Creating affiliate comparison website

[Rainy_State]

Hello o wise ones,

I am looking for advice.

I have an idea about building a comparison website in a yet untapped market. The potential market is massive but getting prices from suppliers is extremely tricky, pricing is very complicated hence no one has done it yet. I own business in that market and have some solutions for the complicated pricing but no help or mentor to make a start.

Should I start with finding a website developer? What sort of costs am I looking at?

Or is there a better way to proceed with the idea?

Many Thanks,
RS

 

[animalstyle]

Your title says affiliate site, but then you’re talking about suppliers? There is a disconnect here that I’d suggest you do more research into the internet marketing side of things - this is coming from an internet marketer.

I’d be happy to answer more if you gave more detail too

 

[Rainy_State]

Your title says affiliate site, but then you’re talking about suppliers? There is a disconnect here that I’d suggest you do more research into the internet marketing side of things - this is coming from an internet marketer.

I’d be happy to answer more if you gave more detail too

Thank you, animalstyle,

I have an idea for a price comparison website in a fairly profitable niche that I am familiar with. I own a business that provides a service in this niche.

Nationwide, there are tens of thousands of businesses that provide the same service as I do so I am not unique. The nature of the service is that there will always be customers that require it.

There is a lot of competition between businesses fighting for the customers. Majority of them do not publish the prices of the service on their website, instead they want customers to phone them and visit before they reveal the price.

This creates a lot of headache for the costumers. If they want to compare the prices, they have to do a lot of calls and visits. A price comparison website would be an answer to their prayers and would change this market forever.

So why no one has done it yet? Two main reasons:
1 - the providers of the servers are notoriously secretive about their prices and getting them to share would be a challenge.
2 - this is a service, not a product. The pricing is made of several layers and has to be customised to the customer's specific requirements.

Just like buying a car insurance. You go to a comparison website, enter your car details and get a list of prices. In order to finalise the purchase you have to call the company directly.

I have some ideas on how to work around two problems I listed.
I can not generate income through CPC or CPA or commission. The cost of the service on average $1k per month but once the customer bought it, they will continue buying from the service provider directly. No repeat customers.

This is as much detail as I can go in right now. Thank you in advance.
RS.

 

[animalstyle]

I guess I am confused by the title saying 'affiliate' site which would indicate that you'd be sending visitors to multiple providers and then you turn around and say you're already a provider yourself.

It would be hard to be unbiased in this case since it would always make more sense to send the customers to yourself. In that case I'd suggest boiling this down to what is the value that you're providing to your potential customers and incorporating that on the current site for your business.

If there is value in showing prices, it sounds like that would be a USP for your own business rather than an affiliate site.

Just my two cents based on the info you gave.

 

[Coalission]

I guess I am confused by the title saying 'affiliate' site which would indicate that you'd be sending visitors to multiple providers and then you turn around and say you're already a provider yourself.

It would be hard to be unbiased in this case since it would always make more sense to send the customers to yourself. In that case I'd suggest boiling this down to what is the value that you're providing to your potential customers and incorporating that on the current site for your business.

If there is value in showing prices, it sounds like that would be a USP for your own business rather than an affiliate site.

Just my two cents based on the info you gave.

The way I understand it is, when creating a price comparison site where the site makes money on affiliate commissions (Kayak, Trivago, etc.), you can usually pull the prices from different vendors using a simple API or something, since the prices are public and easily accessible, so basically they just become price aggregators and the value is they save people time.

In her industry, it's difficult to have a price comparison site because the prices aren't public, and it's hard to get quotes without a phone call, personal visits, etc. This gives her an opportunity and a competitive advantage because since she already has a business in this industry, she knows the inner workings of how to get these prices and make them easily accessible to people in one place, and there's no competition because of how hard it is to do.

To answer OP's question, the hardest part of this will be the marketing and closing deals with a lot of vendors who may not have affiliate programs set up. Try using some "price comparison" wordpress theme or template, you can probably find some on Themeforest or Google should find something for you.

Once you get that up and running and filled up with all or some of your data, you'll have something to show vendors and close those deals, you can find any wrinkles in the business model that you may not see now, and you can later have a developer re-brand the site if need be. I wouldn't start there.

 

[Rainy_State]

The way I understand it is, when creating a price comparison site where the site makes money on affiliate commissions (Kayak, Trivago, etc.), you can usually pull the prices from different vendors using a simple API or something, since the prices are public and easily accessible, so basically they just become price aggregators and the value is they save people time.

In her industry, it's difficult to have a price comparison site because the prices aren't public, and it's hard to get quotes without a phone call, personal visits, etc. This gives her an opportunity and a competitive advantage because since she already has a business in this industry, she knows the inner workings of how to get these prices and make them easily accessible to people in one place, and there's no competition because of how hard it is to do.

Yes, you nailed it, Coalission. The prices aren't public, I cannot extract them through API. They also vary depending on the type of service. Since I also provide service in this market so I have an inside knowledge on how other providers arrive at these prices.

The goal is not to send more customers to me because only local customers will use my service. Customers from other city cannot use it. Obviously, if I said what sort of service I am talking about, it would all make sense but I am not there yet to reveal it.

I am thinking of charging the service providers per click directing to their websites or phoning them directly. Nationwide, there would be tens of thousands of customers per week searching for this service. Yes, it is a huge market but technology wise, it is lagging behind all other industries because historically, it never needed to use much of the technology. People accept that this is how it's always been and the idea of getting 90k+ service providers (nationwide) to publish their prices on a comparison website seems impossible. Well, I think it's time for a change. It will provide a massive value to the customers if I can get it right.

I am not a website developer myself, so should I hire someone to create a basic comparison website and then look for an angel investor to raise funds for a marketing campaign?

TIA,
RS