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Building a Search Engine

by wings2341
7 replies
I am currently working on a hobby project and am working on building a search engine. I really just did it out of curiosity, however do you think this could be monotized as an offline offering?

I figure the 4 dollar C.P.M rate is far too low to earn any serious cash and obviously CPA wouldn't work as it would be a simple search egine.

Anyone have any fancy tricks on how to integrate building a search engine and make money with it?

I'm really just doing it as a "look what I can do" for myself but why not ask some offliners and see what your opinions are like.

I am considering trying to make it go viral. Maybe I can use the same skill set to build a database for researchers in a niche market?

Anyone with any ideas feel free to comment.

Thanks
#building #engine #search
  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    Your pretend search engine isn't even worth $4/CPM

    It isn't worth anything until you have a legit following. Probably shouldn't even think of monetizing until you have 100k searches a day.

    Really, try building up and branding. Maybe sell it. If you have enough people using it, you could probably sell it out to a more major one. Get it to go viral using facebook, maybe FB will buy you out for 1 billion too LOL.
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  • Profile picture of the author kolbywhite28
    It's cool and all, but how is this in the Offline section?
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinSch
    Elaborating on what PPC-Coach said...

    If you go city + industry + search.com i.e. miamichiropractorsearch.com or tulsalandscapingsearch.com then I could see it working nicely.

    The idea would be to...

    1) get all local businesses freely listed without even contacting them, just put them in there.

    2) get your search site ranked for as many relevant keywords as possible.

    3) make money with it.

    How you use it to make money is up to you.

    You could cold call or direct mail prospects offering them premium listings on your site where X number of people every month/day are already looking for them.

    That would be the simplest approach, but I am sure others can chime in with more creative ways as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Aaron Doud
    1. Does your search work well? If no stop here and make it work good or stop project.

    2. Does it work better than google? If no stop here and make it work better or stop project.

    3. Have you advertised it? If not stop here and advertise it or stop the project.

    4. Is it getting good traffic? If not stop here and work on getting traffic or stop the project.

    5. Begin to make money with it.

    A search engine that is great and works well is worth a fortune and you should work on it from that stand point. But if it's just a side project for fun realise it is not worth money but could get you noticed by google and if the coding is good it might get you a job.
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    Aaron Doud - Sales & Success
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    • Profile picture of the author wings2341
      Thanks for all of your replies. I posted this in the offline section b/c I wanted to see what the creative minds of this forum could suggest on making money with this. Maybe I will just tinker with it and see how it goes. I do believe socializing it through social mediums is obviously a good idea as socializing anything is always a good idea.

      I believe that it's not how many people that you have on your website anymore that counts but how active those users are aka increased user activity.

      I would love to sell it for twice its value to facebook which at its current value would sell at 0 dollars lol. Instagram is clearly a fluke and just another exercise in a monster buying out intellecutual property and chasing away other bidders.

      I think creating a local search engine is for small bizz is a futile excercise b/c I would have to not only get business owners to buy into it for premium listings but I would need to get local search traffic on it. Plus this is already sold as a business in a box by another warrior here somewhere for 10 a month or something so I wouldn't want to waste my time.

      It might be worthwhile if I can build it for a specific niche and then socialize it and get some good P.R. That's not a bad idea at all.

      Well thanks for the brainstorming. I promise if I build anything that gets bought out I will be back to tell of the tale. LOL.

      Thanks
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