Have many Irish internet sites been profitable?

donedeal.ie have done very well. They charge €3 per ad and they have 000's of ads. It does what it needs to do and provides a good service. There are 00's of free classified sites out there yet people will pay to advertise on donedeal.
 
umop3p!sdn said:
I still don't quite understand what kind of site qualifies.
To make money, a site is either going to:

- sell a product (amazon, microsoft, etc)
- sell services (irish times, statcounter, porn, gambling, blanknight etc)
- or make money through advertising, probably adwords. Which really falls into the selling a service category - advertising space.
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Selling a product is out e.g. Microsoft.
The Irish times is out because it's not standalone.
Blacknight is out because it's an ISP.
I don't really know what statcounter does. So i don't know.

If their only revenue is advertising or subscriptions, they are in.

I am trying to identify sites where there are no costs apart from the development of the site itself.
 
Here is an extraordinary site

[broken link removed]

It doesn't take advertising. But it seems to charge people for using a calculator to show whether you are better off buying a house or renting.

It doesn't look as if any money was spent on developing it, so it probably won't lose much. But I can't imagine anyone paying for it?

Brendan
 
I have loads of ideas, but they are along the lines of Askaboutmoney and not intended to be profit-making.

The purpose of this thread is in the first post:

A few people have asked my views on their ideas for new websites. My view is that it is very difficult to make money from a website aimed at the Irish market. I find it hard to think of many websites which do make money.
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I am not trying to put these people off, but I just want them to be realistic.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Hi Jonathan

Some more very interesting comments there.



The problem is that what might look amazing to one person, is offputting to others. A lot of people have suggested that we need to "spice up" askaboutmoney, but they miss the point that the objective is to have a clear site with as little "noise" as possible.


Agree. I found The Motley Fool to be a great site and suggested that they should set up one for Ireland, but they said we were too small. So I set up Askaboutmoney instead.



It could be, but the objective is to be an advertising-free discussion forum. Its objective is not to make money.

What I am trying to achieve in this thread is to identify the profitable sites and then identify why they are profitable. So when people ask me about their great new idea, I can say "Well study these websites and see why they are a success. Then look at some of the failures and learn from their mistakes."

I am surprised that I have not seen this discussed before. It could be very useful to a lot of people. There is a lot of stuff around about how to develop good websites but they tend to be aimed at businesses which have a product to sell.
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Hey Brendan,

Looks: Yeah agreed - different story if you are commercially driven though.

Motleyfool: I'm pretty sure their wrong - there are 4 million people in this country and at least 1-2 million should or do care about personal finance - but that could be conservative, especially in this recession. I agree if it concentrated only on stocks and shares then perhaps the market is too small.

I think thats a big enough market to tackle for a small business. Maybe too small for them - but certainly not for someone in Ireland who wants to ramp up a potentially 1-2 million turnover company. Achievable IMO in the long term with direct Ad sales, sponserships, Affiliate sales and sales of associated home grown advice products for anyone who wants to have a go.

Askaboutmoney: Agreed and it does a very good job :)

Irish Content site examples: Entertainment.ie, Breakingnews.ie, Boards.ie, Politics.ie, Irishhealth.com, Campus.ie, Weddingsonline.ie, Gumtree.ie, Ads.ie

I will still say that given the limited nature of whats available there are so many opportunities out there for someone who can deliver but if you want to advise clients I'd suggest that you look abroad
 
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Motleyfool: I'm pretty sure their wrong - there are 4 million people in this country and at least 1-2 million should or do care about personal finance - but that could be conservative, especially in this recession. I agree if it concentrated only on stocks and shares then perhaps the market is too small.
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Jonathan - that was 10 years ago.

Maybe we will extend Askaboutmoney to the UK? :)
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Jonathan - that was 10 years ago.

Maybe we will extend Askaboutmoney to the UK? :)
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Absolutely - that should be the next stepping stone for many of the successfull sites listed above.

One area I think needs adressing when building a company and trying to expand to another country is the basic lack of contacts.

That brings me to an idea I had for the future which is to make a networking site for professional's to find potential local business partners in the new market when expansion time comes. One already exists for the US and its extreamly successfull - but there is literally nothing in Europe.

The idea would be that people who are interested in new business opportunities would sign up and list their core areas of expertise. Basically people would offer equity stakes or monetary compensation to the new partner and this would help them breach the market.
 
Satanta said:
Obviously quite a large difference in the functionality of the site and on the 'networking' element to that of LinkedIn, but if you've not come across [broken link removed] you might find it of some interest. It's the closest thing available focused specifically on Ireland at the moment and provides many of the benefits you mentioned (the offline networking is really down to the individual users to drive in their locality, but it can/does/has happened in many locations across the country to great results).
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Thanks for that Satanta, I have it open in a tab and I'll check it out later.

adam
 
Pigsback.com? I don't know how profitable they are but they have been up and running since 2000.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
If their only revenue is advertising or subscriptions, they are in.

I am trying to identify sites where there are no costs apart from the development of the site itself.
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I know of a site (bandauction.net) where revenue is not from advertising or subscriptions, but from commission. To my knowledge, there are no costs other than the cost of the site development.

I think it's quite likely onlinetradesmen.ie is making money or at least will pretty soon.

The guy who talks tech on George Hook on Monday evenings has a site called Putplace.com for backing up and organising digital content.

Any good?
 
I don't know about profits - but these sites all accept advertising and have pretty healthy visitor numbers according to Google. I would guess they are all generating healthy income from ads (I may be wrong) ...

donedeal.ie
daft.ie
boards.ie
gumtree.ie
irishtimes.com
independent.ie
jobs.ie
adverts.ie
buyandsell.ie
politics.ie
carsireland.ie
irishexaminer.com
property.ie
jumbletown.ie
recruitireland.com
dublin.ie
loadzajobs.ie
careerjet.ie
carsforsaleireland.ie
thepropertypin.com
examiner.ie
pix.ie
foot.ie
beaut.ie
schooldays.ie
irishdictionary.ie
gaire.com
kildare.ie
shopireland.ie
latedeals.ie
mylocalnews.ie
jobisjob.ie
advertiser.ie
adoos.ie
tribune.ie
irelands-directory.com
qype.ie
ireland-guide.com
dublintourist.com
farmersjournal.ie
dublinevents.com
whoseview.ie
visitdublin.com
hotfrog.ie
funkymotors.ie
jobdone.ie
homewise.ie
irelandjobs77.com
mytown.ie
jobsearch.ie
furniture.ie
locallink.ie
irishpropertywatch.com
yalwa.ie
localbusinesspages.ie
bestjobs.ie
showbiz.ie
irishisptest.com
soccer-ireland.com
learnpipe.ie
galway.net
whatswhat.ie
mayo-ireland.ie
dublinbynumbers.com
gardenplansireland.com
localpages.ie
 
Just a comment on BandAuction.net

TreeTiger said:
I know of a site (bandauction.net) where revenue is not from advertising or subscriptions, but from commission. To my knowledge, there are no costs other than the cost of the site development.

I think it's quite likely onlinetradesmen.ie is making money or at least will pretty soon.

The guy who talks tech on George Hook on Monday evenings has a site called Putplace.com for backing up and organising digital content.

Any good?
Click to expand...

Hi Guys..

I started BandAuction.net but changed the name to BandBidder.com to get the '.com' domain..
You are right about sites out there not being pro-active enough to utilise what the internet has to offer for generating revenue.
We hope to keep advertising off the site for as long as possible and yes we aim to bring the music marketplace worldwide.
We were initially going to charge 20 quid as a sign up for musicians but hey we need them on our site so they can sign for free. We now take commission and it's working well..

On the web developer side of things.. My techie partner on this is fantastic and likes to push the boundaries when it comes design etc.

I've a big interest in start-up companies and love to share advice so if there is anyone out there wondering what to do with their idea to bring it to the market please get in touch..
Thanks,

Chris.
 
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