normally I would never allow myself to be dragged into your small world, but you've pissed me off...
that's right - spending thousands of dollars before asking the questions you are asking now means that you screwed up.
hey - even you admit you screwed up, so why do you get mad if I suggest it?
thousands of dollars on a custom scraper (for an untested idea) when you could've bought one off the shelf for under $100? yup, screwed up
actually - you didn't even mention that in your comment, and I didn't say you were emotionally invested, I was throwing up a warning to be careful about emotional investment - EVERYONE gets emotionally invested in their projects, and it's not easy to detach yourself from your pet ideas - it was a blanket warning ..but now that I've seen your unbalanced reaction - I'm going to say that yes, you are overly-invested emotionally in your project.
If you had done your KW research properly, you wouldn't need to be here asking about whether or not your business idea was viable.
oh - and speaking of ignorant, apparently math is not your strong suit:
so, in a city with a population of 500,000... (your number, not mine)
let's assume there's a business for every 20 people (including children) in your town (not likely, but I'm gonna play this in your favor) so there are 25,000 businesses you can list in your directory.
Of those, you are going to get 500 businesses (2%) in your city to pay you $600 per year?
They might, once (forgive me if I doubt it). But no one is going to keep paying you that much money for nothing - and there's not going to be enough traffic to convert into $600 in sales for most of those businesses. $600 is too high for a vanity listing
@Duffers5000 (who's opinion you appreciated) is charging less than 10% per year of what you suggest, and even he suggests that the money in these directories is in doing a lot of them, not just one.
but using his fee (let's call it $60 per year) and your idea of selling ads / featured listings to 500 businesses = closer to $2,500 per month
(you realize you are going to have to make 2 sales per day, every day, mon-fri?)
For the amount of calls / letters / saleswork you are going to have to do to make $2500 per month - well, it sounds more like a $10 / hour job than a website
that was actually my polite way of telling you that your business idea sucked , but that there might be something you could salvage from it (I wasn't talking about you personally at all), but it looks like I hit a nerve, because your reaction was waaayyyy over the top.
seriously? the way I format the text in my posts offends you? that's a reason to get rude?
I know a lot more about directory websites than you do, so what does that make you?
You know, no one else thought my comments were ignorant? I was trying to be helpful, and my comments WERE helpful, if you had been open to hearing anything other than what you wanted to hear. As it turns out, I have made several successful directories and you haven't.
but hey - go ahead and prove me wrong
