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Worth it to compete with a website?

Capital Life

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What is the best way to decide if it is worth time to "do it better" than a current site? I know nothing about programming, very little about starting websites, and nothing about the statistics of a website. I am very eager to learn everything I need to know about this to start the site, but I will learn as I go. I need to know if a site that I am thinking about starting will be worth the time.

I checked out a website that is doing basically the exact same thing I want to do (didn't know that anyone was already doing it...I had to look for them), but just by looking at it, I can execute better. I looked on dnScoop - Domain Name Value, History, Stats Tool and Forums and alexa to check traffic etc. but I am not exactly sure what this is telling me. My guess is that it should be very easy to compete with to make #1 :shruggie: 33% bounce rate seems very high. I also looked at keywords and there are about 200,000 searches monthly.

The website I was looking at specifically is garagesalefinder.com. Also, does anyone know what I can expect to make monthly from this type of site? It seems that all my revenue would be through ad clicks, but eventually, if this is something that others find value in, I could start selling certain services.

It would be great if someone could point me in the direction of figuring this out (good web articles/blogs/other threads on here/etc.) I am new to the fastlane way of thinking and even newer to internet business. Thanks to everyone in advance!
 
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valuegiver

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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

Chris Dixon said:
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.
 

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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
 

Capital Life

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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.
 
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Brent Jacoby

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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
 

Brent Jacoby

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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.
 

darkjediii

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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.
 

FDJustin

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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.
 

LightHouse

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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.
 

Capital Life

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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?
 

Russ H

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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.
 
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AJ.

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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.
 

Icy

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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
 

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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.
 
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Capital Life

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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.
 

LightHouse

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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.
 

MJ DeMarco

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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.
 
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Ready2bfamous

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You just posted a million dollar idea without any hesitation. Mad respect and props to you for the willingness to boost another!

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.
 
A

Anon3587x

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My computer science teacher said more people worldwide connect to the internet through a cellphone than a computer.
So it's critical to optimize websites for mobile use.
 

valuegiver

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Where does he pull the statistics from? I don't think that is true.

My computer science teacher said more people worldwide connect to the internet through a cellphone than a computer.
So it's critical to optimize websites for mobile use.
 
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A

Anon3587x

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He sited his source but I can't remember.

I remember the statistic was there are around 1 billion computers in the world, and 4 billion cell phones.
 

valuegiver

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That doesn't mean that 4 billion people surf the internet from their phones.

He sited his source but I can't remember.

I remember the statistic was there are around 1 billion computers in the world, and 4 billion cell phones.
 
A

Anon3587x

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Even the weakest technological phones right now can get online.

The smart phone market is booming and in a few years they will be a affordable commodity everyone has.
Every 18 months technology doubles itself.
It's called "Moores" law I believe.
 
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