Your feedback for these ideas (need/problem/biz model)

[goo_br]

Hello, I have been think of exploring the following ideas. Any feedback very appreciated!

A) Courses Listing Website

Need: person wants to find a course* that meets their requitements.
* Like Languages, Cooking, Financial Planning, Dancing etc etc

Problem: somebody looking to take a course in my city goes to Google. There problem is that there are a plethora of results (my city has 12M+ people) and several requirements that need to be fulfilled: location, times, dates, cost, reputation. As a result, it takes a huge amount of time for someone to find the right school/course.

Idea: build a website that is a catalogue of all courses in the city and has all the necessray filters for the requirements

Business model options:
- Charge companies for a better position on the listing.
- Paid subscription give ability to enrich their listings.
- Free for x leads/months. Paid subscription unlocks unlimited leads.


B) Information product - Using Facebook to Generate Sales and Build Relationships

Need: Small companies need to attract more customers and build relationships to the existing ones.

Problem: small business have no money to hire a digital agency normally manage their fanpages, so they end up doing it in a very amateur way. One of the biggest problems is that the content they post interests NO ONE.

Idea: build an ebook or video course.

Current ebooks and online courses focus on the tools and MECHANICS (setting up the page, paid traffic etc) while I would focus on the right STRATEGIES - what kind of content to post, how to post, how to interact with audience, how to drive audience to sale.

Such content is scarecely available in the country/language I am thinking of targeting.

Business model: give some content for free and then sell the complete course.

Thank you.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I definitely like #1 as I can see that being very beneficial to the world.

Business model options:
- Charge companies for a better position on the listing.
- Paid subscription give ability to enrich their listings.
- Free for x leads/months. Paid subscription unlocks unlimited leads.

A better model, with better barriers, would be to take a commission on new enrollees. Whatever you decide, ultimately your initial build-out is what will determine if you could succeed at this.

Option #2, eh, not so much. It is easy entry, anyone can do it ... lot of competition and ultimately seems tied to time.

 

[mlk]

#1 is nice but...

how are you going to get traffic/leads?

 

[goo_br]

A better model, with better barriers, would be to take a commission on new enrollees.

It makes sense. On the other hand, I would like to start as lean as possible, without any sort of integration. In order to correctly track when a student was enrolled there would be heavier development requirements. I gree with you, makes the barrier bigger and is very fair: "new student = commission."

how are you going to get traffic/leads?

Have very little money for ads, so I would have to rely on these channels:

- Startup forums
- Monitor facebook and twitter conversartions and recommend the new website
- SEM
- SEO

 

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[mlk]

Have very little money for ads, so I would have to rely on these channels:

- Startup forums
- Monitor facebook and twitter conversartions and recommend the new website
- SEM
- SEO

You should look into what the most wanted courses are using Keyword Planner and then create a simple website which has one page of relevant content to each one of the respective courses. If you are getting leads through your channels thats basically bare money and you can later on rebuild/expand the project to create more of a listing type of website.

 

[goo_br]

You should look into what the most wanted courses are using Keyword Planner and then create a simple website which has one page of relevant content to each one of the respective courses. If you are getting leads through your channels thats basically bare money and you can later on rebuild/expand the project to create more of a listing type of website.

And how would I make money? Google Adsense does not offer much...Offering paid ads for some large school franchises?

Also, the thing is with this strategy I believe i am not adding real value to the person who is searching for a course. Does it make sense?

 

[mlk]

You make money selling the leads to companies/people which offer those courses...?

I thought that was your plan from the beginning. Businesses won't pay for listing if they aren't getting leads/customers from your website. Well, maybe they do but I wouldn't count on it.

 

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[brob742]

I believe i am not adding real value to the person who is searching for a course.

You'd be adding value if you aggregated all the available courses on different subjects, so I don't have to search X amount of sites.
Any type of aggregate site saves the user time from searching all over the place. If you can also save them money, even better. But sites that aggregate info into one location is value to me.

 

[goo_br]

You'd be adding value if you aggregated all the available courses on different subjects, so I don't have to search X amount of sites.
Any type of aggregate site saves the user time from searching all over the place. If you can also save them money, even better. But sites that aggregate info into one location is value to me.

It makes sense. So there are basically 2 options:

a) Building a course aggregator for the whole city (which could also scale to the whole country)
vs
b) Building niche websites for every course type (piano, for example), containing relevant content and course listings.

Would you say those are 2 separate paths of option B would be a lean way to start and further evolve into A?