Thread: Worth it to compete with a website?

I just skimmed the website. It looks like Consumer to Consumer (C2C) website, no? This kind of business is not easy to build since it is catering to two-sided markets. I think you may even need to have some amount of capital up front for advertising.

cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog / The “ladies’ night” strategy

Originally Posted by Chris Dixon

Many singles bars have “ladies’ night” where women are offered price discounts. Singles bars do this for women but not for men because (heterosexually-focused) bars are what economists call two-sided markets – platforms that have two distinct user groups and that get more valuable to each group the more the other group joins the platform - and women are apparently harder to attract to singles bars than men.

Businesses that target two-sided markets are extremely hard to build but also extremely hard to compete against once they reach scale. Tech businesses that have created successful two-sided markets include Ebay (sellers and buyers), Google (advertisers and publishers), Paypal (buyers and merchants), and Microsoft (Windows users and developers). In some cases individuals/institutions are consistently on one side (buyers and merchants) while in other cases they fluctuate between sides (Ebay sellers are also often buyers).

In almost every two-sided market, one side is harder to acquire than the other. The most common way to attract the hard side is the ladies’ night strategy: reduce prices for the hard side, even to zero (e.g. Adobe Flash & PDF for end-users), or below zero (e.g. party promotors paying celebrities to attend). Rarer ways to attract the hard side is 1) getting them to invest the platform itself (e.g. Visa & Mastercard), and 2) interoperating with existing hard sides (e.g. Playstation 3 running Playstation 2 games).

If you are starting a company that targets a two-sided market you need to figure out which side is the hard side and then focus your efforts on marketing to that side. Generally, the more asymmetric your market the better, as it allows you to market to each side more in serial than in parallel.

Hi
I am the webmaster for a hobby group (strictly volunteer), and am developing another for my church (also volunteer). I have been learning it as I go. Nowadays you can use pre-formed webpage templates from different services. There are lots of them. Also go to google and enter GOOGLE WEBMASTER. That will bring up lots of info on the various webmaster tools and stats and other goodies.

There's lots of free info on the web.
If you are (or wanna be) a code-monkey go to the w3 schools site. Lots of info on HTML, XML, CSS. A VERY valuable resource!

Just remember that your site should be in the top 10 (if not higher) of the first page. You don't really have much time to make an impression.
1) go to your competitors webpage.
2) Hit the VIEW tab on your browser
3) select VIEW SOURCE - this shows you the actual code for the page.
4) search for KEYWORDS - these are the words that google searches for when you enter them in the search box. You want to PACK the keyword field with as many relevant search terms as possible. Look at your competitors site and see what they left out - that will help you.
Hope this helps!
Kevin

Originally Posted by valuegiver

I just skimmed the website. It looks like Consumer to Consumer (C2C) website, no? This kind of business is not easy to build since it is catering to two-sided markets. I think you may even need to have some amount of capital up front for advertising.

It's kind of a C2C site I guess. It's like an interactive craigslist. These particular people actually pull craigslist listings from there site and put them on an interactive map. Then people that want to find sales quickly in an area can. I think there is a lot more that can be done with it and with a good solid interactive site, a little advertising could go far and if people find value in this, should be easy to grow.

Originally Posted by dowserman

1) go to your competitors webpage.
2) Hit the VIEW tab on your browser
3) select VIEW SOURCE - this shows you the actual code for the page.
4) search for KEYWORDS - these are the words that google searches for when you enter them in the search box. You want to PACK the keyword field with as many relevant search terms as possible. Look at your competitors site and see what they left out - that will help you.
Hope this helps!
Kevin

Actually the major search engines DO NOT use the keywords meta tag for search engine optimization. It's pretty pointless putting any keywords in there (although there my be some very dated low traffic search engines that use them) because it will not help you rank better in google, yahoo, or bing. You can read more about it and watch a video on Matt Cutts blog (he is the head of google's webspam team) Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search

Capital Life,

The best way to decide if it's worth your time to "do it better" is to first look and see if there is a market.

And second does that market have money to spend.

Third, how can you trade value for money.

Let's look to see if there is a market first.

Using the google keyword tool, I'm just not seeing a big enough market. For most of the keywords I am checking, craigslist ads are coming up. I know people who have garage sales and then post ads on craigslist for free about their garage sale/yard sale.

At that point I would personally stop there and decide I wouldn't want to go further into it because I don't see a big enough market, and I don't see how I could make any money.

That's what I would do. Don't take my way as THE way... but I do think it's best to make sure there is a market with money, and you have something they want.

Also you have a lot more competition thank you think:

The Garage Sale Site - Yard Sales
Garage Sales, sale listings
Find My Yard Sale - Yard Sale Listings
Garage Sale Listings
http://www.garagesalesource.com/http://www.garagesalesource.com/
Yard Sale Search - Find or advertise garage sales for free!
Garage sales | Yard sales - Find & advertise garage sale or yard sale
Garage Sales! Find and advertise garage sales for free!!!
Garage Sales, Yard Sales, Estate Sales, List Your Items at GarageSales.com Free!
Garage Sale Shopper - Advertise your garage sales, rummage sales, yard sales and estate sales online for FREE.

Now competition isn't a bad thing, I just don't see people knocking down your door for a solution.

A couple of those sites look pretty decent, the problem is none of them have content.

The good news is that 95%+ of your competition is garbage.

Originally Posted by darkjediii

A couple of those sites look pretty decent, the problem is none of them have content.

The good news is that 95%+ of your competition is garbage.

That could also be bad news, if said competition isn't empty because of poor execution.

the problem is populating the database... There is the problem, if you can find a solution then you have a viable site.

Originally Posted by darkjediii

the problem is populating the database... There is the problem, if you can find a solution then you have a viable site.

This could be seriously helped by heavy programming, but someone will have to make sure the data is correct and double check listings before they go in. Shitty competition but usually a good reason for it being that way. The time taken has to outweigh the potential value of the site.

So if these sites are garbage because of poor execution, I certainly have something. But if they are garbage because there is no traffic or market for what they offer, then it is a waste of time. How do I determine without spending hours and hours executing a site better than theirs, which of the two is the case?

This is not my area of expertise, but I think craigslist is dominating this niche.

At least that's where locals here look-- so much so that the local newspapers are hurting.

Hey, maybe craigslist will let you advertise your site in the garagesales section?

(I'm not joking--- stranger things have happened)

-Russ H.

Worth it to compete with a website?

I remember reading a Paul Graham article (essay?) where he asked rhetorically:
Do you think 10 years from now, Facebook is going to be the only game in town?
What about other popular sites? Do you think they won't have competition?
They did the idea, and that's it?
(( this is horribly paraphrased by me... I can't find the article I read it in ))

Yet I think it sets the mindset: GO FOR IT.

Originally Posted by AJ.

I remember reading a Paul Graham article (essay?) where he asked rhetorically:
Do you think 10 years from now, Facebook is going to be the only game in town?
What about other popular sites? Do you think they won't have competition?
They did the idea, and that's it?
(( this is horribly paraphrased by me... I can't find the article I read it in ))

Yet I think it sets the mindset: GO FOR IT.

Not *quite* what you mentioned, but number 3 on here discusses attempting to avoid competition:

The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

Why create a website? If I was going to a garage sale Im not going to be carrying a computer around, but I'll have my phone. Create an app instead that can update automatically when a new garage sale is listed an it puts a pin on a map with the info. As the app grows people could put their garage sale on the app. At first you can do the manual work and go through craigslist and get the new garage sale listing and enter them into your app. Im sure people would use it because it would save them writing down the address of the places they want to go.

Like Russ said, craigslist is probably where everyone looks. You could even throw in a live review system on the app. Once someone has visited the garage sale they can let you know if its good, terrible or closed early. Also let them favorite specific garage sales that they like.

Yeah... this is where I am headed. Apps could be very useful, although at first tedious and possibly worthless. They would work better once the site is atleast somewhat established. I am just thinking of a solution to the problem of writing down sales, addresses, start/close times, finding the sales from the newspaper/craigslist/etc. This would be a one stop, fill a schedule, print it (with or without directions) maybe a gps file creator. You could find garage sales based on what people are selling. I know my wife ONLY goes to garage sales with baby stuff. She "drives" by to make sure when they say "baby items" that they are for girls and in the age ranges we have.
Those are problems I think I can offer a very good solution to.

Now..how many people are like my wife and would find value in this vs. people that just go and look around for fun? I think that might be the true question here.

Originally Posted by dispin

Why create a website? If I was going to a garage sale Im not going to be carrying a computer around, but I'll have my phone. Create an app instead that can update automatically when a new garage sale is listed an it puts a pin on a map with the info. As the app grows people could put their garage sale on the app. At first you can do the manual work and go through craigslist and get the new garage sale listing and enter them into your app. Im sure people would use it because it would save them writing down the address of the places they want to go.

Like Russ said, craigslist is probably where everyone looks. You could even throw in a live review system on the app. Once someone has visited the garage sale they can let you know if its good, terrible or closed early. Also let them favorite specific garage sales that they like.

I think this would be an excellent idea. You would have to make it cross platform (there are codebases and programs out now equivalent to adobe AIR for computers) but having an app that gets your location and shows current garage sales on a map and maybe shows the google street view of what the house or area looks like. or whatever, would be extremely useful.

Why create a website? If I was going to a garage sale Im not going to be carrying a computer around, but I'll have my phone. Create an app instead that can update automatically when a new garage sale is listed an it puts a pin on a map with the info. As the app grows people could put their garage sale on the app. At first you can do the manual work and go through craigslist and get the new garage sale listing and enter them into your app. Im sure people would use it because it would save them writing down the address of the places they want to go.

Bingo! Just drive into a neighborhood, geo-connect to a database server and wham, it will spit out a predetermined route that takes you to multiple sales.