Newbie comes up with Brillant idea,

I think it could work. But you have your work cut out (which is usually the case anyway, right?).

You need 2 main things:

- Interior designers;
- People who want interior designs.

I would purchase the domain and then get in contact with interior designers. Tell them what you intend to do (although you really don't intend to do it just now; you're actually testing the waters) and ask if they would like a notification when the site is complete.

What you're hoping for is to strike up an email conversation, a friendship too, of sorts, with possible designers. Get them interested and don't be afraid of wowing them with your plans.

I would say that if you can find yourself a dozen strong commitments of involvement, you should them go ahead and create the site, working out how best to monetize: ad space or a percentage of each fee paid to designers (like Fiverr), or both.

Getting traffic is the last piece of the puzzle and should be a breeze.

I think the idea itself is creative and could be a plausible business model (freelance/gig sites have been proven to work) but make sure you have a solid marketing plan. You could have a great site but if no one comes to see it, it still won't be profitable. How will you drive traffic? Do you have funds to buy targeted ads or are you looking to only use SEO?

Also, think about who would be buying your services. There will be a significant price difference for a normal person renovating their kitchen vs. a high-end real estate flipper. You may want to determine a sub-niche and make sure you can get enough of that targeted traffic.

Good luck!

I think the concept is brilliant, and you have several potential target markets. At the high end, the homeowner wishing to do a complete re-design.
At the moderate end, the real-estate flippers mentioned above.

And for an entry level market this service could be catered to real estate staging companies - the businesses that give advice on how best to present a home to maximize sales price. A lot of people are willing to invest a few grand to have their home sell for a lot more.
Just a thought, hope it helps.

What segments of each market would you be reaching out to?

And before I delve into this, I want to say that just about any segment of those two markets of vendors and clients are not going to be best reached with that domain name.

Virtual Lofts sounds like it is intended for gamification. Whatever the clients, they aren't buying it because it is virtual.

This is a feature. You need to sell the benefit.

The benefit if that they can get it done anywhere. That they can access professionals that normally wouldn't be able to get to them, unless they were flying them out...

Which brings me back to my first point. You could take a high-end approach, trying to attract the luxe clients and vendors, but my own skepticism says to me that I doubt that would be the best segments to aim for (and, of course, your own skepticism must lead you to do the actual research).

Instead, and because of this I loop to also selecting a word that isn't loft and is rather apartment or something similar, look for the budget clients that haven't hired an interior designer before. And, honestly, that probably couldn't.

Hire a specialist writer (or do the interviews and creation yourself) and get a pre-qualifying questionnaire, a standard best-practices for clients to use. Get as much of the work done without personalized advice as you can, and bring an easy to use package to interior designer so that when you're paying them to virtually "show up" you're getting it as affordable as possible.

Have a file-sharing protocol in place so that it is easy for everyone to upload their own images.

And remember - these aren't one and done jobs that actually can be estimated by the minute. I suggest you have the minimum time in the package, and then towards the end of that time they'll get a final report from the designer, and a recommendation for how many more hours are needed, if so, with it available to purchase.

Then, of course, the service needs to be so good that they want to purchase that but also so good that if they can't/won't they don't need to because of the aforementioned report.

Now, I apologize if my ideas are all over the place. But this is what happens when I'm on the Warrior Forum before I've had my coffee.

Kudos to you for getting an idea. Unfortunately that can be the easiest part.

Do your research.

Evaluate the resources available to you - money, and time.

Make a plan if you haven't researched your way out of this idea in any of those steps.

Then take action and revisit your metrics in above plan.

Oh, and tell us how you did.

By the way, I am interested in your service. I own a small home and am partial to shabby chic/French country/romantic country style and have always wanted to hire an interior designer. The typical business model does not justify my investment. Perhaps you find your research pointing out to other people like myself...and then we can do business :-)

I think you better get on it and put your plan into action sooner than later.

Otherwise, you may find that a fast-acting entrepreneur launches "your" site before you're done developing your plan on an open forum.

Yes - get a business partner or outsource a lot of the actual website work.

Also, I would consider charging the freelance designers a monthly membership fee for using your website to promote their portfolio. These are contractors, not your employees.

Just wanted to chime in and say that I'm currently minoring in architecture and am very proficient with Sketchup. I'd love to give you some of my thoughts from a designers perspective. Namely the difference between a "mock up" and a rendering. I think an important step in this possible startup would be developing the pricing structure. How much are people willing to pay to virtually see an interior mock up of their loft (as we're calling it)?

Like others have mentioned, I think you need to show there is a demand for this "service". The implementation of the platform might be difficult as well, but that's for later I suppose.

Thanks for the idea. Just bought that domain... :-)

fyi angie ben is telling you he knows things you may not biblically speaking 2 are better than 1. you would b wise to strike up a jv here.