A little background info about myself.
I have been selling online since almost a decade. I started off my online career with Baazee.com (which was later acquired by eBay). Loved every moment of it. And at one point in time, I was the highest-rated power-seller on eBay.in.
I then moved on to selling ebooks and audio courses online. Built several niche sites. But unlike eBay, I liked the fact that I did not have to courier any products to my buyers. Again, I loved the freedom of what I was doing. I was earning more, and at the same time, had more time on hand!
But although life was comfortable, I felt like there was a vacuum waiting to be filled by something more meaningful.
The crazy idea that would challenge me on all fronts!
Then, around 3 years ago, something happened. Something that would render almost all my past online experiences nullified! Something that would make me invest all my savings. And something that would make me dream and think bigger than ever before. And regardless of the challenges, something that would make me happier!
We got a crazy idea – to create a website that would make people Happier…
…a site that would enable people to cherish every moment of their lives, and live it with child-like enthusiasm, excitement and joy.
To quote the renowned author and spiritual guru Deepak Chopra, “Happiness is the goal of every other goal”. Being Happy is our real nature. Anything other than that means we are not being what we are meant to be.
This was such an abstract thought, and I wasn’t even sure where to start.
Since I had previously sold so many ebooks, I wanted to create something that was less theory and more practical. And also, since I always liked reading self-improvement books, I knew that most of the times, we read, but hardly implement what we read. So this strengthened my belief that our site needed to be activity-oriented. That was a good starting point.
The birth of Revelri
Our site was called Revelri.com.
For me, with my very limited resources, Revelri was a BIG project. And during these 36 months, more ideas flowed in, and it became BIGGER…much bigger than what I had initially envisioned!
Although this journey has been an exciting one, it was not without its own share of impediments! With the extremely limited resources I had, I faced several roadblocks and challenges – I had people quit on me, I faced technical hurdles, and sometimes I even wondered if following my dream was the right thing to do! But I am glad that I believed in myself.
I bootstrapped all the way through, exhausting all my personal savings.
We had launched Revelri twice earlier, and got around 13,000 members. But after some time, most of them became in-active. We realized that we were weak on engaging our users, and needed to do something to improve that.
So, last week, we re-launched Revelri as a “gamified” version of itself, where we used game elements to make the site more interesting.
So what is Revelri?
Very briefly, at Revelri, we provide users with simple, personalized Happiness Activities that help them improve various areas of their lives – health, relationships (with spouse, children, parents, with themselves, environment, etc), helps them grow spiritually, and even improve life at work. But more than anything else, Revelri helps them take life less seriously, have more fun, and lead happier and meaningful lives.
As users perform the Activities, they earn badges, and move on to higher Levels where they do other things that improve their Happiness.
Need your suggestions and feedback
Revelri is by no means a finished product. It is a constant work-in-progress. We have adapted, learned and re-invented ourselves, but never changed our main focus of spreading Happiness.
We request you to spend some time checking out the site at www.Revelri.com and give us your valuable feedback/criticism that will help improve Revelri further.
We know that there are a few things we need to work on:
1. Integration with Facebook. Make it more social.
2. Have a responsive design so that the site can be accessed using other devices.
3. Work on our HELP section.
4. Create a mobile app
Apart from these (or maybe even for these!) if you have any feedback, do let us know.
Although with this launch, we have a added a monetization model, we are yet to start earning. Any inputs on that front would be welcomed too!
Thank you.