Q&A: Which business idea should I pick?
Question by Ryan Johnson: Which business idea should I pick?
I would like to start an online company. My goal is to eventually make six or more figures a year. I have two ideas, 1 being a interactive type of site, and 2 being a standard online business. I’m not sure which one is profitable.
1. A website where people can siign up for free and sell, list, buy, trade, and auction off their websites and or domain names. Users would be charged a small fee to post a listing. They could then post info and photos of their site and people can buy the site for a buy now price, or get entered into an auction. I would have account ratings and telephone verification to help with security. There is already a site called flippa.com that does everything I just mentioned. The reason why people don’t like flippa is because the listing fee is to high. If I can lower th fee, and implement a marketing plan, I will have success. Flippa makes 4-5k a day just from advertisiments on their site. There are currently pre made scripts available for this type of site, and they only cost $ 60. The problem is, it is not a professional site, and I’m worried about bugs with the script. If I wanted to make this site, should I buy the pre made scripts, have an elance person build an okay site for $ 1000, or hire a web design firm to build a top notch site for 10k? I am a teen, so my startup cash is limited.
Pros- limited competition, huge potential
Cons- huge startup
2. I would start a web hosting company by reselling web hosting plans. I would join a companies reseller program, and create a website and promote hosting plans. The company keeps the wholesale cost, and I keep the markup. So if it’s 40 a year and I mark up to 65 a year, I keep 25 a year for that customer. It is recurring income. If I get a modest 2 people per day, I would have 730 clients by the end of the year. That means for the next year, I am making 18k from the people from the first year, while also gaining new clients. So every year, assuming that the client still is hosting with us, I am getting an additional 18k. So I’m making tons of money for years to come. I have heard of host gator and resellers panel which I think has good reseller plans. Resellerspanel has great profits and you get unlimited domains, a website to promote your company, 24/7/365 support, and marketing tools. Resellerspanel does not use cpanel though. They have their own site builder and control panel system which is a problem for clients who want or need cpanel. Host gator costs more than resellers panel, does not host as much space, but does come with cpanel. Would you recommend I use resellers panel, or any other hosting company.
Pros- super low startup costs, just need to promote, work any hours
Cons- a lot of competition, but hey, if you attract people to your site first and they like your plans, you get their sale.
Which idea is more profitable. Do you think any could make me six or more figures a year? Thanks.
Best answer:
Answer by Ralph C
Listen, I don’t want to pop your bubble, but I don’t think either one of these is that great. First one, what makes you think you are going to out-do the existing sites which you have sorely underestimated (Flippa is just one, godaddy.com does this and so do many others) with a $ 1,000 or even $ 10,000 budget? It’s being done well already, you bring nothing additional to the table. Second one is more realistic but your math is probably very faulty – you are not going to sign up two new customers a day. If you think you are, then tell me – how are you going to promote your site where people sign up? That is a highly, highly competitive area when it comes to building traffic.
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