Is it a great time to start an online business?

[Stella Richards]

Hi...

I want to start an online search engine submission business. I want to charge a free and paid service to customers to submit their site to search engines manually. So my question is should I start this or wait. And if I should wait how long?

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[ShawnLim]

Hmm, you may carry out market research before you dive right in.
I've seen websites providing services just like what you mentioned.
There are free submission to major search engines and paid submission to
submit to other minor search engines.

[Fergal]

Hi Stella, you mention in another thread that you wish to start a clothing business. Are you planning on starting two businesses at the same time?

Why would you wait, if you want to start this business, why not start right now?

As Shawn mentioned, have you looked at what the existing players in the search engine submission business are doing? A couple of quick searches in Google (http://google.com) will give you a lot of very useful information.

[scifi]

According to me, starting such a business is not advisable in current situation when you already have a lot of players in the market giving same service...Still,if you insist on a startup, then I will advise you to start the business with some innovation as there are some search engines which provide you results in pdf, ppt, doc format only i.e. no html format...I think you can understand innovation is such terms..!!!:D

[Nazreen]

Still,if you insist on a startup, then I will advise you to start the business with some innovation as there are some search engines which provide you results in pdf, ppt, doc format only i.e. no html format...I think you can understand innovation is such terms..!!!:D

Are there a lot of online search engine submission businesses out there already? I googled "search engine submission" and I came up with 4M search results so I guess you're right Scifi.

I also have to agree with you that an innovation added to this would be a very good addition to this online business and might just be the thing that will give it the edge.

[Fergal]

According to me, starting such a business is not advisable in current situation...

I'm not sure that I agree with you there Scifi. Although we are in a recession, the percentage of business being done online, is increasing all the time. As a result of the increasing importance of e-commerce, online advertising and search engine marketing are experiencing increases in expenditure, even at a time when expenditure in almost all other forms of marketing are falling.

Search engine marketing is still a growth industry, in many parts of the world.

I do agree with you as regards the intensity of the competition, it is important to find a niche and to differentiate the new business by being better in some way than the existing competitors. You must also ensure that the area where you have a competitive advantage, is something that is valued by your potential customers. Ask seriously, why would customers use your service, over and above the existing providers.

[scifi]

I'm not sure that I agree with you there Scifi.
Try this out Fergal..DOCJAX (http://www.docjax.com/home/index.shtml)..This is one of my favourite. I hope all here will like it..!!!
I think now you will agree with me that intensity of competition is too much to allow any low capital player enter in the market..In a no time either he will be eaten by BIG Fishes or will die out of losses....However, I also do deny about growth possibilities you have mentioned but market environment now is suitable for only Big Players....!!:)

[Fergal]

DocJax, looks like a document search engine to me Scifi, it does not look like a search engine submission service, or am I missing something?

The fact that there are major players in a market, is not necessarily a reason not to compete in that market. If there are major players in the industry, at least you know that there is a market there and customers are paying for the service. What you need to do is find a niche that you can operate in, and be better within that niche than any of the large competitors. Know why potential clients would use you rather than the existing competitors.

Perhaps you could focus on search engine submission for certain industries, e.g. specialise in search engine submission for hosting companies.

Perhaps you could focus on your own geographic area. If you build up your network and provide a quality personalised service, local businesses will think of you and use your search engine submission service, before they use those provided by international companies.

[scifi]

Yeah Fergal, Docjax is a document search engine not a submission service.....I was referring it as an example to point out the extent of competition in the segment...But as you have stated that more hefty the market place is better is the demand, I think; that is a very good reason for one to enter into the market despite heavy competition. I absolutely agree by it & thinks that saturation point for this segment is still far ahead ...:rolleyes:

[flashgordonweb]

The only problem I see with this is that the service you are thinking of charging for is not required in today's internet age. Websites are automatically crawled by Google and other search engines. There are ways to speed up the crawling and indexing of one's site (such as pinging it, submitting to social bookmarking sites, etc.), but there is no need to submit it to search engines specifically. Especially since most of them share the same robot algorithm and cross-reference each others databases. If Yahoo or Google find you, then everyone else will.

Now, setting up a service to help people with their website positions within the SERPs might be viable, but there is a ton of competition and you really have to know what you are doing.

[scifi]

Fergal, what do you think on Flash answer to the business opportunity..I am not much technically sound like FLash..so I could not termed it the way exactly flash has defined....
I would like to know your point if view..May be it can give me some insight in to the opportunities & problems in such type of businesses..!!!:)

[Fergal]

The only problem I see with this is that the service you are thinking of charging for is not required in today's internet age. Websites are automatically crawled by Google and other search engines. There are ways to speed up the crawling and indexing of one's site (such as pinging it, submitting to social bookmarking sites, etc.), but there is no need to submit it to search engines specifically. Especially since most of them share the same robot algorithm and cross-reference each others databases. If Yahoo or Google find you, then everyone else will...

Flash, could using search engine submission services give you the following advantages;

Speeding up the process, so that the search engines index your new site quicker
Getting your site included in the smaller search engines and directories that, otherwise might not know about your site?

[Hope]

hi stella
I think you have to go for it.

[scifi]

1. Speeding up the process, so that the search engines index your new site quicker

Flash says
There are ways to speed up the crawling and indexing of one's site (such as pinging it, submitting to social bookmarking sites, etc.)
I think-
When there are popular & easy ways to speed up the process that people are more familiar with as mentioned by Flash, why they tend to use such a service for speeding up the process that offers them no additional benefits..!!!!!!


This has definitely increased my Knowledge from the point of view of SEO as more & more tips are coming out of experienced professionals..Its really great..!!Looking for positive outcome of this discussion:D:)

[Fergal]

It would partly depend on what market you are targeting. For example if you are targeting someone who has a blog that they set up with something like Wordpress.com or Blogger, they may want to have their blog indexed in search engines but they may not know how to ping it or submit it to social networking sites. Or someone may have a web designer set up a small site for them but not have the budget for a comprehensive SEO campaign or the time and expertise to do it themselves. Would these type of website owners be interested in a search engine submission service, I think they might?

[Violet]

I wouldn't unless you are going to offer a service different than everyone else. It's a saturated market. What can your service do differently so that people would want to use you instead of someone else?

That would be the first question to ask myself before going any further.

[flashgordonweb]

Flash, could using search engine submission services give you the following advantages;

Speeding up the process, so that the search engines index your new site quicker
Getting your site included in the smaller search engines and directories that, otherwise might not know about your site?


For point one the answer is no. You can get your site crawled within 10 to 20 minutes simply by pinging it with pingler.com or socially bookmarking it on Digg, Mixx, or one of the other big social bookmarking sites. If you want to get your pages indexed, then the fastest way is to submit a Sitemap to Google via their Webmaster Tools feature. This will let you know just how many pages Google has indexed. You can also check using Yahoo Site Explorer: go to Yahoo, and type in index:http://yoursitehere . You can do the same in Google, but it will not reveal all of your links or indexed pages. (If you want to see all of your backlinks, go to Yahoo and type in link:http://yoursitehere.

For point two, again the answer is no. There are really only three search engines out there: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. They all cross-reference each others databases, and all of the little SEs out there (such as ananzi.co.za in South Africa) rely heavily on the local version of Google (in this case google.co.za). This is why pingler is great, as it pings all of Googles databases around the world (in Italy, in South Africa, in Australia, in Japan, in the UK, etc.)

Or, if you are using Joomla or WordPress, install the ping plugin and add the list that pingler is using so that you ping all 90+ SEs when you update.

[Fergal]

Thanks Flash, your expertise is most helpful and of benefit to us all.