« First « Previous Comments 14 - 47 of 47 Search these comments
@mell What about some form of crowdsourcing to get the data?
Realtors advertise prices and landlords advertise rents. They essentially need to advertise those prices. People see those ads and know what the price and address is. If they were to enter the data on patrick.net, I am pretty sure that would not be a violation of anyone's terms of service, and advertised prices and addresses are facts, which cannot be copyrighted.
Now what would motivate the crowd to enter this data? Maybe access to more data. So if they enter one data point, they get access to 100 nearby data points, or they get access to important derivative data, like whether a given house is a good deal based on nearby rents. Might work. https://www.gasbuddy.com/ crowdsourcing of data works because users get to feel that they are united against big corporations, and they get access to the data for free. But gas is a commodity and houses are all on unique plots of land...
Thanks @Ironworker I had not considered that idea, probably because I don't have much faith in my ability to predict the short term, which can deviate for quite a while from what fundamentals would predict. As they say: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
I'd feel better about a newsletter if I had some kind of unique data or analysis that others don't really have.
One cool idea I had was using cellphone locations to count cars in retail parking lots over time to give investors an idea of which stores are likely to report good earnings soon. But now probably half the apps on our phones are actually tracking our location without our permission or knowledge, so they could already do such things.
Are there some other metrics which would also provide these insights to investors? The easiest way for me to get data is web scraping, but I'm also interested in unusual channels, like automatically scanning satellite photos over time.
Exactly why are you expecting people to essentially pay for Reddit? Even if Reddit tried to charge $5/month, people would flee it like mad.
What kind of service do you think people would be willing to pay $5.46 per month for?
sell $5.46/month subscriptions to my housing email newsletter once again
The big question is whether I can get enough subscribers to live from it.
Is the $0.46 out of the $5.00 for credit card fees or something?
I think it's high to start out.
Some grad students I know wrote several booklets to sell on Amazon. Guides on different math topics. Nothing original in them. Probably copied stuff from here and there. Priced them cheap ($2.99 or $3.99, I don't remember) and wrote fake reviews themselves. They were soon generating as few hundred $ a month.
I'd feel better about a newsletter if I had some kind of unique data or analysis that others don't really have.
why would someone pay you to do what they can do themselves in less than 30 minutes which is establish a daily reading list of Real Estate related websites - for free.
If whatever you create allows similar to take place - I would be asking for a full and immediate refund.
I agree with the concept however there are a lot of blogs and websites already slogging it out in Real Estate. I posed links from one of them on here a few days ago - it's based in San Francisco.
* Subscriptions are the best of all possible business models, except that users generally hate subscriptions.
How about a site where you rate your real estate agent? And/ or landlord?
Just made sure that Apocalypsefuck writes most of the first batch of reviews.
How about a site where you rate your real estate agent? And/ or landlord?
Business suggestions for Patrick
« First « Previous Comments 14 - 47 of 47 Search these comments
I'm thinking of bringing back the housing news links, but it was a huge amount of work, and subscriptions were declining below the point where it was worthwhile. Maybe if I paid for advertising, that would help, but I doubt I'll get anything like the free press coverage I got way back in the housing bubble days.
Is there something else related to investing, housing, or politics? Curated news links like the housing links are relatively simple, but not really worthwhile until you can get well over 1,000 subscribers (= $5,000/month, = $60,000/year)
I know subscription fees are annoying, but they are often totally worth it as a consumer, and are definitely the best business model as a provider. I gladly pay my $5 to Spotify per month for a huge selection of music. They in turn spend most of that on licensing, which is a typical issue with subscriptions to raw data that someone else controls.
OK, housing newsletter again, or something else? Best funny pictures? Carefully selected porn links? What would you really enjoy getting in your email a few times a week?