New idea for a local business directory – would this work?

[MELIAM]

Got an idea I'm playing around with and wondered what people here think.

Basically it would be a local business directory but instead of charging businesses a monthly fee for featured listings, every business would be listed for free and they could bid to move higher up the page.

So for example, plumbers in Nottingham.

All the plumbers are listed free. If nobody has bid, £1 would put a plumber at number 1.

If someone has bid £5, then another plumber would need to bid £6 to go above them.

The bids would be visible so everyone can see exactly what each position has been bid up to.

It would be a one-off payment, not monthly. The bid wouldn't expire either. If somebody had already bid £5 and later wanted to increase to £10, they would only pay the extra £5.

Basically, you're already listed free, bid to move up.

Each town/trade would have its own rankings, so plumbers Nottingham would be separate from plumbers Derby, electricians Leicester etc.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether it would be better as one national domain with all the different town/trade pages, or lots of separate local/trade domains.

Not trying to promote anything and there's no site link, just interested whether people think the idea has legs or if there's something obvious I'm missing.

Also interested which way you'd go with the domains - one national site or separate local sites?

 

[Nickz]

On a new site (no traction, no visits) charging £5 is pretty stiff.
On a site with 100 000 visitors a month not so.
Till you get to 100 000 depends on how deep your pockets are.

 

[MELIAM]

On a new site (no traction, no visits) charging £5 is pretty stiff.
On a site with 100 000 visitors a month not so.
Till you get to 100 000 depends on how deep your pockets are.

Fair point, traffic is definitely the chicken and egg part of it.

Do you think the actual visitor number needs to be that high though? Say a page for "plumbers in Nottingham" was only getting a few hundred visitors a month, but they were people actually looking for a plumber. Would you say the top position then starts to have some value?

That's really the bit I'm trying to work out - whether a small amount of very targeted local traffic could be enough to get the bidding started.