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DanCheet · 10-08-2005, 01:58 PM

Hello, thanks for taking the time to read my questions. First off, I too am a college student and am in the process of starting my own business. Many of my fellow students are frustrated with finding rental housing, appartments, duplexes, etc. to move into after dorm life. The business I want to start would be a simple website where people could type in thier college, a mile radius, and a few other simple criteria. From there, they would be presented with thier housing options. People would pay me to list thier "For rent" property on the website. I would in turn advertise in local papers, school papers, flyers, T-Shirts, etc. The cost to put one ad on the website would be about $30.00. i figure i would do the area around my school first, with the first 3 listings free just to get a good customer base then go from there. I have plenty of friends at other schools nearby that i could pay to advertise at thier school. Anyways, i'm just looking for some feedback and any help as to what are some good places to get my website/business started. Thanks again, - Danny

Steve · 10-08-2005, 02:19 PM

Rent.com and a couple other places do that.

If you made a site specific for COLLEGE HOUSING in a specific area and did a lot of offline local advertising -- I think you would have the biggest chance to be successful.

Bscivolette · 10-08-2005, 03:03 PM

Good idea, but there is competition out there. Even the big websites like apartments.com and rent.com have the ability to search by college campuses. If you were to do this, devote the site only to college housing and if you would like to make it profitable, I suggest charging a little more than $30.00. A newspaper ad alone usually costs more than that.

DanCheet · 10-08-2005, 05:44 PM

Thanks for the advice guys. Yea, my plan is to only go for colleges, starting small at my school, and hopefully by this time next year have at least 3 more colleges in the Pacific Northwest. I've written up a business plan (if you want to call it that) and a timeline of where i want to be in a year and how to get there. Now i have to set my ideas into action which seems to be the most dificult part. Does anyone have any reccomendations on where exactly to start on the tangible part of the business? should i buy a template webpage or have someone build one for me? thanks again, it's truly appreciated. - Danny

Bscivolette · 10-08-2005, 06:14 PM

You can probably find a great designer for fairly inexpensive, my designer is awesome. If you go to www.paxwest.com and click her link on the bottom right you can see her site. I would suggest reading up on SEO and how to make an online business successful. The Internet changes every second, and in order to succeed you must learn it.

DanCheet · 10-09-2005, 03:43 AM

Thanks, as far as getting a website to meet my needs, it seems like it would have to be relativly complicated in the fact that there would be a search page, database of all the housings, etc. can these requirements be met by a normal web designer? what kind of price should i be looking at for a quality web page? Is the diffrence between that price and the price of a template worth it? thanks for everything. - Danny

bigpund · 10-09-2005, 09:45 AM

Hello Danny. I would be interested in speaking with you about putting your website together if you are interested. I have created websites for other members of YE and have had great success. As for your question about the price you should expect to pay, it really depends. Most web developers do not set their prices at anything very specific because the complexity and time it takes are high factors in the price.

And for if the price between a custom website and a template is worth it or not, for your case I would say no but in some cases the answer can be yes. Because of the special programming needs that you have and the different capabilities you are looking to have done, even if you buy a template, you are still going to need someone to do the coding work for you and actually make the website run correctly. The price of a custom website would include all of this and make the process much smoother and you would also be guarenteed that you are getting a truely uniquely designed website just for your site.

Please feel free to contact me further and we can discuss different options and pricing for your website.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you.