Internet community
So here is how its going down.... I'm a senior in High School and my web dev teacher has been kicking her self for the last 3 years because she hasn’t made a fortune on the internet. She keeps telling me story’s of people doing very simple stuff on the web and making a ton of money off it. So today (soon to be yesterday) she was reminded of craigslist.com. If your not familiar with this site let me tell you...
This guy wanted basically a simple forum for his city. Buy, sell, jobs, events, ect. This guy has made a lot of money off this thing. Free at first then businesses pay big money to advertise on your very popular site.
Now if you look at craigslist.com it looks like crap! It doesn’t work very well and it should of failed (In my opinion).
Now where I come in...
My teacher wants to start something like this for my rapidly growing city. Nothing like this exists right now but we are the fastest growing city in the nation. (Old people like 90 degree weather ) I can design a template and write the ASP code easy. The only thing is.... should I spend hours and hours setting up a new internet community when there is a chance it will fail? I'm almost broke and getting kicked out of my parents house soon. All I want is your personal/professional opinion.
Renegade posted this at 04:09 — 4th March 2005.
He has: 3,022 posts
Joined: Oct 2002
I say go for it, you don't really have much to lose. If it fails, then at least you won't be like your teacher kicking her self because she didn't give it a try.
Greg K posted this at 06:14 — 4th March 2005.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
I agree, as long as it's not keeping you from a definate income elsewhere, go for it. And just in case it does fail down the road, be sure to save/invest any big bucks you make after it first gets popular.
Perhaps that is why craigslist is the way it is. He's made enough to the point he don't need to care about it? (just purely a guess, have no clue about who runs it or the history other than what was posted here).
-Greg
andy206uk posted this at 11:42 — 4th March 2005.
He has: 1,758 posts
Joined: Jul 2002
My god... I can't believe anyone ever clicks beyond the homepage, that website is UGLY!
Megan posted this at 15:28 — 4th March 2005.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Yowza! That is one ugly site.
One thing you'll need to keep in mind with this is that in order to make money from local busiensses you'll need to get them intrested, which may require that you interact with them on some level. They won't just come to you at first, you'll need to go to them.
ETA: older people as a target audience will also provide some extra challenges. You'll need to be sure that these people are online, first of all, and that they can use your site (accessibility!).
Megan
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