Acoustic Compression Combustion Engine / World Wide Market

[Viv]

Ooops. A failure of mine:

3) -pricing and buying methode (e.g. pay-pal, online banking)

I ment: Is there no other possibility to pay for an engine, the (rolled) parts or simply the plans? Really nothing but the internet?

Internet payment was for speed and ease of use but if you prefure then an international money order drawn in Canadian dollars is perfectly acceptable.

Maybe I should add this to the web site to clarify this point.

Viv

[luc]

Hummmmmm ......

Is that all what the WORLD MARKET IS ... 8 or 10 peoples?

Hummmmmmmmmmmm................

Cya,

Luc

[tufty]

Is that all what the WORLD MARKET IS ... 8 or 10 peoples?

I certainly hope not, for your sake. however, this forum is not the world market. It's probably not even your primary market. It's a bunch of steel-bashing noise and heat geeks. Personally, I'd love a fully made up chinese, but I don't have the cash.

There certainly seem to be enough - ahem - suckers out there willing to shell out hard cash for 'gluhareff' plans that (as you found out) don't work entirely as advertised. So there has to be a desire for the things.

So. The buyers are there, somewhere. They need to be convinced to come to your door.

If I might suggest something, which one could possibly see as unethical, depending on one's outlook, you need advertising, to the sort of people who might shell out for this kind of thing. I'm not talking trade rags, although they are good. I'm not talking a paid google ad, (although that might pay off, 'gluhareff, pressure jet, helicopter tip jet,' etc would be good phrases). No. I'm talking about the great leveller. The destroyer of websites. Slashdot. Seriously. Slashdot readers have cash, are interested in noisy dangerous things, and like a laugh.

How might one get oneself slashdotted, we ask, should one be out in the icy wastes of Canada?

One might, and this is just a suggestion:

Equip a snocat with a big gluhareff, and video the ensuing mayhem. Hell, a bobsleigh or luge with a 130kg gluhareff and go _up_ the run with it.
Get video of test firings of all the various pulsejets you have, with maximum fireball madness.
You get the idea. As dangerous and madcap as possible, entertaining, and likely to get people interested in buying kits. Get Viv on a snowboard with a chinese or two strapped to the back ;-)
Shove it up on your website, plus a few mirror sites chosen beforehand
Get someone to post it to /.
Watch your hosting company's servers melt as thousands of geeks grab video files.
Several minutes later, your shills post 'mirror sites' and take a pounding too.
Hopefully you sell a few kits, enough to pay for the extra bandwidth charges ;-), but what's more important is that your name is out there.

Just a thought.

Simon

[Tom]

I am sure our server is up to it (hypertoad). Who am I kidding, course it isn't, but why pass up a chance to be /.'ed?

[Mike Kirney]

I don't see why you couldn't move them on E-Bay, especially with a good "Buy It Now" price. Somebody paid $28,000 US for a grilled cheese sandwich last week, so I think a few hundred for a valveless pulsejet would not be asking too much. That guy from Oregon has sold at least six of his Solar-jets in the last year, each one fetching more than $1000 US. The main thing is to have some stock on hand at all times so you can fill your orders quickly and not end up backlogged and burnt-out like Bruce.

[Mike Kirney]

Equip a snocat with a big gluhareff, and video the ensuing mayhem. Hell, a bobsleigh or luge with a 130kg gluhareff and go _up_ the run with it.
Get video of test firings of all the various pulsejets you have, with maximum fireball madness.
You get the idea.

I concur. A video of one of your jets running would hook people in like mad. If you made just one size of Chinese and offered a model airframe to go with it, then shot a short clip of the engine running on a stand and then the thing in flight, you could easily clean out wallets from Albany to Zanzibar.

[Viv]

Equip a snocat with a big gluhareff, and video the ensuing mayhem. Hell, a bobsleigh or luge with a 130kg gluhareff and go _up_ the run with it.
Get video of test firings of all the various pulsejets you have, with maximum fireball madness.
You get the idea.

I concur. A video of one of your jets running would hook people in like mad. If you made just one size of Chinese and offered a model airframe to go with it, then shot a short clip of the engine running on a stand and then the thing in flight, you could easily clean out wallets from Albany to Zanzibar.

Well we have a 34 km diameter lake here thats going to freeze hard soon, and yes we have all ready discussed something to go on it:-)

Viv

[luc]

Okey ... Here are my comments on what I have read so far.

First, Viv and I know we need to post videos and pictures. All this is directly related to the setup of our facilities, and this will be completed in a few weeks.

Second, Viv and I sure don't want to "Empty wallets". As a matter of fact, we even have a plan for comprehensive pricing for you guys. We want to give back to this community what we have gained from it. It is also our goal to be recognize as an honnest and reliable buisness this community. Regardless of all the scams that happened before, we want to be know as peoples that deliver and deliver comprehensivaly.

Beleive me, starting an honnest buiness is hard and frustrating, especially when seeing what we see today.

Tuffy Wrote

Personally, I'd love a fully made up chinese, but I don't have the cash.

As for cash is concern, you guys need to know there is a big difference between showing your interest in what you would like and buying it. For shure Viv and I don't want to force anyone in a transaction, we just want to visualize what is the recreational engine market.

Tuffy wrote

'gluhareff' plans that (as you found out) don't work entirely as advertised

Bullseye for this one. You know, what trigers me OFF and make me mad in what you just said above, is everywhere we go on the Web, we see their damn link everywhere, even considering your sentence above, alot of Websites still display those links. And after a month of constant request, WE still don't have OUR link on this site ... That's very frustrating.

So ... I hear you when you say we need to be visible and when you say we need to gain the confidence of peoples. It is our everyday nightmare doing so and it is very frustrating.

But you guys can count on me for one thing. Yes we will build a solid and honnest buisness, yes we will deliver what we advertize and yes will will have a link page. We might even host other manufacturers, even if they compete us. There is nothing wrong with good, honnest and fair competition, it is good for the customers and keeps the prices at a reasonable level ... AS LONG AS THEY DELIVER WHAT THEY ARE ADVERTISING.

We will not promote and support any scams or KNOWN tiefs ... You can count on me for this one.

So ... If you guys want your WebSite link or some visibility on our Website, feel free to send me or Viv your request and we will shure process it ASAP.

Regards,

Luc
luclaforest@glc-inc.ca
vivcollins@glc-inc.ca
www.glc-inc.ca

[tufty]

Salut Luc

Desole, mais le restant de cette message sera en Anglais, c'est vraiment plus facile pour moi, et probablement 95% des autres.

First off, I'd like to say that I at least, and probably most of the others on the pulsejets site, are sure that you will be running an honest and reliable business. Hell, it's a first, the rest of the people out there doing stuff vaguely related to what you're trying to do all seem to be scammers and assholes. Far to many 'perpetual motion machine', 'tesla vibration machine' etc plans being fobbed off along with second rate knockoffs of the gluhareff plans out there.

Video, photos, sound files, thrust measurements, all that good stuff will help to take you above the humdrum, but only once people know you're there.

You need to get your name out there. It takes a while to hit the search engines, but you will get there. Once people start realising what it is you're dooing, and start getting links to your site, the hit rate is going to go up. At the moment, you're on the plateau, and that is frustrating. Which is one of the reasons I suggested slashdot. It could give you a good 'hike up'.

Another thing that might help would be if Viv got the list of hotwords to me so I can put the information up on the site for the robots to crawl ;-) I know you're trying to stay away from getting lumped in with the 'shite gluey sellers' out there, but I think a liberal sprinkling of the phrases 'gluhareff' and 'pressure jet' on the site aren't going to hurt any. To be honest, I don't think most of the pressure jets out there have been anywhere near a thrust stand, and sadly I think most of the buyers have the attitude of "it said 130lb on the plans, it drinks propane like it's going out of fashion, must be producing 130lb".

In that vein, maybe a document (or better, published article in one of the trade rags) about why your models are better than the other crap out there, would be a good thing. A working title might be "When 130lb thrust isn't enough to knock your hat off" Get known worldwide as 'those guys who know their shit when it comes to the gluhareff, and can back it up'.

Also, you need to stop being coy about what you're doing. You _need_ to be emptying wallets - while I appreciate that you don't want to be seen as ripping off people in the PJ community, you need to be making money as well. I understand that, I think everyone on the site understands that. So, yes, by all means put together a comprehensive pricing agreement for the 'listers', but they are not going to be your primary source of income, IMO. The guys (and gals, hell, I dunno) on the list are generally speaking the type of people who are perfectly willing to waste hours welding something together just for the hell of it. Well, maybe that's just me. I really see your primary market (at least for the 'hobby' jets) as being people with too much money to burn and a desire to do something out of the ordinary. People bored shitless with their day jobs. Gen-Xers. People who would have otherwise gone out and taken juggling courses, that sort of thing.

I don't know if you've ever seen the british film 'How to get ahead in advertising'? It's a black comedy about a guy who works in advertising, and is given a client who sells acne cream. In order to sell this product, he makes manipulates the media to make acne _fashionable_, before killing that fashion fad and cleaning up on the acne cream side of things. Deliciously twisted. This is almost what you need to be doing. Very few people actually _need_ a pulsejet. Not many even know what one is. You need to make people not just _want_ a pulsejet, but feel that their life is incomplete, and they are a poor substitute for a human being, without one. Once they _need_ your product, they will buy it. And you shouldn't be ashamed to empty their wallets in return;-)

As I said, I'd love a welded up chinese, but I can't see the money becoming available for quite some time to come. When it does, I know whose shop I'm coming to. Seriously. I'd rather waste welding rods on purely speculative stuff than making something known to work, so if I go for a chinese, which appeals to me, I'm gonna buy it. But don't base your business plans on that ;-)

As to how you go about selling the pressure jets - well, I dunno. You need to be noticed, I guess, and to get a few clients who trust you. I think that's where your real money should be, but how to get there? Maybe you could also offer a 'gluhareff tuning' service for those that have been ripped off and have shittily performing gas hogs?

Selling a few made up, with test stand figures, chineses on ebay probably wouldn't hurt, either. Might even be worth putting a documented 60Kilo pressurejet up, with enough of a reserve to make sure you don't lose any money on it.

A+

Simon

p.s. Realistically, though, I still think you need film of Viv hunting ducks on a pressure jet powered snowboard.

[Mark]

Luc and Viv,
Just produce a Chinese and get the picture out there for people to see. That should produce several bites on your line. If you are thinking of making a valved pulsejet, you might like to buy a Bailey jet, $200.00, but you should see the welding, smooth as can be and perhaps something you could make for less?
Mark

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Call me an old fuddy-duddy but I hate the idea of hustling people to buy something they have only been told they should like. To me it always looked like a con. Creation of artificial needs is a con game, even at this simple level, not to mention lifestyle advertising.

In my old-fashioned world view, a product should satisfy a genuine need. By 'genuine' I mean something that a person's real life has steered him towards, not something that advertising made him want, or something to keep up with the Joneses.

It can be a fancy or a toy -- those things are also integral parts of people's normal lives -- but let it be a natural extension of a person's make-up, not something foisted upon him by artificially created feelings of inadequacy and other forms of peer pressure.

Yes, I know you can sell fridges to Eskimoes and make good money on that, but I would not like to be a part of such an endeavor. Mind you, I practice what I preach. I have done a lot of things in my life and selling stuff has often been a feature of the job I had to do, but I can proudly say I have never led people to buy stuff I thought they did not really want and would not really enjoy.

So, back to pulsejets.

I still think pulsejets have a real role. If I were involved in their manufacture, I would try to identify and define that role as clearly as possible and then go after it with my product. I have nothing against wicked advertising, but only if it builds up upon a genuine product. Everything else looks a bit tacky to me.

[luc]

Heyyy Guys,

Don't start a argument over this ... I was just trying to see what was the receational world wide market for these engines and I think I got the picture now.

As for shoving engines down the troth of peoples just because we made them beleive they want it ... Well, I don't think we want to do that, especially when we want to build our buisness on a solid reputation.

I think Tufty's point was more about visibility and I beleive he is correct on his asumptions.

But again, I said what I had to say about "Visibility" and especially ... "Links". I rest my case over that issue and let some peoples realise they are actually supporting scamy advertizingt.

Viv and I will deal with our visibility and as for this thread and market evaluation, I will consider the subject close, having a clear picture now.

Just a hint do ... Soon, we (Viv and I, Conception GLC inc.) will post and demonstrate few things that will have you guys ... Fall Flat on your back ... He he he.

But for now and like you said Bruno ... Back to the engines.

Regards,

Luc

[Mark]

[quote="tufty"]Salut Luc

I don't know if you've ever seen the british film 'How to get ahead in advertising'? It's a black comedy about a guy who works in advertising,

Simon

That made me think of the British movie, "O Lucky Man" the greed and satire of the business/legal world. A great movie in some strange way, and the music in the movie is very good also. I feel certain Viv and Luc are dedicated to accounting for every bean. They are good guys.
Mark