Got an idea...need some feedback

[Bestmiler]

The business will be web-based. The site will focus on promoting business for companies/stores in my local area (New York), probably just my county. I would advertise/email/call companies/stores and let them know if they wanted to take part in the site. People would visit the site and be able to select (from links) like automobile, clothing store, deli, restaurant, etc; for whatever business has signed up or by town. I think this would be a good idea to get small business more recognized.

Companies/stores would have to pay according to what they want posted on the site. This is an example that I have thought of so far...

-Basic Package ($10) - Basic Info (Name, address (multiple address if applicable), phone#, email, store hours)
-Deluxe Package ($25) - Basic Package + Sales (if they have any sales that week or whatever), Pictures
-Premium Package ($50) - Deluxe Package + Coupons, Company/Store of the week*, anything they want to write

*Businesses will be featured on a company of the week (small section of the site) type thing to further promote.

Also, I was thinking that businesses could donate some products (like old phones, gift cards, free meal/item, etc) and people (visitors of the site) would have to pay $1 to vote on the price of the item or what it should cost or something similar. Very similiar to a rafle.

To get started, I was told (thanks to sarmonkey17) that I could give out the service for free to attract visitors and then start to charge or Make a site with a lot of info about the county and slowly begin to advertise.

I have done some research on familiar sites for my county and I came up with one but it hasn't been updated in a while and it doesn't look like it gets many visitors.

Im not sure if I would make them pay yearly or every 6 months.

I know it's long but I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks a lot.

[Day2]

So essentially, a local directory and/or yellow pages?

Fine idea and can be a real value to the users and the businesses... But it totally depends on your market.

Any big city is already saturated with sites that do this... However, there are lots of secondary markets which don't really have a dominant player.

The trick is to make a site that is a joy to use as a business and as a consumer.

The problem out of the gates that you'll have is that consumers won't get a lot of value from a site that has only a few different businesses on it... You might ponder buying a database of local businesses to serve as your core data and let your paid businesses build on top of that.

Might also want to check into mapping capabilities-- lots of easy plugins to allow your site to offer maps and driving directions.

Regards,

[Bestmiler]

"So essentially, a local directory and/or yellow pages?"
I never thought about it like this but yeah.

I live in New York but not the city. I live in the suburbs but its still a bit populated but nothing like the city.

"The trick is to make a site that is a joy to use as a business and as a consumer."
How will the site be a joy to use for businesses? I understand for consumers.

"You might ponder buying a database of local businesses to serve as your core data and let your paid businesses build on top of that."
How would I go about doing this?

"Might also want to check into mapping capabilities-- lots of easy plugins to allow your site to offer maps and driving directions."
Do you mean that I could add this (mapping) to a feature to one of the packages?

What if someone else in my county is doing the same thing, can i get in trouble?

Thanks for the feedback so far.

[DaVinci]

I have a great Domain for you cheap.

www.HitNY.com - Currently working hard as a free hosting reselling storefront.

HitNYC.com

HitManhattan.com

or

HitNewYork.com

All successfully parked and producing a tiny income. Enough so that you don't have to sell super cheap.

"Hit" is great verb and means both online click/visit and offline GO. Makes for great sub headings: hit the beach, hit the mountains, hit the bars, hit the road, hit soho etc etc...

Good luck - Keep your costs down and work hard at it. You'll do fine. getting paid listings might be hard before you have massive amounts of traffic but you can make money along the way until you get there.

Cheers,

[Bestmiler]

bump......

[akula]

The business will be web-based. The site will focus on promoting business for companies/stores in my local area (New York), probably just my county. I would advertise/email/call companies/stores and let them know if they wanted to take part in the site. People would visit the site and be able to select (from links) like automobile, clothing store, deli, restaurant, etc; for whatever business has signed up or by town. I think this would be a good idea to get small business more recognized.

Companies/stores would have to pay according to what they want posted on the site. This is an example that I have thought of so far...

-Basic Package ($10) - Basic Info (Name, address (multiple address if applicable), phone#, email, store hours)
-Deluxe Package ($25) - Basic Package + Sales (if they have any sales that week or whatever), Pictures
-Premium Package ($50) - Deluxe Package + Coupons, Company/Store of the week*, anything they want to write

*Businesses will be featured on a company of the week (small section of the site) type thing to further promote.

Also, I was thinking that businesses could donate some products (like old phones, gift cards, free meal/item, etc) and people (visitors of the site) would have to pay $1 to vote on the price of the item or what it should cost or something similar. Very similiar to a rafle.

To get started, I was told (thanks to sarmonkey17) that I could give out the service for free to attract visitors and then start to charge or Make a site with a lot of info about the county and slowly begin to advertise.

I have done some research on familiar sites for my county and I came up with one but it hasn't been updated in a while and it doesn't look like it gets many visitors.

Im not sure if I would make them pay yearly or every 6 months.

I know it's long but I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks a lot.

This project is too small for you to worry about it any further.

Go and launch the damn thing, move on and do something else.

An online classifieds directory is a complete no brainer. The fact that you fail virtually every common rule of thumb that makes for a good business (differentiation, defensible technology, etc) is a secondary issue not important here.

From your post it's obvious you've never done anything like this before so further analysis is unnecessary because it'll be useless and confusing.

You need to get started, you need to do it now, and the next thing you should do is post the URL to your directory.

If you look carefully, there's plenty of scripts out there to let you have this site up and running within a couple of hours.

[Bestmiler]

what are some ways I can get people to visit my site? I think this is going to be my biggest problem.

[nytronix]

reply to previous post:

1. content
2. you should have something that everyone else who has similar pages does not have
3. good looking design
and of caurse a lot depends on your marketing strategies and strenth of your competitors