Pre-proposal - Travel, Gain DASH and Support Charities

[gkmw]

Hello everyone,

we would like to share an idea that it's in our mind for quite some time.

Take a look at the presentation that we made for you. It will give you a general idea of what we are up to.

In a nutshell, we are the owners of the hotel-booking website hotelgo24.com, a partner of expedia.com. We are offering a cashback to our clients in bitcoins (up to 5%). Coins can be transferred to the travellers or used to support charities. In one year we gathered almost 2 BTC for charities!

Now, as we find DASH much more interesting, we would like to do a re-branding and swap BTC for DASH. With your funding help we will be able to do a massive buzz in media. If every tourist that book a hotel on our website gets DASH, it will boost the number of DASH-users and DASH-transactions. Not even mentioning the positive feedback that we can create by supporting charities.

Take a look on the more detailed presentation of what we want to do:

Please, take a look at our proposal and give us your feedback.

Any ideas, concerns and comments are more than welcomed!

Thanks a lot.
gkmw

 

[jimbursch]

Why are you switching from BTC to Dash?
Do you plan on switching to Dash regardless if this proposal is funded?

I'm just curious what you see as the value proposition of Dash.

By the way, I like the graphic proposal!

 

[gkmw]

Hello Jim,

Thanks for your reply, appreciated!

We are afraid that without funds we won't be able to encourage neither our customers nor the new charity organisations.
We would consider switching to DASH anyway but, being honest, it can be very difficult. With funds it can be done with a huge buzz, giving both the new service and DASH a positive impact.

For us, DASH has only a positive press, it's much more transparent. From the marketing point of view DASH has brighter future - especially with such a catchy name!
BTC has a negative PR, a lot of people associate it with grey economy.

 

[TheSingleton]

This sounds interesting and I am inclined to vote yes. But first, we need to know how much funding you think you need and how long you think this will take. Additionally, it would be great if you could enter into a legal Agreement with the Core team in which you commit to only using Dash.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I don't get the charity angle. Why charity? You could just offer dashback or a discount next time.

Also, I agree the domain name needs to be a lot better!
Btw, I can see dashback.today and dashback.city are both available

 

[gkmw]

This sounds interesting and I am inclined to vote yes. But first, we need to know how much funding you think you need and how long you think this will take. Additionally, it would be great if you could enter into a legal Agreement with the Core team in which you commit to only using Dash.

We would like to use the funds for 12 months to increase our numbers in marketing - e.g. 120 DASH/monthly. After each month we would like to report TO you what's done, and what's the plan for the future. Also, in this case, you can always have some impact in.

The Legal Agreement is a great idea to minimise your risk.

I don't get the charity angle. Why charity? You could just offer dashback or a discount next time.

Also, I agree the domain name needs to be a lot better!
Btw, I can see dashback.today and dashback.city are both available

The client can get either dashback (simple by giving the DASH Address while booking) or it can be decided to support charities (in DASH).

A lot of people are not interested in keeping cryptocurrencies but they are happy to help. It is also good from the marketing point of view that DASH-community is supporting charities (and encourage charities to accept donations in DASH). And we can really help those in need.

Talking about the naming - we are willing to have .com only. dashback.com can be bought for around $ 5k. But on the other hand - putting your brand DASH into our domain might not be legal (trademark). What do you think about tripcoin.com - it costs around $500, so very much affordable.


Thanks for your replies guys!

 

[TheSingleton]

That would be 2 Mill $ in Total. Not sure if that is worth it. In any case, you should definitely start with a shorter proposal if you want to have any chance of it succeeding.

I mean we are basically paying you to do advertising for your own WebSite not so sure how I feel about that. I don't mind paying for integration + an initial marketing push but a year-long campaign seems a bit much.

How many customers do you have each month? And what percentage of those decide to keep the BTC. For me, it would be important that most actually take the Dash instead of donating it. Donating it is nice but doesn't grow our Ecosystem.

So basically what I am asking how many new Dash users could we reach.

 

[gkmw]

That would be 2 Mill $ in Total. Not sure if that is worth it. In any case, you should definitely start with a shorter proposal if you want to have any chance of it succeeding.

12 months x 120 DASH x $ 145 = $ 208,800 in total. To succeed we want to spend the money step-by-step, analysing the results and conversions. The 12 months project is also much safer for you - in case of not liking what we do, you can simple just cut off the funds after few months. Remember, that it is pre-proposal, we can discuss the details and numbers.

I mean we are basically paying you to do advertising for your own WebSite not so sure how I feel about that. I don't mind paying for integration + an initial marketing push but a year-long campaign seems a bit much.

Successful marketing campaign should take place in a longer period, not just one-time. Especially in the market like cryptocurrencies, we need to be up-to-date and constantly encouraging new people and markets.

Our purpose is not only to advertise our own website but DASH and DASH-values at once.

How many customers do you have each month? And what percentage of those decide to keep the BTC. For me, it would be important that most actually take the Dash instead of donating it. Donating it is nice but doesn't grow our Ecosystem.

So basically what I am asking how many new Dash users could we reach.

So far, without a strong brand and marketing in the cryptocurrencies world, 5-15% of the customers are keeping BTC. You can see all the transactions for charities on the website, everything is transparent. We are aiming for a big boost when changing to DASH and creating the new brand and marketing strategy.

Supporting charities is not only great for DASH-PR but also for DASH-marketing. People will start associate DASH with more and more organisations (some of them really big) - in this case we can reach much more potential DASH users. Charities are powerful authorities and having them on our side is a big asset.

One of our ideas for the marketing - we will be offering DASH for sponsored articles from travel bloggers (e.g. if the regular price would be $100, we would offer $120 but in DASH). Every single one of them is an influencer, having the community around. We will try to encourage them as well to accept donations in DASH.

Thanks once again for all the comments!

 

[GrandMasterDash]

A lot of people are not interested in keeping cryptocurrencies but they are happy to help. It is also good from the marketing point of view that DASH-community is supporting charities (and encourage charities to accept donations in DASH). And we can really help those in need.

Talking about the naming - we are willing to have .com only. dashback.com can be bought for around $ 5k. But on the other hand - putting your brand DASH into our domain might not be legal (trademark). What do you think about tripcoin.com - it costs around $500, so very much affordable.


Thanks for your replies guys!

Broadly speaking, your idea is nice but as it is now, I'm sorry, I wouldn't vote for this.

1. Re-examine your logic; if people are not interested in keeping cryptocurrencies then you've done nothing to encourage or educate them to do so. And because charity is there only other "option", the money might as well be burned and they still wouldn't care.

2. All that money on marketing would go nowhere. You're in a highly competitive space, your competitors would eat you alive, not least because you haven't honed your game plan. The fact you haven't got your brand sorted demonstrates this.

3. It wouldn't be a legal problem to use "dash" in the domain name because you're in the travel space i.e. not a competing crypto. Nor are you defaming dash or passing off.

4. .com holds little value these days, the world has moved on. Simplicity and originality would be a better approach. Try to avoid numbers, "l"'s and "r";s.

 

[halso]

Will it be possible to actually pay for a booking completely in dash? This is something I would be interested in. At the moment, the only option is to convert Dash to BTC and use cheapair for hotel bookings.

 

[gkmw]

1. Re-examine your logic; if people are not interested in keeping cryptocurrencies then you've done nothing to encourage or educate them to do so. And because charity is there only other "option", the money might as well be burned and they still wouldn't care.

Every single person that will be looking for a hotel in the Internet (doesn't matter if he/she will actually book it) will be educated about DASH and cryptocurrencies on our website. It is a huge impact to start educating regular Internet users and, step-by-step, encouraging them to keep and then use DASH. The prices on the website are exactly the same as on expedia or hotels.com, so every single user is gaining a bonus in DASH. What he/she will do with it - it's the matter of choice. But everyone will know exactly what it is.

We will encourage as many charities as possible to start using DASH (accepting donations) - why do you think this is a waste of money? It can create a very positive impact, educate people and give DASH some interest among newbies.

2. All that money on marketing would go nowhere. You're in a highly competitive space, your competitors would eat you alive, not least because you haven't honed your game plan. The fact you haven't got your brand sorted demonstrates this.

We know that it is very competitive - we are on this market from quite some time. The marketing plan is sorted, the brand is more or less sorted, just still wondering on the name. This is why we put this proposal over here, to have this great brainstorm!

3. It wouldn't be a legal problem to use "dash" in the domain name because you're in the travel space i.e. not a competing crypto. Nor are you defaming dash or passing off.

Good to know then. We were thinking on few names both including and not the word "DASH".

4. .com holds little value these days, the world has moved on. Simplicity and originality would be a better approach. Try to avoid numbers, "l"'s and "r";s.

.com is still a basic one. While using the fancy .city or .today a lot of people will still use .com instead which doesn't belong to you and can cause a lot of troubles.

Will it be possible to actually pay for a booking completely in dash? This is something I would be interested in. At the moment, the only option is to convert Dash to BTC and use cheapair for hotel bookings.

The main target of the service is a new member of DASH community. We are receiving the payment through credit cards and giving cashback in DASH.

Nevertheless, if the project goes well, we might be able to galvanise hotels and other players to consider accepting DASH.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Sorry but in my mind you've re-enforced that your ideas are too old-fashioned and immovable.

Education doesn't simply mean the telling of a story, it must include practical hands-on. Giving people the option to do something else (give to charity) is not hands-on.

Money to charity is not necessarily a waste but it's all about context. You're not giving to charity unconditionally, you're saying, if the person is not interested in dash, then you'll give it to charity regardless. That is not a choice, it's default.

You can't be saying your brand is sorted yet still thinking what your name will be, that's ridiculous. It's like saying Pepsi's brand is sorted, they just need to decide a name!

Just for a start, look at the very first words on your site, "Find Cheap Hotels". So, the only benefit someone's going to think is "cheap hotels"? - well guess what, that claim is made everywhere. Even a simple, "Cheap Hotels, get dash rewards!" would be better. So sure, people could scroll down and see more details but that's too late, you've already lost 50% of people because you're just a same-same, no real benefit to users.

There is no "a lot of people will still use .com". That just demonstrates you're thinking old-school. Take a look at TenX, for example.. they use tenx.tech. Or look at how the tech industry has adopted ".io" domains. Sometimes we need to empty our brain of old ideas and look at things a fresh. If you want a great name it doesn't have to be expensive.

And just like halso said, perhaps you should be accepting dash as payment.

 

[gkmw]

Education doesn't simply mean the telling of a story, it must include practical hands-on. Giving people the option to do something else (give to charity) is not hands-on.

Money to charity is not necessarily a waste but it's all about context. You're not giving to charity unconditionally, you're saying, if the person is not interested in dash, then you'll give it to charity regardless. That is not a choice, it's default.

It's not necessarily bad for DASH if, let's say, 50% of the cashback would be given to the charity. Imagine the impact in the media if organisations start to receiving a lot of donations in DASH> It's one way of marketing. The other is, obviously, engaging the new users to use DASH.

You can't be saying your brand is sorted yet still thinking what your name will be, that's ridiculous. It's like saying Pepsi's brand is sorted, they just need to decide a name!

Just for a start, look at the very first words on your site, "Find Cheap Hotels". So, the only benefit someone's going to think is "cheap hotels"? - well guess what, that claim is made everywhere. Even a simple, "Cheap Hotels, get dash rewards!" would be better. So sure, people could scroll down and see more details but that's too late, you've already lost 50% of people because you're just a same-same, no real benefit to users.

We are thinking about few names now, we will give you some more details tomorrow. Very much appreciated your opinion!

There is no "a lot of people will still use .com". That just demonstrates you're thinking old-school. Take a look at TenX, for example.. they use tenx.tech. Or look at how the tech industry has adopted ".io" domains. Sometimes we need to empty our brain of old ideas and look at things a fresh. If you want a great name it doesn't have to be expensive.

On the websites where you have to put your own credit cards details, the trust is really important. Please, take a look at the research on ICANN: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2016-06-23-en - .com is the domain with the greatest trust, and then .net and .org. All the new GTLDs have a 50% lower trust-level.

Also, our target group contains mostly people who doesn't know cryptocurrencies and new technologies - we need to be as much trustworthy as possible.

 

[TheSingleton]

Sorry for calculating that number wrong. But my point still stands it seems like you want us to pay for growing your website. And 5-15% are keeping BTC how can you not have an exact number for this? So let's just assume 10% you still haven't said how many customers you actually have so ill guess not that many. So it's not too unreasonable to assume that the people keeping the BTC already knew about it.

You are saying that every single person looking for a hotel will learn about Dash but that's bullshit, not everybody looking for a hotel will actually visit your site.

So yea not that enthusiastic about this anymore, especially since you can't use Dash to pay.

 

[Biltong]

Proposal Evaluation Committee​

Hi abob54

Hi gkmw

Just want to find out if you are planning to submit your proposal officially, i.e. Pay the 5 Dash to submit it?
If so, do you agree to the PEC (Proposal Evaluation Committee) assisting you in preparing your Pre-Proposal?

The way we do it is to give a Report on your Proposal highlighting areas that you can improve.
As you improve the Proposal the Report is adjusted and this may be done a number of times (up to 5 or more), each time the chance of your Proposal being accepted by the MNO’s will increase.

The Report also has another function:
To give the Pre-Proposal a percentage mark. This percentage will make it possible to give the MNO’s and community a prioritized List of Evaluated Proposals. This list will save everyone time and increase the chance of your Proposal gaining votes.

However, please be aware that the PEC has not officially been accepted by the MNO’s. We are also in the Pre-Proposal phase, so you have no obligation to partake.
If you want to know who will be doing the Evaluations – see here: Official PEC Pre-P https://goo.gl/qrbeXK

If you do want to use our services (note this is a free service)
1. Please PM me on the Dash Pre + Budget Proposal Discussions Forum indicating agreement.
2. and if you have not done this yet, please read: How to submit a Dash Pre-Proposal https://goo.gl/7jmwXQ
3. Once you have read it you might want to adjust your Pre-Proposal before we submit the 1st Report, so I will wait for you to give us the go-ahead before we start the evaluation process.

If you don’t want the PEC to evaluate the Proposal – please PM me as well, then I won’t bug you again for an answer

Good luck with your Proposal!

 

[gkmw]

Sorry for calculating that number wrong. But my point still stands it seems like you want us to pay for growing your website. And 5-15% are keeping BTC how can you not have an exact number for this? So let's just assume 10% you still haven't said how many customers you actually have so ill guess not that many. So it's not too unreasonable to assume that the people keeping the BTC already knew about it.

We were never hiding numbers - everything is visible on the website. In April we had 40 reservations (37 travellers supported charities). It's a good start but we need funds to boost the number of reservations. Please note that one of the first step is to do a complete re-branding of hotelgo24 into a service fully oriented in dashback.

Even if the ratio will stay as it is - do you think it's bad for DASH that 90% of the dashback will go for charities? It means that there will be dozens of organisations that take a part of it, talking about DASH and accepting donations in DASH. Nevertheless we think that with the new, informative service there will be much more people actually keeping DASH.

You are saying that every single person looking for a hotel will learn about Dash but that's bullshit, not everybody looking for a hotel will actually visit your site.

We said that about those who are visiting our website only. With good marketing (not only AdWords but Facebook, videos and articles) the amount of visitors on the website can be significant. It's not possible to even count how many people will learn about DASh even without making the reservation.

So yea not that enthusiastic about this anymore, especially since you can't use Dash to pay.

For the promotion of DASH (in this particular moment in time) it is important to actually start distributing and educate people, who are not hi-tech experts. Later, if we grow enough, we can surely push for DASH-transactions while booking hotels.

Just want to find out if you are planning to submit your proposal officially, i.e. Pay the 5 Dash to submit it?
If so, do you agree to the PEC (Proposal Evaluation Committee) assisting you in preparing your Pre-Proposal?

Thanks for your proposal, we will surely write you a PM shortly.

 

[Biltong]

xxx

Hi gkmw,

Here is your first PEC Report.
Couple of notes:
· There is NO pass/failure mark. The percentage simply allows us to create a Prioritized List of Evaluated Proposals. The idea being that a MNO with very little time can concentrate on Proposals at the bottom of the list only. MNO’s with more time will obviously look at all proposals as per normal.
· How did the Evaluators decide on marks: PEC Evaluator guidelines https://goo.gl/Futw1d
· The evaluation also enables the Evaluators to look for scammers etc and red-flag a proposal that is a possible danger to Dash. They have more time and tools to look for the tell-tale signs.
· MNO’s have been very lenient in the past. So even if you have, what you might consider a low mark, you might still pass the Vote
· Most Important: The evaluation is to give you an idea of where you can improve your proposal to have a better chance of earning MNO votes.

When you improve your proposal, please color all new material in red and don’t delete any word/sentence, but use strike through. This will make it easier for the evaluator to find changes, when she or he re-evaluates your improved proposal. The MNO’s will also so be interested to see what you changed to improve your proposal.

Since you were unlucky enough to submit your Pre-Proposal just as the PEC started, you had a handicap: You did not know the importance of the Dash Project Proposal Template https://goo.gl/m0jgfS .

This Template was created some years ago by the MNO’s to get all the information that they need to make an informed decision. It is also the easiest way for you to earn extra marks J If your proposal did not cover a question in the Template – just put the Heading and answer in your detail doc. If your proposal does cover the question: Just put the Heading with the words: See original Proposal.
E.g.: Project Scope - Milestones and Schedule: See original Proposal.

We know this is a painful bureaucratic exercise, but once you’ve done your improvements for this 1st one, the next couple of improvements (maybe just one?) will be easy, and of course – you are bound to have more proposals in the future! J

Good luck

 

[JZA]

I dont think is doable to award any DASH for more than 3 months. 120 DASH in 6 months could be a serious ammount that will be undersold or overcompromised to ideas and proposals that wont generate the desired return to the DASH network. I would counter offer with a 2 month proposal, at 200 DASH and a limit of 5000 usd per additional month proposed monthly at the current DASH pricing. (so you will ask for 10 dash if dash cost 100 usd and 5 dash if it cost 200 usd)

 

[Acedian]

Sam is doing a research.
Sounds painful.
Anyway, yeah sounds good. Shorter term proposals are more favourable.

 

[gkmw]

Hi guys,

thanks a lot for all your opinions. We appreciate it!

Based on your report and opinions we will pass on the project in this manner. We will re-think our ideas and maybe come back to you later on with a shorter proposal.

Cheers!
gkmw