Is it a good time for a Car Classifieds website?

Gizmoses

Hi

So I have a website, it's like donedeal in a way that its a classifieds ads site. But it's only for car/vans/trucks etc

It's a nice looking website and it works really well. At the moment people can list on it for free. What do you think?

smash

Gizmoses wrote: »

What do you think?

I think:

Carzone
Donedeal
autotrader
Carsireland
CBG
Adverts

Gloomtastic!

I've just bought a car after months of trawling through all those car sites. I had to do all the searching and it was a mighty PITA! I knew exactly what I was looking for in terms of price, car model etc.

I would of liked to input what I was looking for into some website then get emails on a regular basis when a car matching my search criteria appeared on any of the classified sites.

Also, have you ever read this thread? http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2056198864?page=1#post_70986891

Buying a used car is a minefield, and a very expensive one if you end up with a dud one. I've done it and it was just soul destroying. You have no comeback whatsoever if it's a private sale and unless you're a grease monkey most people know damn all about cars.

You could have a panel of grease monkeys who would rate each car. It would keep the cowboys away but is that a bad thing?

Those same grease monkeys could make themselves available, for a reasonable fee, and go with the buyer to view the car. I did this last time, best money spent ever!

A few killer ideas there my friend. You owe me one!

jimmybeige

There seems to be people building classifieds sites almost every other week. I don't get it. What does the site offer that the current ones don't? If it had something that would make the process easier or better, maybe it could find a space in what seems like an already very congested market. Is it different somehow?

Graham

The barriers to entry are fairly low when it comes to classified websites, plenty of free/cheap script available or relatively easy to throw together something in php etc.

Jimmybeige is definitely asking the right question, what's the USP that stops your classified site becoming another 'me too' tat market?

Gizmoses

It's different in a sense that when you look for a car, it gives you all in the input options and when you press search it will show you what you asked for. Unlike the other sites out there now. It's easy to use. It's free which is important these days.

Gloom has a good idea with the grease monkey panel. Don't know how you would get people interested in doing that. Probably need to pay them.

smash

Gizmoses wrote: »

It's different in a sense that when you look for a car, it gives you all in the input options and when you press search it will show you what you asked for.

I fail to see how this is different at all.

bucks

Focus on a somewhat niche market i.e. Just cars, or vans or trucks.

You will get everyone saying that Done Deal has the market wrapped up etc… but in my opinion there is always room for competition in any market and as the little man you will have very little to lose. I’m sure Buy & Sell thought they had the market wrapped up prior to Done Deal!

You will need to offer users something that the other sites don’t. You will need to adapt to the latest web technologies and move with the times. Above all you will need to realise that you may have to spend years working on the site before it even provides any sort of income or success.

You will get people telling you that classified websites come and go and they do. The reason being though is not because they are ugly, non user friendly etc… but because the owners think they are a get rich quick scheme and when they realise the amount of work involved in marketing and promoting the site they quickly lose interest.

Done Deal was operating for years before it became popular.

One thing though, do you have a genuine interest in motoring? Because if you don’t forget about it as you will need to eat, sleep and breathe motors in order to make the site successful.

I own a few car related websites and feedback from a lot of enthusiasts is that Done Deal is becoming a pain to advertise on, not because of the user interface but because of the vast amount of time wasters who have created a hobby for themselves by enquiring about cars they see on there that they have no interest in.

If you believe in the website you are offering then go for it! Don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and change things when they need changing, above all don’t give up!

Gizmoses

That's good advice bucks. Donedeal were up 3 years before they even made a cent. You do have people saying no there's no point (smash) which is fine cause that's his/her opinion. Your never going to be successful with that attitude.

But yes I will be going for it. Hopefully it will go well.

Hunter21

Loose the notion that "Your website will provide better quality cars, less timewasters and will have no dodgy cars"

Classified websites and ads always have time wasters and dodgy motors on them.

Free texts and cheap call plans on mobiles are reasons for time wasters.

Stay away from classifieds, my advice focus your energy on a new innovative internet site thats what will make you the €€'s and make you a real entrepreneur.

smash

Gizmoses wrote: »

That's good advice bucks. Donedeal were up 3 years before they even made a cent. You do have people saying no there's no point (smash) which is fine cause that's his/her opinion.

You see the thing is that the sites I listed above... Well I know how each of them actually operate and how much they invest in their business. So please don't throw out bs comments like:

Gizmoses wrote: »

Your never going to be successful with that attitude.

Gizmoses

That's good for you that you know that. But so do I. I'm pretty sure I'm in-titled to my opinion. Seems like you have some kind of chip on your shoulder against people bad mouthing classifieds

smash

Gizmoses wrote: »

That's good for you that you know that. But so do I. I'm pretty sure I'm in-titled to my opinion. Seems like you have some kind of chip on your shoulder against people bad mouthing classifieds

Bad mouthing classifieds? Classifieds sites pop up every other week and the disappear just as fast. If you're going to do something then do something innovative and original. With the current players in the market, and how saturated it is, it's a complete waste of time and energy!

But hey, prove me wrong...

jimmybeige

Gizmoses wrote: »

It's different in a sense that when you look for a car, it gives you all in the input options and when you press search it will show you what you asked for. Unlike the other sites out there now. It's easy to use. It's free which is important these days.

Gloom has a good idea with the grease monkey panel. Don't know how you would get people interested in doing that. Probably need to pay them.

Have you even looked at the other sites out there? Sites like Carzone and Autotrader do just this, intuitively with an Ajax search, and a huge amount of options to refine your search.

Can you tell me again how your site is different/superior to this?

I think that is what people have a problem with. It's sounds like you've just built a site where there are already plenty of good options, except your site is obviously way behind in terms of content, marketing and traffic. No one begrudges someone with a good idea, and if you have one I think everyone would wish you the best with it. But this just sounds like the many people I have heard say that building another Facebook would be a good idea, when there's already a Facebook. Didn't work out for Google and I am sure they have a lot more marketing power than you. Didn't work for Ben Dunne when he tried to take on Done Deal. Another car site for the sake of it genuinely sounds like a bit of a harebrained idea.

jmcc

Gizmoses wrote: »

Hi

So I have a website, it's like donedeal in a way that its a classifieds ads site. But it's only for car/vans/trucks etc

It's a nice looking website and it works really well. At the moment people can list on it for free. What do you think?

So how do you make money from it?

Regards...jmcc

bucks

Loads of money to be made with classified sites :eek: (sarcasm)

http://www.donedeal.ie/for-sale/businessopportunities/4534597

tricky D

OP is this the same classifieds site as the one mentioned here from nearly 3 years ago?: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=65601577 What happened in the interim? (any investor will insist on an explanation)

If you do want to make a proper stab at this, you'll need to mitigate the fact that you are late to market vs existing brands, so you need backing for your first 3 years of loss-making, just like DoneDeal. Without a significant (at least) 6 figure amount you'll be wasting your time and money. Even then, there's no guarantee of success as Ben Dunne found out.

And then there's all the other factors needed to ensure the formula for success.

You also need to listen better to people who have seen all these attempts at classifieds come and just about all of them fade into obscurity. There's loads of threads here which amply prove how easy it is to fail in this arena. Telling people they have chips on their shoulder for badmouthing being correct is not the way to go.

Gizmoses

Right, so what your saying is, my opinion is wrong. Is that correct?

Gizmoses

He does have some points. Fair enough if some websites did appear and disappear. From someone who failed to think how different the sites were to agreeing that they are different is odd. Donedeal do have a shoddy search engine. That's my opinion. If you think they don't. That's yours.

Graham

Gizmoses wrote: »

What do you think?

People are answering your question. There's no point getting all defensive when they don't give you the answer you want.

You either want to know what people think, or you don't.

riveratom

Gizmoses wrote: »

He does have some points. Fair enough if some websites did appear and disappear. From someone who failed to think how different the sites were to agreeing that they are different is odd. Donedeal do have a shoddy search engine. That's my opinion. If you think they don't. That's yours.

Hey OP,

The point here really is that it's not about a shoddy search engine. It's about whether the site is doing what it is supposed to do, i.e. getting stuff sold for users and making money for the company. The fact that the search engine could be better is neither here nor there really, unless of course having a much 'better' search engine would make a material positive difference - the answer to which is almost certainly no.

Ryanair's site is painful to use, but it didn't stop them making €18 million in profit last year (or last quarter, whatever it was).

In other words, a better search engine is of no consequence in the grand scheme of things. Besides, classifieds sites are a dime a dozen and not very exciting - wouldn't you rather work on something more interesting / innovative?

smash

Go ask in the motors forum and see what they say. You'll get lots of feedback there. But that's from users, not people who have been there in the past.

RATM

OP I'd say you are a little late to the game in terms of offering a classified website that sells every type of vehicle.

However there are lots of niches you could fill- sports cars, tradesmans vans, farm and plant machinery, etc, the list goes on. Do your research on each sector and find out sales and advertising volumes to see if it is worth your while.
Get known for one niche and one niche only and then become far better at it than any of your competitors.

riveratom

Classifieds sites also suffer from the chicken and egg syndrome. If you don't have lots of content, users and activity, you will find it very hard and slow-going in terms of making a return. To get all that activity you need to have one or both of the following:

1) Bucket-loads of cash to spend
2) A unique / innovative solution that is so good that lots of people will want to use it.

Even if you had millions to spend, you'd still have no guarantee of a good return (and it would be money you could be spending on something that hasn't been done a million times over).

Gizmoses

Graham wrote: »

People are answering your question. There's no point getting all defensive when they don't give you the answer you want.

You either want to know what people think, or you don't.

Show me where I said anything to anyone about not wanting there advice.

Yes river I wouldn't mind doing something else. That's why the title of this is "Is it a good time". Just getting the views of what people think. I do have a different business. Which is going quite well. That's the game it's hit or miss.

smash

RATM wrote: »

sports cars

Market is far too small in Ireland.

RATM wrote: »

tradesmans vans, farm and plant machinery, etc

Autotrader has these markets fairly tight.

Gizmoses wrote: »

That's why the title of this is "Is it a good time". Just getting the views of what people think.

People said no. You're not listening though.

tricky D

Gizmoses wrote: »

Right, so what your saying is, my opinion is wrong. Is that correct?

Your opinion is one thing, how to make a successful classifieds site is another thing entirely. The opinion you need to deal with is not really your's or mine, but the opinion of any VC you would need to court is paramount. The grilling they would give you would make this thread look like a picnic. Eg. you would have a lot of explaining to do in relation to your site already existing for almost 3 years and having been cut to just motors.

As already pointed out, having a 'better' search engine is a very small ingredient to success and misses the bigger picture.

Gizmoses wrote: »

Yes river I wouldn't mind doing something else. That's why the title of this is "Is it a good time".

If you have shedloads of money behind, then any time is potentially a good time otherwise you are wasting your time and money. Innovation isn't a big requirement in most business, just doing it profitably is.

jmcc

Gizmoses wrote: »

He does have some points. Fair enough if some websites did appear and disappear. From someone who failed to think how different the sites were to agreeing that they are different is odd. Donedeal do have a shoddy search engine. That's my opinion. If you think they don't. That's yours.

I see the web differently to most people here in that I run website usage and classification surveys over entire TLDs sometimes with millions of websites in each survey. (Essentially rapidly building search engine indexes for TLDs and countries.) These surveys have historical elements in that the compare the current usage of a website with a website's use in the last survey. The sites that tend to be abandoned or never fully developed are blogs, web directories and classified adverts sites. Many people who set up a blog find out that writing is a hard discipline and they never get beyond the "hello world" post. Web directories were a money making venture about ten years ago but prior to the introduction of Adsense, they had a limited lifespan of about 18 months. Even with Adsense, many web directories are not updated much because of the way that Google ranks them now. These web directories suffer from the same issues as Classified Adverts sites - content and traffic. Most of them were just sticking up a directory script and pulling a feed of sites from Dmoz. Of course Google noticed that duplicate content issue. Most Classified Adverts sites start out with a load of content that reflects the enthusiasm of the people running the site. But that's a hard thing to maintain when there are no sales and no new content. After six to twelve months, the content becomes stale and there is hardly any new content being added apart from drugs/warez/pron spam. Some of these sites don't even have their domain renewed for the second year.

Each country tends to be dominated by a few Classified Adverts websites. Ebay is the big transnational site but when you drill down, you'll find that most of the business in each niche is done by a few websites. This is often because they are run as businesses rather than hobbies and have deep connections with the businesses in the niche that they dominate. The adverts.ie site has a cars section too. So not only are you up against DoneDeal and Adverts.ie, you are also up against strongly connected trade websites.

Just having a search engine that works better than the one on DoneDeal is not enough. There has to be some reason for people to use your site instead of others and there has to be a sufficient level of traffic for people to advertise there. If you approach this like a hobby then it will end up just another hobby site. You've got to approach it as a business and the most important part of operating any business site is knowing when to walk away.

Regards...jmcc