Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Greg H.

High Quality, low cost, real estate and automobile ads

Okay, so how would you say that you`re different---that you differentiate yourself---from such places as Craig`s List, eBay, or the various newspaper online classifieds?

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Greg H.

High Quality, low cost, real estate and automobile ads

RE: whether or not being undifferentiated would prevent me from advertising: Yes.

The reason is a combined argument that being undifferentiated would also mean you have a limited visibility, so I`d probably not bother advertising on the site. Conversely, I`d hesitate to buy from a site that was showing as a "classified ad" site, but had only a few actual advertisements.

What I`d do, maybe only at the start, but maybe as a main strategy is to model after small, independent car dealers. They don`t even try to compete with large dealerships, and focus on a neighborhood market. That`s what Craig`s List did, meeting the needs of the local neighborhood.

Later, with growth, the strategy could change.

The way I perceive your site is a wide-area classified advertising location. That`s the "Look and Feel" of the site, and it`s nicely done. But without a substantial list of actual ads...it quickly deflates.

Of course that`s a huge problem for ANY startup, and a sort of Catch-22 between having a lot of product, but being too new to have a lot of product. So the key, strategic question (in my mind), is how to create phased growth.

What`s wrong with picking only your geographic area, perhaps within a 50-mile diameter, and making the site all about classifieds for that closely-constrained area?

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Greg H.

High Quality, low cost, real estate and automobile ads

Y`know, it`s not that unusual around here (Chicago region) to see signs along roads, sort of hand-made, that advertise a URL. Something like, "Need a Car? Visit abc.com!"

You could do that, direct marketing, flyers in stores, postings on supermarket bulletin boards, and even maybe some newspaper advertising. Right?

Please take a look at my website and tell me what you think about it and the service we offer.


Computer Repair

Thanks

Yes, that is part of the plan.  The other part is getting to know the folks in my area that have autos and real estate to sell.  Whatever it takes, that is what I`m in for.

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Greg H.

High Quality, low cost, real estate and automobile ads

If I have to ship my machine or components to you, then get them back later, I see very little on your site that would make me feel comfortable doing so. On the other hand, if we`re talking about replacement parts, I think you`ll want to make that more specifically clear. :-)

The site`s okay...it just doesn`t "reach out to me." Right now I`m working for an employer who knows nothing at all about computers, other than they`re crucial to business. How, why, or what particularly computers can do means nothing.

Meanwhile, they have no backups, no install disks, no nothing. It`s a nightmare waiting to happen, so I`m doing what I can to keep some sort of safety net in place. Alright, so let`s suppose a computer crashes horribly.

Right away, I`m going to need tech support. There`s almost no budget or money for this support, but in a forest-fire catastrophe, money will show up from somewhere. What`s going to be my Very First Step, that afternoon when the system goes down?

Your first step would be to call us.
 A tech would walk you through signing up for membership or sign up for you. 

Once your a member the tech would walk you through basic troubleshooting steps to determine what the problem may be.  If it can`t be fixed remotely he would give you shipping instructions and a shipping number to check the status of any repair.  Once we received your machine and for example if its a hard drive that went out.  We would price hard drives for your machine and call you to see the one you want.  We don`t mark up prices for parts.  We would bill your credit card and then buy the part you want.  We would try and recover your files from the hard drive.  As long as you have a Windows key on your machine we would install your OS, put the files we recovered back on it, install antivirus/anti spyware and our online 150 gb backup service.  We would stress test it for 24 hours and ship it back to you.  If you wanted to keep the hard drive then we would ship it with the computer, if not then we would take it apart and torch the platters.

If you wanted you could then cancel the membership and not pay another dime or you could continue the membership and call in with any computer problems you have and you would continue to receive 150 gb backup.  If you had no computer problems then we would call you every 90 days to remote into it and do a check up to make sure everything is running ok.