Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Facebook: worth about $15 billion

MySpace: sold for $580 million in 2005

Yahoo: market cap $19 billion, despite being down more than 50% from its peak

Twitter: no certain numbers, but some say around $100 million, give or take

Are you sure you want to stand behind the comment that these companies have a poor business model?

The fact that they all are working means that each is missing something. Or that people have too much time on their hands.

You don't have to prove their lack of business sense to make your business viable. You just have to reach your market better than they can.

"They" created groups within their models to reach those segments.

Point is...the water's fine. Come on in.

Michael

It's unlikely that our assessment of the opportunity for or viability of your business concept will really be helpful. What you need is some research that essentially asks that question of your primary target audience.

You could probably structure a simple concept test and conduct an online survey to see how people react, what their likely purchase rate would be, etc. The biggest problem I see is finding respondents who are in your target audience ... but that's telling you something:

How would you find your target audience if you had the business up and running? How would the right people learn about the site? Where would you advertise/promote it?

Don't presume that "if you build it they will come." That's been the downfall of many new businesses. You'll need to invest in awareness-building campaigns to get the word out. If you can figure out where and how you'll do that, then you can use those same vehicles to recruit the participants in your survey.

Since you claim that this is a new model, you'll need to build the community first. Unless you already have a strong networked community, you'll need to let people try out your services for free to understand the benefit (and to build critical mass).

If you haven't already, you might want to look at:www.selfgrowth.com

I think what you are after is what a lot of people are trying to work out (and have been trying to work out for the last 10 years) from business directories to newspapers among others.

Unfortunately just paying to be a member isn't a great offer unless the member gets something really good at the end. In particular why would people pay for what you offer, when they can get it free somewhere else?

大多数的商业模式似乎不按章工作g are around the exchange of valued goods - eg gambling, music, photos, software, adult materials, e-commerce, travel, dating and privileged access to high quality information. The exchange part adds the value and is where the site can take a cut.

Generic discussion, friends, membership, recommendations and even newspaper copy don't have enough deep value, so no-one signs up. But then critical mass doesn't work because no-one expects to pay.

Can you guarantee (money-based) a level of quality in what is on your site and in the access to resources you will provide?