy Goodrich, Ericson Smith, and Widhadh Waheed.
- Ericson & Jerremy haven’t seen each other in more than six years, and have been collaborating on the site over phone / email / and IM to build FunAdvice over the years.
Wait there’s more! This 30 year old guy in the past 8 years, has started 8 companies, sold two, and currently manages a consulting business as well as FunAdvice. (Edit: Sound Familiar?? Can We Say Over extended?) Widhadh Waheed is Jerremy’s wife and business partner. Ericson Smith was their partner in
one of the two businesses they sold in 2004, prior to him joining Yahoo as their first full time SEO manager.
That’s pretty big! Maybe Jerremy will lend a hand to AskTheAdmin’s SEO or lack thereof.
Jerremy and Widhadh have two boys, 5 & 6 years old, as a upcoming father I can only imagine how hard that is. I hardly have time for my preggo wife, consulting company, full time job and AskTheAdmin – I have a lot to learn eh?
In August FunAdvice had Mandy Moore (Edit: Who we grew to love on Entourage!) As a “Special Advisor” who was answering users questions. That’s DOPE! How did you guys swing that one? Come swing by and drop some comments for our readers. Any questions for the question man?
They recently redesigned the site and with The Big Boys scooping up all the other similar sites we can only imagine FunAdvice will be next! I am going to keep a close eye on this one and when you guys are all famous and shit – you will come and say hello… Won’t ya?
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about 4 years ago
Hey, thanks for the write up.
>>Mandy Moore
Her promotion company contacted us & setup the appearance on our site, and for the month, they had a large graphic pointing to the FunAdvice profile for Mandy Moore from her MySpace page.
To be honest…I don’t know how they found us & I thought the email might have been spam, but decided to reply anyway. Sure enough, it was real ;) And made my day.
about 4 years ago
maybe we could get her on AskTheAdmin to field a few questions, :) i doubt she’s the technical type… real purdy on the eyes though… Gotta envy Vincent Chase!
How did you come up with the idea for funadvice?
about 1 year ago
I wonder where they earn their money, because they surely do not run this site without having an income from someone.
I guess on three sources. They probably sell member contact information to instances paying for it.
Instances paying for it probably answar selected questions by refering to their commercial web-site. If an average member try to do it, the website is blacked out.
They say thet do not give infromation to others, but can youreally take on them?
I registered as a member and found no way to deregister again – a creepy parctice telling me that my contact information means money to them.
In either case – funadvice seems to be one of many sites earning from the efforts of members without paying for it.
about 8 months ago
After just recently stumbling upon this write-up, I feel that we have a right to justify our actions, as Mr. Holt seems to think we are running a shady business here.
First of all – The site earns money through advertisements. Companies pay us to display their ads on our site, and while logged in, we try and maintain as little ad intrusion as possible, but logged out, you get the full package.
We do *not* sell user information … ever. That’s a pretty serious accusation, and I expect you have the evidence to back up your theory? Probably not, because we don’t do it.
As for the problem with deactivating your account … this is a security issue. It’s far too easy for members to create and delete accounts one after another for the purpose of abusing or causing trouble, therefore, anyone who wants to delete their account will have to ask an Admin to do so for them. We don’t ask for a reason, and we don’t try and push a member to remain … they are free to leave as they wish.
On that note, there are several similar communities who employ this same approach.
So, FunAdvice is earning off of the members? Maybe you should have stuck around for the cash-for-points blitz where people were able to cash in their points for real US dollars.
I think, Mr. Holt, that you need to be very careful about the kinds of lies and misinformation that you spewing on the internet … some would consider that libel.
about 8 months ago
That’s a lot of action for a 5 year old post!