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"MARKET RESEARCH!!!"

Hi, I am doing a little market research for a site i am trying to get my dad to fund but he want some proof that it will work.

The site will be a site that sells Cards and gifts, The differance in it is that people will be able to have a free subscription to the site in which they will have there own account, The account will comprise basically of a yearly callender in which the user can put events in (birthdays, xmas etc..) with the names of the people who they want to send the cards to, The site will send an auto mail 2 days before the event with a link to my site, The site will also have the options to set up all the cards and gifts for the whole year and pay for it there and then, this will mean never forgetting someones birthdays or anniversary's, The site will also have a section on which you would be able to creat your own card and upload a picture to it which will then be printed and sent, There will be a large range of gifts including alcohol, Also company's would be able to arrange us to automatically send out cards and/or gifts to there customers, the site will look very proffesional and i will pay to get it featured highly in all major search engines. The site will also have a range of cards for differant occasions

What do you guys think? would you use this site?

Thanks

O.k. just i am at work and not supposed to be on here so can't pay attention to what i am writing and have to type it at lightening speeds.

But you can still read what i have writen and thats all that counts.

P4_MAN_25 wrote:
> Is this aimed at me?
Yes,not in a offensive way though.

Is this aimed at me?

snake10 wrote:
> And when your writing,don't put capital letters after a ","
> and put fullstops where needed.

I think I'll answer the question actually:

I personally wouldn't go in for a site that sells cards, however, the selling of cards has become very popular throughout the years, For an example of someone that sells cards and handmade things (made of card) go to eBay and check out this month's powerseller, she's someone who has made a business of selling it.

eBay site is here [URL]http://ebay.co.uk[/URL] and the article is located here [URL]http://pages.ebay.co.uk/services/buyandsell/powerseller/superps.html[/URL] , in case you need inspiration. The persons eBay name is artymiss_cardcraft.

I also knew someone, a friend of the family, who managed to make quite a lot by simply selling things like Birthday and Christmas cards.

In terms of the automatic mailing list, it's probably better to let people sign themselves up from the site or promote it. Simply sending out mails will be counted as spam, and won't receive a good response.

I'm not sure about the alcoholic prizes as they don't exactly represent the site and it's a sightly strange giveaway if you're not going to be selling it. Prizes need to be good I agree, but you won't get a realistic portrayal of the site itself if it is simply promoted by unrelated products and free gifts alone.

And when your writing,don't put capital letters after a "," and put fullstops where needed.

Being slightly more expensive than the shops might not be too bad since you're saving people from going down the shops in the rain to get a card.

A nice gimic might be to send people, who've signed up, a card on their birthday which would be quite a decent way to promote your business and remind customers about your service.

Like the idea and could earn a few hundred thousand maybe go into the millions. It will take alot of hard work for it to be set up, but I think it would be successful.

Remember seeing on ITV News a couple months back where a couple made their own website selling alcohol. They are a millionaire now, and with Birthdays being popular aswell I don't see why it wouldn't work.

If you got the money to set it up then go for it.

Yeh true statement, The only thing is that Clintons is also a high street shop and i think a lot of there gifts are high in cost, although there cards are low in price, I have scanned the net for places that do similar things and connot find any good one's there are a few but they are takky and have hardly any gifts, Also we would be able to buy bulk (not to the amount of clintons though) and as my dad own a shop anyway then all licences are in place to sell alcohol, but the way i see it is if i don't try i will never know :)

Speaking as someone with a couple of years of Supply Management experience, I forsee a problem with you actually obgtaining stock at a price which will let you be competitive with the gift shops that are already out there. Clinton's, for example, buy their stock in on a very large scale, nationwide, in fact and take advanatage of the large manufacturers discounts they get for doing so. Much of this saving is passed on to the end customer.

You're likely to find yourself priced out of the market, or making a loss just to be competitive on price. Other than that, it's not a bad idea.

Yeh, Good point, I think a lot of money would be made on the corporate side as well, they are bothered about hand writing it, I have got a quote for the full site creation which is £1650 with everything i need, Obviously i would need to get a business loan, Just think i wanna work for myself as i am bored with working for other people.