Classifieds website start-up [Help!]

[brett.mifsud]

Hi, everyone. I am new here and would firstly like to say – Excellent community! – Thanks for the opportunity to collaborate with everyone.

I have a start-up idea that I believe can be successful; however there are some issues that I am hung-up on.

It’s an automotive classifieds website, similar to carsales.com (Australia’s No.1 automotive site [or so they say lol]).

There are two problems that I face.

1. Getting a solid base of car listings on the site so it has a good selection and credibility.
2. Driving traffic to the site.

I believe that without a decent number of cars listed, people will see that the website is in ‘start-up’ phase and turn away. Secondly, I think that there must be a lot of cars on the site before significant traffic is driven to the site, but until then, the vendors that listed their vehicles may wonder what’s going on and why they have not received inquiries about their car.

I have thought that to get listings to the site, I need to fully undercut the competition; so I plan on providing free listings until I am satisfied that there are enough cars on the site and traffic coming in to begin to charge a listing fee. – how many car’s before I charge...I do not know. Maybe 500 or so?

If you have experience or ideas, please let me know.

Thank you


Regards

Brett

[Brendan]

Hi Brett,

Welcome to the forums.

Not a bad idea, but you have some pretty serious competitors with a lot of money to throw around so its going to be a hard slog.

What you really need to do to compete in this market is to offer something different, something that no one else is doing, you basically need a Unique Selling Point.

I know if I wanted to sell my car I would want it listed where it gets the most possible exposure to buyers, not necessarily sellers.

Getting cars listed is one thing, but if there are no buyers visiting the site, then why would people want to list their cars?

So things you need to work on are;

- What makes you different from your competitors?
- Why would someone list a car on your site?
- Why would someone go to your site to look for a car?

Hope that helps.

Best of Luck.

So what you should

[brett.mifsud]

Brendan,
Thanks for your comments!
I do realize that I need to work on strategies in my business model that distinguish me from my competition. For that reason I was thinking of doing news & reviews on cars etc. But more importantly, allow people to comment and collaborate on the website. – I think community participation is crucial. So heavily engage in web 2.0 technologies.
It is very hard to find a solution that can heavily differentiate myself from the competition….

[Brendan]

Can I ask why you have chosen to compete in this market?

Can you look at advertising something different?

If it is your first online business, my advice would be to enter a market you can actually compete in and become successful, try finding a market where there is a gap that you can fill.