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Is my business idea feasible? Please give me feedback for letting me know the weak points of my idea.

Actually I have written a concept statement of my business plan and I want the people who are reading my business idea to give some important feedback and to raise some questions whose answers we will give. So, here is the concept statement: Product-We provide deep linking and advertising service for app developers to improve upon app advertising by using our SDK (software development kit). Developers basically can lock down certain features of their apps and user can unlock that features by seeing an advertisement and use those pro features and also developer can control its app advertisement using our free service for developers. Target market-Mobile App developers and individual mobile advertisers and mobile application market. Special Feature-We provide choice to users whether they want to see banner ads or want to watch a video ad to remove banner ads for a day or for an hour or more (which is controlled by app developers). We also provide some other features also like, if you see this add you will be able to unlock some pro features of the app. Marketing Strategy -We will promote us via online presence or via twitter and later we will promote us in tech conferences and developer conferences. Scaling Strategy-We will scale it up and build a centralised ad platform and our user can sync with all the application and can transfer our virtual money all over other application and use it on from one application to other application and can use that virtual currency to remove advertisements and buy pro versions of applications. Thank You For Reading.

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Answers

Aaron Sylvan

Consulting CTO • Technical Due Diligence

The application you're describing is probably useful, and can probably be sold... but that's not the question :)

The question is what it will cost you to acquire a new customer, and what you can charge that customer.

Before actually BUILDING this thing, see if you can get 10 potential customers to at least SAY they're interested. In exchange for their feedback during the development process, offer them free use of the product until it's released, and then for a year thereafter. If you can't close that sale, then either you or your product has a problem.

If you CAN get a handful of customers to agree to this "free participation as a development partner" arrangement, then move on to step two: get yourself a HUNDRED signed up. This is a larger number than you can pursue manually, which means you'll have to develop your sales pitch as a landing page on a website, figure out what language will be effective, decide where to advertise, and so forth.

Again, if you accomplish this, then you're very well along the way to making this project feasible. But if any part of the above seems impossible, or too expensive, or too confusing or scary, then don't bother wasting your time creating the system.

In other words, I'm saying you need to test whether you're capable of building a marketing engine to support the sales of this concept. I *assume* you're capable of creating the underlying product, but that's far from the only challenge.

I hope the above was helpful, and of course do feel free to look me up for a call if you'd like to discuss further.

Answered about 9 years ago

Jeremiah Prummer

eCommerce & SaaS. Doing CRO before CRO was cool.

I've launched a few businesses and projects and worked in startups for years so hopefully my insight is somewhat valuable. :)

This sounds like a good idea, but I think there are two questions you need to answer:

1. Is there any competition?
2. If not, why is no-one else doing this already?

If this isn't being done already it's probably because it's very difficult as this definitely seems like a good idea. If I understand correctly you're attempting to build a marketplace. I'm in the process of building a marketplace and have worked in a marketplace startup in the past. I can tell you it's extremely difficult because you have to market to both the supply side (advertisers) and the demand side (app developers).

Targeted Ads: if you're going to be bringing in advertisers to show their ads in mobile apps you're going to have to take into consideration the fact that each app may have a very different audience. That means you will need to customize which ads are displayed in which apps, which introduces a whole extra layer of complexity to your system.

Ease of Use: This needs to be extremely easy for the advertiser, customer and developer. If it's not easy for any one of the three groups it will not work.

Proof of effectiveness: Both the advertiser and the developer need to know that your system works. That means building in reporting, and probably tracking conversions for both the advertiser and the developer. Not an easy task by any means...

Pricing: This is extremely important. How do you make money? Make sure your incentives align with both sides of the marketplace. The developer wants to maximize payment they receive for displaying advertisements and the advertiser wants to minimize their cost to acquire a customer. You need to make sure that the better you do at meeting their incentives the more money you make. It will encourage you to build a better system and reward you for giving your customers what they need.

Last, but certainly not least, evaluate and see if there is reasonable way you can do this leaning on existing advertising networks. If you can minimize the work on the supply side (getting advertisers) it will greatly increase your chance of succeeding. Once you have a strong network of developers you can always go out and recruit your own advertisers.

If you want to chat more let me know and we can schedule a call. :)

Answered about 9 years ago

Shaun Nestor

Content Marketing Advisor & Agency Consultant

You're asking for a lot of someone's time and expertise.

I'd recommend you book a call with an expert in the various areas of your business plan and invest a few dollars into flushing it out.

At a quick glance, your business plan is pretty thin. I'm a marketing consultant, so I'll pick on that: what you have isn't a plan. There is no actionable step or direction.

There is a need within in the industry for the service you're proposing, but, based on this outline, it won't get off the ground.

I encourage you to commit some additional time and resources to create a MVP - minimum viable product - that you can start with. This will give you a better sense whether your proposal is feasible.

Answered about 9 years ago