professional sevice deals on Living/boardsdeals etc

capefear

Hi Guys

Myself and a friend were talking about the latest deal we bought on Groupon and we were wondering would this ever work for a professional service. We are two start up business and from reading the bulk of post's here about these type of sites, they seem to be about marketing your business and hopefully you will make a profit if not on the deal itself than hopefully the repeat business.

But what if you were to offer say a professional service like design a Logo or business starter package or website or some other professional service could it work. I know we wouldnt have as many people buying a service as some of the deals that or on offer but. Even small business owners like a bargain if its a service they need.

Thanks for any advice

miju

only one way to find out and thats try it.

at worst you get a bit of business and some sites for a portfolio and at best you succeed

there are definitely many small start up businesses that are sole trader that would be interested if the price was competitive.

very best of luck

Peterdalkey

It strikes me that the is certainly a market for the types of services that you have in mind. A sort of Onlinetradesmen.ie for professional services. I use that for both company and personal jobs that need doing and have only had great experiences at really good prices. Because the provider bids for your work, generally you only get responses from people who are hungry for work, and the sooner the better. I like the site because the customers get to rate the tradesman and that info is in the public domain... No better way to keep it all above board.

Give it a go!

Cheers

Peter

Post back and let us know if you get it running!

Lyn256

Definitely!
Just because you run a small business doesn;t mean that you don't like a bargain!
I'm thinking of setting up a training business myself and the services that you provide are definitely ones that I would consider (in fact I logged on today to figure out how much it costs to build a basic website).
I think that Groupon are the only ones that offer business to business offers!
Best of luck with it!
Lyn256

Overthrow

It won't work with the regular deal sites.

Firstly, by the sounds of it you're not very well established so the big deal sites would be concerned that you'd actually do the work promised.

You're business to business, not business to consumer, and the big deal sites prefer the latter.

Your service is slow turn over, meaning the volume of 'units' sellable will be minimal. Groupon want to be able to sell hundreds of deals, not a dozen or so.

For the same reason, say if you sell 12, the 12th customer will have to wait a very long time for the work to be delivered.

Lastly, the big deal sites demand a big bid reduction. You'd be much better off running an adwords campaign or something like that.

Lyn256

Overthrow wrote: »

It won't work with the regular deal sites.

Firstly, by the sounds of it you're not very well established so the big deal sites would be concerned that you'd actually do the work promised.

You're business to business, not business to consumer, and the big deal sites prefer the latter.

Your service is slow turn over, meaning the volume of 'units' sellable will be minimal. Groupon want to be able to sell hundreds of deals, not a dozen or so.

For the same reason, say if you sell 12, the 12th customer will have to wait a very long time for the work to be delivered.

Lastly, the big deal sites demand a big bid reduction. You'd be much better off running an adwords campaign or something like that.

Not strictly true-I personally know of 3 businesses that have successfully used these services. One company is only trading a few months.
Groupon is the only one that will do B2B.
In 2 of the 3 companies I know-they both sold less than 100 units (Groupon & Living Social)
How do you know that it would take them a long time to fulfill the order??
Standard practise is 50% off for consumer and then deal site thats 25%-40% of remainder (That means that you get 30%-40% approx of original price)
In order to be successful and make money you need to have an additional offer for the client or be able to provide another follow-on service.

Overthrow

Lyn256 wrote: »

How do you know that it would take them a long time to fulfill the order??

Because they're paying for his time. And there's only one of him. So the more sales made, the longer and longer customers will have to wait to get dealt with.

Peterdalkey

OP Can I suggest that you take a look at the models of www.onlinetradesmen.ie and www.supply.ie. and see if the same benfiit/new business could not be achieved at even better margins. maybe even a deal with one of them as they have the platforms up and running. They are both relatively recent startups.

A good B2B business model needs a quality direct relationship between vendor and buyer, especially if you hope to get more business from the customer base.
As a business owner, I would probably shy away from buying something that was too cheap or too good to be true. I note from recent press reports that there has been a huge surge in consumer complaints in relation to these types of "deals". Check out the consumer association of Ireland for details www.thecal.ie.

Hope this helps

Peter