Hey all, I haven't posted a lot lately, but always reading 
Anyway, we are currentky planning a web project that essentially is a very niche directory and community site for a specific target demographic. We have market research to indicate a need for a site to cater to these people.
However, we are looking at how it would be monetized, and investigating the path of companies whose products and services cater to this demographic paying to be listed.
Here's where I get stuck. As the directory is essentially the core aspect of the site, and companies (that we've approached anyway) seem interested in the idea - but only if there is reasonable traffic to the site, of course - how do we get traffic, before we have content?
I imagine it's a fairly similar question to that presented by people trying to do social sites, but this isn't really a social site.
At this stage, I'm thinking we can offer companies that they can list free for a 3month trial, before starting to "subscribe" as it were - but then that really only gives us 3 months to build a relatively high level of traffic to a very niche site.
Are there other options we should be looking at?
We have a number of other features we are looking to add once established, such as mobile / sms access to the directory etc, but again - need the content before the users.
At this stage, we are simply allowing people to register their interest - either as an individual or as an advertiser, but starting to get a bit shaky direction-wise from there.
Any help or advice would be hugely appreciated.
Anyway, we are currentky planning a web project that essentially is a very niche directory and community site for a specific target demographic. We have market research to indicate a need for a site to cater to these people.
However, we are looking at how it would be monetized, and investigating the path of companies whose products and services cater to this demographic paying to be listed.
Here's where I get stuck. As the directory is essentially the core aspect of the site, and companies (that we've approached anyway) seem interested in the idea - but only if there is reasonable traffic to the site, of course - how do we get traffic, before we have content?
I imagine it's a fairly similar question to that presented by people trying to do social sites, but this isn't really a social site.
At this stage, I'm thinking we can offer companies that they can list free for a 3month trial, before starting to "subscribe" as it were - but then that really only gives us 3 months to build a relatively high level of traffic to a very niche site.
Are there other options we should be looking at?
We have a number of other features we are looking to add once established, such as mobile / sms access to the directory etc, but again - need the content before the users.
At this stage, we are simply allowing people to register their interest - either as an individual or as an advertiser, but starting to get a bit shaky direction-wise from there.
Any help or advice would be hugely appreciated.
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