Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi,

First I'd like to say thanks for the opportunity, I've bene hoping to do a start up for some time but always worried that no one would ever know if I did.

So I created this website called Fauxsaics.  Basically, it takes all your pictures, and makes them into a photo mosaic of a picture that you previously submitted.  i know I am not the first person to do this, but I feel there is a big market for it and no one has really emerged as the ultimate in free photo mosaic creation.  The plan is to do this virallly,so that thanks to the Facebook API, people can go to my website and a few minutes later have a profile picture made out of them and all their friends-tagged and all.  however, it can be used for other reasons too, which is why it's not just a Facebook App.

Anyway, after several months of working on interface, I'm pretty proud of how it tunred out.  However, apparently it's not enough, Ive moved the entire set up system to one page where people can upload a source and all the pictures on the tiles.  I mean to put emphasis on importing pictures from Facebook since it's supposed to be my main market and it's just faster and get's better results.  However, no one seems to gravitate towards it.  My guess is that the page is too difficult to understand, since most people quit after uploading a canvas picture and maybe tiles from their desktop...but I can't figure out why.  i know it works and it seems straight forward to me, but I guess been the problem all along.

Anyway, the creator can be found at http://www.fauxsaics.com/canvasupload.php?step=0 .  Any advice anybody can offer would be MUCH obliged because I spent a lot of time and money on this and I really think it is a good idea and I hate to see it fail.

Thanks in advance!

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I got an error page when I tried to upload and image:

Warning: imagecreatefrompng(images/UsersPictures/1502/Picture.gif) [function.imagecreatefrompng]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/content/97/5333297/html/canvasstore.php on line 55

Warning: imagejpeg(): supplied argument is not a valid Image resource in /home/content/97/5333297/html/canvasstore.php on line 55

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/97/5333297/html/canvasstore.php:55) in /home/content/97/5333297/html/canvasstore.php on line 58

But I think that's only half the problem. Visually the website looks very dated. If you're targeting Facebook user the website needs to look it's part.

Also you should show examples of how people can use the artwork that they created. Give people suggestions, mention occasions when to give these type of gifts. It's all about selling the need to use the service.

- Yiana