I am working on creating a web site that will actually take off. I have a few websites I have been working on for over a year and they just aren't taking off. So I am wanting to get some opinions on a few ideas of mine.
1. Post That You Are Searching For A Home - Instead of houses being posted on the site and you searching through tons and tons of homes how about you post what you are looking for and people come looking for you instead?
2. Online Lotto - A lottery type site where the money that is used for purchasing "tickets" is then distributed back out to the buyers. 95% or so of the money put in will be part of the pot of money.
These are just a few small ideas. I was wondering what you thought of these and which ones exist or would be most successful.
Comments
1. People don't know exactly
1. People don't know exactly what house they wanna buy. But every seller knows exactly what house s/he want to sell. If every potential buyer listed every house they potentially would buy, the list would be much, much bigger than the sellers' lists. If you want to know what houses people are looking for, why not look at the prices for similar houses in your area? Higher prices = more demand.
2. People don't buy lotteries because they are worth the money (in fact, in your example they wouldn't be worth it either). They buy them because they want some excitement in their lives (the idea that you could be a millionaire is what gets people excited... imagining it in their heads). Nothing to do with the actual probability. In other words, you would just be giving away the money that you might as well keep.
Thanks for your comment! I
Thanks for your comment! I have some responses and am hoping you can tell me what you think!
1. Yes why the list would be large it would help sellers find potential buyers. Now maybe limit the listings for buyers to one at a time. Then users of the site could also help other users find potential homes in the area. Also by the looking at houses in my area what did you mean??
2. Well the point of the online lottery would be to allow users to be able to play lottery without having to go to the store. If would still be exciting I think because there would be a chance for them to win some money. There wouldn't just be one large pot but it would be distributed and separated into multiple little pots and a larger pot. Then Sales will stop and numbers will be drawn.
These were just a few ideas I had while brainstorming. I am trying to develop a web site so I can have active users. This is my main goal. I have been challenged by a few people to develop a web site that can attract a large crowd. So that is what I am attempting to work at.
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#2 needs to look into gambling laws within every country the site expects to penetrate, I'd think. Quite a bit of beauracracy there.
Yeah well that would be one
Yeah well that would be one of the things that needs to look into.
I just meant if you want to
I just meant if you want to know if there are people looking for a house like yours, just look at the prices of other similar houses in your area. So, if an identical house next door sold for $200k, then there are people looking for a house like yours for around that price. I mean there would be no reason to go to a website to see if anyone's looking, you know? I could be wrong.
But I think that both ideas are similar in that people would love to click through things here and there, but there's no business plan here. It's a website first and business on a side; it should be the other way round. Other than that, I'm sure you'd have some visitors who just wanna browse around, why not.
Lastly, I wanna say that many successful ideas have worked when everyone was saying they wouldn't. If you can find a good way to go about implementing your own ideas, maybe they will work too :)
I mean the main purpose of
I mean the main purpose of the home site ideas it to allow the ones selling the homes to find people looking for homes. This would help both sides of the deal. Like list how many rooms you would like and how many baths and things like that. With out getting to specific. Also give a possible price range I guess.
It would take time with both ideas. Like it is hard to find the right house sometimes so having homes shown to you that fit your criteria would help.
Sure, if you have a vision
Sure, if you have a vision for how it's gonna work and provide value--by all means do it! :)
Okay I am going to try and
Okay I am going to try and get it working. See if I can get something good mocked up and working well! The main thing I am having trouble getting my head around is receiving visitors to the site and people coming and posting their homes.
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some form of advertising. The internet is no longer an "if you build it they will come" environment. It takes a great deal of work and sometimes luck to become a revenue stream.
Removed Spam
Removed spam comment. Couldn't delete because it had attached comments and I didn't want to remove those. - VMBut the thing is I can't just
But the thing is I can't just attract one side of the deal. This site is a two sided website. So I need Realtor and buyers!
Not really, I can see how
Not really, I can see how people would post what they are looking for even if there aren't many sellers on the site. If it's quick it might be worth the time anyway (or appear as being worth the time). But then the website has to convince them this is the site to do it on! Then, once you have good buyers, sellers will also come. But it has to work smoothly or else it won't seem like it's worth the effort to post anything there.
That is a great point. So
That is a great point. So maybe I will start working on the site and get it working smoothly and then maybe launch it fully. I think the general idea is good just may have to execute it differently then some other sites.
One more thing: you'll need
One more thing: you'll need to separate serious buyers from people who just wanna post about their dream home without even being able to afford buying it. A seller should be able to come in and look thru the list of people who are actually going to buy the home. Good luck! It's all about the execution anyway, not the idea imo.
So when people register to
So when people register to the site should I have them put in a salary and such? Then use that to separate them into categories or something?
That probably won't work too
That probably won't work too well haha. I'm not telling you my salary! :) I meant maybe people could specify how serious they are about it.
OKay like maybe some
OKay like maybe some categories like: Just Looking, and then some more serious categories?
Yes.
Yes.