[kriskross]

hi,

please criticise my idea and give your valuable suggestions

The problem at my place with a population of 6.7 million and internet usage of 0.93 million :
1. customers don’t know what are choices available to them in different sections (for ex: bags, clothes – small business are being overshadowed by malls which sell goods at a higher price)
2. the sellers don’t have a right orientation about the needs of the customers, the problems the customers are facing, the areas where they have to improve.
3. Sellers do not have a portal for communicating changes/offers on their services except for the print media which may prove very costly for the small businesses.

The idea i have to solve this problem:

A website which offers free registration for the sellers, and to cater to sellers with no computer knowledge we place postboxes at general places of visit to drop in their registration(for ex: if ELAHE boutique registers it would be appear as elahe.website.com) as many small business people in my place do not have any computer knowledge.

A premium service would be offered where they could make changes in their future offerings in the site(ex: sale offers, new stocks available etc.).

Another premium service for sending email, sms about their offerings to interested customers can be done

consumer could search for whatever he wants(for ex: when he types xbox 360 several places which sell would appear on the screen with their contact information and their price offerings) he could review the seller on various scales like seller reliability, customer care etc. And give suggestions. Other similar consumers could report how useful his review was(like in amazon.com)

stuff required(as per my knowledge – please give suggestions)
1. Two full time young web designers with attitude of entrepreneur
2. I have got a place to work and do have some cash ready to invest

What i need to know?
1. How much do ads usually cost on website
2. Revenue models you think are viable for my idea
3. How viable do you think the idea is ( does it ring a wow? )
4. Marketing strategies
5. Where and how to find web designers who have got passion like me
6. How much will the website cost?


i would like to see how it works at my place and then spread throughout the country where there is none addressing the problem

i am like 21 years old now and i have like so many ideas. i feel soo sad that i have not begun anything till now. i am actually a medico(i finished my Medicine degree), my father is a very famous doc when it becomes very easy for me to use all his goodwill to settle for big bucks very fast. but i have this real passion for entrepreneurship. i dont care even if i dont earn a pie. i enjoy it to the core. if anyones feels just like me.....please pm me...

[akula]

hi kris!
just to clear things up, is english your second language?

[kriskross]

thank you akula, i corrected my mistake. please let me know if there are any more. thank you for reading. hope you could give me some valuable advice. i need help from veterans like you

[rogercbryan]

First off... 21 is young so you are in good shape. I'm very confused by your post. You want people to register for a website via regular mail (because they don't know how to use the internet) and then they go to the web to shop for products? Maybe you should try the catalogue business instead?

I'm not trying to be negative... I just don't get it... can you clarify for everyone?

[kriskross]

yes surely, thanks a lot for ur reply. i live in India where quite a few business are run by uneducated people who do not have web presence and do not have enough money to use print media for advertising. but these people sell same goods for lesser prices than malls and other big players.

at the same time customers do not know that these people are existing and are lured by the big players. apart from this customers do not get a chance to select from a wide range of options.

the third problem is there is no place for the customers to communicate their experience of shopping at a particular place to other fellow customers or to the seller who may want feedback from customers

these small business may give away many offers on their products which cannot be communicated to their old or new customers as there is no medium available

to cater to all these problems i want to build a site where
a seller should first register his name and provide details about his business either directly on our website(as some of these do not know how to use internet we give an opportunity where they can even register by post). so there would be many people selling the same thing(for ex: xbox 360) on our website. so when the customer wants xbox 360 he can search for a set of sellers who sell xbox 360. based on the reviews provided by other customers and the offers they are providing, the customer can choose what he feels right. the seller by paying a little amount can send notification about the new offers to the interested customers via email or sms. by reading the reviews and suggestions the seller may want to improve. apart from this there is no medium present for the business to display their contact information. so this site would even do that for them.

i hope you can understand my concept. if not i will try to tell u even better. thanks a lot YE veterans. i hope u would criticise and give me more valuable suggestions

[rogercbryan]

A little better

1- You want to create an online market place for smaller vendors in India? This is a good idea. A few people did this in China and have managed to build multi billion dollar businesses. Do a little research on Alibaba.com
2- You want to give computer illiterate people a way to access your new site. You can do this through a cyber café or you can try and set up internet booths at local markets.

Here are some of the problems you are going to face:
1- Web Development is going to be a little expensive. You said you want to find two young programmers with the entrepreneurial spirit to work with you. Be careful here- if you can’t find someone you know you cold end up spending a lot of money on a project that they will never complete or worse yet steal from you.
2- Grouping together small vendors is a good idea- but they are also the hardest to work with. Unless you have the money to buy their products and then resell them at a profit you will have to deal with all their problems. If they can’t fill orders you’ll suffer, if they go out of business you will suffer. As simple of an idea as a online market place is there will be a TON of back end work needed to manage it successfully.

This has been done in China and I’m sure other places so I think it’s a good idea. It’s going to take a bit of money and a lot of work. Good Luck and keep posting your questions on here.

*This is a brief overview of your idea. There are many many more things to consider before investing your money.

[strategy]

I'm willing to talk about turning your idea's into a reality if you're interested in parting with your cash or equity.

Programming knowledge ranges from Python and CMFL to DHTML and Flash Actionscript.

Out of interest, what country are we talking about?
I've been on a few non-english ventures because of extremely large target markets with little or no competition in other countries. I believe my friend still has a report on internet usage vs. population & trends in countries with 1 mil+ internet users.

[kriskross]

its just a platform where sellers(esp small business) showcase their products and the offers they provide. customer can search for the seller in his locality. we do not deal either with selling to the customer or buying from th seller. we are planning on gaining revenue from advertising and few premium services offered to the seller

[warrensway]

I could not even understand this please clarify.

[0Googler0]

I think I know where you are going with this and it is not that bad of an idea.
A few things you may want to look into...

1) It seems like there may not be a large following for computers already in your area so the store owners may not constantly update the site.
2) what age group would this target because sites are set up different ways for age groups like the elderly, youth, and the middle aged.
3) How many people just go to the mall to hang-out or browse, not to actually buy things