Property again

I want to share my first experience on startup startup. The topic, though rather hackneyed, is real estate - but in our Far East, and in Khabarovsk in particular, it was an uncultivated field. Under the cut - my story.

As I have already noticed, at the time the project began to be developed (March 2009) there were not any decent ad sites, including real estate, in Khabarovsk. The main alleged competitors were the regional site of the famous newspaper “From hand to hand” and also the Khabarovsk newspaper of announcements “Present”. Their advantages were the prevailing audience. The main disadvantage is the lack of elementary ways to filter ads. Even at the moment, this is a simple list of ads, in which, if not the search function in the browser, to find something is hellish work.

Understanding that it would be very difficult for me, a student at that time, to develop a project on my own, I turned my idea to a person with whom I already had experience working together on Internet projects and who could help with finances and ideas, since I’ve been pretty Successfully engaged in offline business. The idea of ​​developing the site to my joy was accepted.

What gave me a trip to the investor? First, material support. Secondly, a person with business experience helped me a lot and, more importantly, taught me a lot. Starting from setting goals and developing a business plan to work with staff and finance.
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The prolonged work on the development of the project, to which we gave the name Kvartius ( www.kvartirius.ru ), began. At that time, I was simultaneously engaged in making money for living and developing a diploma. I must say that people who were nearby helped me a lot, they just believed in the project that we would succeed. I would like to say a special thank you to the programmer who was selected for the project and with whom we are still working. We worked together with him on the project - I was engaged in design, design and layout (at that time, as I already wrote, I was just engaged in making money just this in freelancing), well, the programmer is a programmer. The investor at this stage did not interfere in the work, fully trusting me.

A lot of time has passed, and on December 1, 2009 we finally launched the beta version of the site.



The figure is a mock-up of the first version of the Quarterius.

The main idea of ​​the site was placing ads from individuals. The site even had special markers and filters for this purpose. But it soon became apparent that almost the entire real estate market was realtors. In addition, a number of functional deficiencies in the work of the site were identified. It was decided to recycle the site. It was decided to distinguish realtors and real estate companies as separate user groups. In addition, at the time, websites appeared on the Internet where such positioning worked successfully. And we started to redo everything again.

At the same time, there was a struggle for site traffic. Trying not to spend a lot of money (which still had to work out the project), we tried to attract an audience to the site. Here we were beaten by the first failures. Contrary to our forecasts, visitors to the site were very unwilling. Later, I made conclusions about the activity of Internet users in Khabarovsk - yet here, where Internet tariffs are quite expensive compared to the European part of Russia even today, people do not use it so actively, and even more so go to real estate websites: )



In the picture - the layout of the second version of the site.

It took a little more than six months and the new version of the site was ready. It turned out to be more successful (or still the advertisement manifested itself), and attendance began to increase. Connecting to the project of relatively large neighboring cities - Vladivostok and Blagoveshchensk - played a small role here. But at the same time there was almost no advertising due to budget constraints, and the audience in Vladivostok was already tempted by such local manufacturing sites, and Blagoveshchensk turned out to be very passive in terms of attendance due to the very small number of active Internet users (Internet tariffs there is even more expensive than in Khabarovsk).

To date, we have achieved only relatively good traffic to the site, there was even a small permanent audience of realtors. In terms of monetization, everything is bad. But, I think, still ahead. As far as I know, the average payback period of Internet projects is approximately three years. So we still have about a year and a half :)

But the most important thing that I received during this time is an invaluable experience. On development, on management, on advancement. I filled so many cones that, I think, my next project (on which work has already begun) will be more successful. In addition, I found a business teacher in the face of an investor. This man changed my attitude to work, to money, to life. Today, we work together not only on Kvartirius and I am very grateful to him for all the time he spent on me.

I will be grateful to you, if you express your thoughts about everything that I have said. Of course, I didn’t go deep into many questions and moments, but I think you will have something to say on everything stated above.

By the way, at the moment we are participating in the Far Eastern Sterkh Internet Prize and you can support me and the project by voting for us on the award website - www.premiasterh.ru/vote/495

Thank!