Groupon/Deal Site Questions.

zonEEE

Hi

I have a few questions about setting up a Irish deal type website.

Does anyone have any information on buying scripts such as http://groupscript.net/ ?

How could i integrate laser card payment?

Could i get a grant from my local enterprise board as im currently on social welfare payments?

As for host, would i need a dedi server or could i start off with a hosting plan, i hear its better to have a irish host for seo reasons?

Any any other advice/tips about Deal sites in general would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

YouBuyLocal

You are extremely unlikely to get any help from CEBs in this & the returns in this space are narrowing considerably. A year or so ago people were opening 10% of deal e-mails, now its down to 1% and going lower with the market so congested. You also need large sales infrastructure, vetting the companies more effectively, etc. Try to get ahead of the curve, not on the back of a bubble.

My prediction is you will wreck your head over this for a while and give up, better to start observing trends rather than jumping on bandwagons.

That is, unless you have a particular niche that the deals/group buying strategy could work in that nobody has considered yet. There are still a good few around I think, but you'd need to clever.

Best of luck though, sorry to be harsh.

zonEEE

Thanks for the advice, its a certain area/locality that isnt covered by any of the bigger deal sites. There is many many business in this area that i feel can benefit greatly from such a service.

However i do ask myself why no one else has done it yet. But i really dont see any reason for it not to work.

YouBuyLocal

Hi Dude,

You are correct. There is a big market in local deals/advertising/marketing. But you need deep connections with local business communities to vet businesses and you need a credible marketing platform from the get-go to crab enough consumers/eye-balls.

I'm actually doing this and I have a concrete strategy. The reason nobody has done it yet is not because its been overlooked, its just very very hard to develop the local awareness and a scalable model. Unless you don't have credible strategy you'll either flop from the get-go or you'll be outgunned very quickly by Groupon/google offers/foursquare/etc, as soon as they develop a presence here like they have in the US. Thats because they have the tech-background and investment behind them. So you have to be a very clever little guy.

If you can actually code then pm me - if not then I guarantee you you'll find it next to impossible to create a thoroughly "local" daily deals platform. They are usually based upon large mass populations that attract many hundred of thousands of eye-balls every day.

Good Luck anyha

francomcdaddy

I worked on a deal site and they are a nightmare to maintain. Problem is buying in someone elses script then trying to figure out someone elses logic before you start repairing, yes they do need alot of maintaining. My advice is forget about buying in a script and forcing it to work the way you want it. Hire a freelancer online from peopleperhour, freelancer, guru etc... and it will be a 6-8 week project and will cost a few grand and will save you money in long term. If you are serious about this then you know you need a big marketing budget and some full time staff.

It save money in the long run. This dublin based deal site bought a script from techmodi in india and it wasn't working properly so they contacted me to fix the 5 or 6 bugs etc.. when I look at the code was a mess well over 100 bugs! part of the script from groupon and living social were copied and pasted and forced to work together. I fixed about 12 of the bugs and told them the truth, the feckers then decided not to pay me for work done.

bottom line is that unless you have money to spend forget about this idea, funding is not available. Also funding usually means you have to put the money up front and they will give you 50% if you qualify

Idbatterim

apologies for dragging this old thread up. francomcdaddy, what would you term a "big" marketing budget and where would you target this spend?

Axwell

The user has 47 posts and is banned, chances of you getting a reply of them..none. The thread is also 3 yrs old.