Help Needed

[Dale Moir]

Hi everyone,


I’m looking for some help and feedback on a business venture I’ve been working on.


I’m a pretty experienced web developer (and have worn a few other hats over the years). About four months ago, I was made redundant from my job in London and got a payoff. I’d always wanted to try building something for myself, so I took the gamble and started developing my own system.


I didn’t really have the luxury of a team—no designer, no SEO specialist, no database admin, no infrastructure person—it was just me doing everything.


Fast forward four months: today it came out of beta. Still has some bugs, but to be honest, I'm running out of both time and money, so I really need to get it working in the real world now.


I’ve looked at my competitors, and many are charging up to £500 for something I genuinely think is way worse. I’m trying to price mine at £15/month to make it a no-brainer.


Here’s what it does in a nutshell:

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What is Top Ten Biz?


We curate Top Ten lists for 45+ local service categories in 1,300+ areas nationwide, with over 160,000 businesses listed. Customers can contact all top ten businesses at once for faster, more competitive quotes.


For businesses, we offer fair, rotating exposure, shared advertising, automated promotion, local awards, and a large suite of marketing tools—all massively cheaper than competitors while offering more.


Our lists stay up to date: underperforming businesses can be replaced to keep quality high.

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As far as I can tell, at £15 per month it really should be an easy sell—but I just can’t seem to get my sales or messaging quite right yet. It’s still early days, but I'd love to get this right.


I’ll probably share this in a few forums here to get some honest feedback, advice on marketing and messaging, or just general thoughts.


Any help or insights much appreciated!

 

[fisicx]

Hi Dale and welcome to UKBF.

I’m not sure if I’d ever want to contact the top 10 of anything. Google maps does a pretty good job of showing local services so that’s normally my go to place to find trades.

How are you scoring the top 10? What criteria do you use to determine who is number 1?

I’d comment more but website reviews are only permitted for business members.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Hi Dale, and welcome

One key question, what was your starting point or driver for this?

The amount of times I need to find trades online certainly wouldn't warrant a subscription. And then I'd need some idea of how your 'top 10' was vetted.

That's not saying that this can't or won't work, but I'd suggest that from this point it's all about marketing, starting with research if you haven't done it

 

[WaveJumper]

Perhaps a basic question here is what research did you undertake to see if there was a gap in the market personally this is not something I would use.

What was your business plan how much have you set aside for marketing your idea, more importantly for yourself how long can you survive before needing an income to keep the wolf from the door.

I wish you well but many great ideas fall at the first hurdle ie running out of funds before it can gain any traction and bring in some revenue.

 

[Gecko001]

I would have thought if I ran a small business such as a chip shop, corner shop, was a tradesman, etc,, and I was ranked below someone trading in my neighbourhood who I knew were not as popular, experienced, value for money, etc. as my business, I would be livid. If this happened on Google, I would probably just have to put up with it, as big international companies cannot easily be challenged. O the other hand, if it was a local company that owned the website that was ranking my business, I might be knocking on someone's door.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Here’s what it does in a nutshell:

---

What is Top Ten Biz?


We curate Top Ten lists for 45+ local service categories in 1,300+ areas nationwide, with over 160,000 businesses listed. Customers can contact all top ten businesses at once for faster, more competitive quotes.


For businesses, we offer fair, rotating exposure, shared advertising, automated promotion, local awards, and a large suite of marketing tools—all massively cheaper than competitors while offering more.


Our lists stay up to date: underperforming businesses can be replaced to keep quality high.

I must admit I don't get what you're trying to do here, it appears to be pretty much a directory, the same or similar to dozens of others out there.

Google search and local 3 pack/map pack killed this business model years ago. Unless your platform gets hundreds of thousands or millions of UK visits monthly, why would a local business pay to be on it?

Why would someone do this rather than local service GBP ads, what benefits can you give, how many leads will they get etc?

 

[fisicx]

I ran a local directory for a couple of years. I spent ages adding everyone I could find. Traffic built up and local business were getting leads so were happy with what I was doing.

But they wouldn’t pay for premium listings and added features.

Some trades pay for checkatrade and the like but many rely on their GBP.

What they won’t do is pay £15/month to appear on a top-ten biz site that generates no traffic and no leads.

 

[Ozzy]

Hi @Dale Moir and welcome to UKBF.

I'm afraid I am going to echo some of the comments above as to why you will be finding it a tough sell. I don't think it's the messaging, but more the proposition.

You have just started out so I think it fair to assume the website traffic is low.
This website, UKBF, has been going for over 20 years. It has over 100,000 people using the website every month, making about a million page impressions a month.
The paid membership here, which does include a business directory inclusion alongside other benefits, costs less than you are proposing to charge for your service.
Now have a look at how many active members have 'Free member' next to their name. That will give you an indication of demand for a directory listing, so as a start-up I'm afraid it will be a tough uphill struggle to sell and I'd suggest you need to look at giving it away to build traction and you'll need the pockets to finance it yourself during that time as suggested by @fisicx