[dmanzaro]

Hey everyone, I have a couple ideas for websites to provide specific information to people. As a student at college, I live away from my home and my college isn't located in the city so I rely on getting my haircut when i go home for long weekends and vacations. However, today i realized that I have presentations for a marketing project in 2 weeks and I have no time to go home to get a haircut before them. This had me thinking, what if i designed a website closely related to "ratemyprofessor.com", rather it would be along the lines of "ratemybarber.com"? Here people could post and rate their barbers and the haircuts they specialize in. That way, someone like me could get my haircut from someone I believe can give me what I usually get back home from my own barber. The site would include the locations of the barbers, the shops they are located at, and their specialty haircuts with ratings and even photos of their work. If that doesn't sound like it would be too popular I was also thinking of ratemydoctor.com therefore people can search and reccomend doctors who they feel are at the top of their profession.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? If successful I was wondering maybe if i could profit off advertisements later down the road? Would I start with a .com domain right away or something cheaper? Would this even be profitable?

THANK YOU!!

[akula]

wtf is this?
dmanzaro, no, that's not an opportunity

[exstatic]

I think it does have potential, but I think you need to start on one region at a time so you can focus your marketing on that particular area.

If you spread the barbers across the country too quick and you don't have enough density of barbers in one particular area people will rarely keeping checking back to see if any extra barbers have been added in their area.

What I would do is, in your local area/s contact every barber you know and see if they are interested, get them involved and get them online. That way after a haircut, they can tell their clients to rate their haircut online.

This will ideally improve the quality of haircuts available as they know they will be competing against others in the area, and to promote their business they will want to be rated highly!

Once you have got one area of the country densely covered, move on to the next and then the next.

But be prepared to put in lots of legwork, you need buy in from the barbers not just clients.

If you need a hand, or any assistance, feel free to PM me and I can give you some further advice off the forum.

Good Luck!

[crishenry]

what kind of site you would like to develop...

[akula]

Originally Posted by crishenry

what kind of site you would like to develop...

lol, i love this board
it's like a magnet for retardation
kind of like my house parties..

[ADVERTISE HERE!]

I don't think this has potential based on the type of industry. Once someone has found the barber he likes, he will not return to your site but will stay with the barber. This is different from ratemyprofessor, where students are repeatedly taking new classes with new professors.

[2gould]

I am not sure that barbers will invoke the same kind of passion/emotion/humor that the successful "rate" sites rely on. But, you have identified a problem and that type of thinking will serve you well. Keep on going and you will find a good opportunity. I am just not sure barbers is the one.
Good luck and keep us posted.

[strategy]

Give up now. If your asking for advice and seeking idea's/development on even the most basic projects such as this, you wont get anywhere. Maybe in a few years. Give it 20 minutes of thought, search around, build a site - spend a couple of days max and move on. Project finished, speed of implementation was perfect. You've definitely learned something and maybe you make some money, move onto another project. Personally if you ask for advice on forums for your ideas I dont think they're very confident and have insecurities. Which means failure is guarenteed.

[bzboy]

Akula ha ha...I like your post....anyways, to the OP and others who post up threads like this....For the sake of seeking help and getting tips on this board, make sure you actually have a solid thought of what you want to do. There are so many posts I just skip over and im sure alot of others do as well, bec of posts like these that have no merit. Its a waste of time to make the rest of us look at pointless posts like "I want to start a website to make some money and gain popularity what should I do"...or "I want to become a millionaire who wants to be my partner", or "what kind of website can I create to make tons of money to take over the world"...I mean come on.. Yes this is an entrepreneur forum but spare us the time and create intelligent posts so we can help!

[2gould]

Originally Posted by akula

lol, i love this board
it's like a magnet for retardation
kind of like my house parties..

HAHAHA
Can I get an invite?
Hilarious