Startup on your own. History of the creation of a real estate portal
Greetings to you, dear users of "Megamind"!
I want to share with you my experience in creating your own startup, a real estate portal.
The article turns out to be voluminous, but it will give an idea of ​​what a long way I have come to understand how to, and how not to do projects.
')
My name is Danilevsky Kirill and I am now 36 years old. I graduated from Kiev Polytechnic University back in 2000, and studied at the Faculty of Informatics. After the release, my independent developer flight began.
As a web developer, I have been working for more than 10 years. In my early years (20-25 years old) I was full of optimism and all sorts of bright ideas. I was taken to do everything. I tried to implement all my ideas myself.
One of my ideas that I implemented was my own PHP framework, in my opinion, I called it Site-Master. It was written procedurally and worked quite quickly. I built a couple of my projects on it.
In 2004, I created my own bulletin board, which was called E-Sale and a project that was something of a freight portal. Where it was possible to hire a carrier or pick up goods for transportation. He had the name Trans-avto.
These projects existed for about a year until 2010, after which I let them go, and let me rest in peace with the world.
Why did this happen? And the reasons, in fact, a lot.
1) This is procedural programming. When the project grew, maintaining the existing code was a punishment. I had to refactor the code all the time, rewrite old functions again. And it turned into a never-ending routine.
2) Use your own framework. Then, in my young years, it seemed to me that it was cool to lead a project on my own framework, this is proud, it speaks of my professionalism and experience. It was one of the fatal mistakes. The bulletin board was quite visited, up to several thousand visitors per day. Dozens of new ads were added daily. The speed was great, the interface itself was beautiful and comfortable. I created a large number of buns that competitors did not have. And he was very proud of it. But the site was hacked once a week. That through vulnerability in Ckeditor, then selected mySQL injection where I clicked in some function. And my work has become an eternal patching of holes. Plus, when I needed to add some interesting functionality, I had to write everything by hand, embed it in the code, test, refactor, maintain.
3) My faith in the user. I provided extensive functionality on the board, but there were rules that users had to follow. The rules are quite simple. Do not spam, do not write kapslok, do not duplicate ads, etc. I really did not have time for moderation, and I strongly hoped for the understanding of my users, and their integrity. But it is very vain! Most often, the rules for registration did not read at all. No one kept them. And in a very short time, the board began to turn into some kind of dirty trash. Once a week I started to commit atrocities and remove ads from troublemakers, and ban them themselves. But it did not help. For one deleted ad, ten more new ones appeared, from another account, from a different IP address. It all turned into some kind of mouse fuss. Then I ponastavil wherever you can captcha, but bona fide visitors suffered, who wrote me angry letters. As a result, I again had to think about protection from spammers. But, if the site immediately behaved tough in terms of moderation, then such a headache could simply not be.
4) Wrong advertising strategy. I strongly hoped that traffic would increase from white directories, various forums and other bulletin boards. But if the traffic came, it was so miserable that it was not worth the effort that I spent on it. Then I began to share my software solutions all over the Internet. Payment systems, counters with a system of reports for statistics, etc. People downloaded these solutions in large numbers, implemented them on their sites, but I did not get the desired effect. The traffic to the site did not increase, but the headache increased when I started to fall asleep to the mail with questions about how to install the script correctly, they say, it doesn’t work for me - help and other similar calls for help. I just could not send everyone. And I added a new unpaid job.
5) Sincere faith in all sorts of articles on SEO on the Internet. Frankly, until I came to the fact that all these articles are written only for one purpose, namely, to attract a gullible user to your site, and not to teach something, then it took a long time. With that, I read one article - I read everything! Finding the real experience of people, even if unsuccessful, was an almost impossible task. And all the time I banged my head against the wall in search of some way out.
6) The domination of amateurs everywhere and in everything. Somehow I began to think more often that I needed to hire one developer and one SEO specialist, who would partly relieve me of a part of the headache. It all ended with the fact that I had to dismiss all and again do everything myself. People had less knowledge and experience than I did. There was no motivation at all. Many people who read a couple of articles about CEOs, and of dubious quality, have already called themselves professionals. Approximately the same picture was with programmers. Time and money for salary were spent by me again for nothing.
In addition to all this mouse fuss with their sites, I had to somehow earn a living. And I was just torn apart between freelancing with clients who bring me profit, as well as between my projects, which eat up my money and suck all my juices out of me.
My working day began from the moment I got out of bed and ended with the moment when I went to bed. Such a regime greatly undermines physical health and mental balance, too. I became nervous and irritable.
And at some point in my life, I decided that was enough. Since I was already beginning to feel that I would soon be brought out of the apartment with my feet ahead. I spit on programming for a whole year and didn't even open an IDE. Just switched to home, family, other concerns. This allowed me to maintain my mental balance. Pull back from hitting your huge fiasco.
Somewhere in 2010, I took up the keyboard again. See it in the blood and not run away from it. But I went the other way. I was a little tired of the freelancing of previous years, of eternal clearing up of relations with clients and decided to get a large office for a normal salary. What I did.
Having worked for a foreign company for a couple of years, I realized that I also didn’t find peace of mind here. If I used to have many clients riveting the brain, then now there are only a couple of cool bosses, but no less than all the clients from freelance taken together. The problem was that business owners did not understand how the IT field in general as a whole worked. What to lower the team to do this and that in the morning, and in the evening everything should be ready, it is not possible in principle.
And the motivation was not at all the one I expected. For example, if you can’t do this in a day, then it’s not such a good developer. But before you worked a programmer who we fired, and he could do it in a day. And all in a similar way. I must say that the salary was very decent, but the stress was even greater. Or, as an example, this is still the situation. You are pressed from above, what is needed for yesterday, is forced to create new functionality overtime. You, like a squirrel in a wheel, rush about, but you do everything. And then the leadership still has no time for two weeks to look at this functionality.
But I must say that the work in this company gave me just a great experience. I was able to see all the flaws of the workflow from the side. I was able to understand how important the stage of planning and delegation of authority is. How important it is to keep technical documentation, without which in a month you don’t even remember what it was all about, and what we developed there in general. And the most important thing that I understood is that a large and rich company does not mean that it is successful.
I also received another interesting and very important experience that can only be obtained in a company with a large financial turnover. It is clear that no one listened to me as the main developer. And if they tried, they did not understand what I was trying to tell them. Namely, I often found bottlenecks, illogicalities and dead ends in their TK. Trying to explain this, they did not understand me, and if they did, they did not listen and insisted on their own. And at some point I saw right on a live project how my assumptions came true. After that, the team came down from the top, to redo everything, but this is already correct.
As a result, I learned enough to find the narrow places in architecture with high accuracy. And he could observe in practice how these processes occurred. Since the company had almost billionth turnovers, they simply did not reckon with such things. For them, this was the average error. But for me it was an experience that is not possible to buy for any money. And it was this experience that became the key in my life. So, how to keep finances at the design stage of your project is actually the key to the success of the project itself.
Since I remained a free artist at heart, work in an office could not keep me forever. Even a large salary did not motivate me, although it allowed me to make up the initial capital. And I quit. Also due to the fact that even with a high rate, I still have not found peace of mind.
Even in the office, I was thinking about my future project. I approached this issue carefully, without rushing with a good share of sober skepticism. I already had a great experience with a bulletin board. I knew what users need firsthand. I was able to look from the side at all my negative experience, and objectively criticize myself on my own.
Plus, I was always attracted to real estate. Why exactly real estate. Well, there are a number of objective reasons. First of all, this is a very difficult, but at the same time very interesting area of ​​business. Then - this is an eternal topic, a strategic type of business. Well, in addition - it is a huge financial momentum.
Naturally, I was aware of what a highly competitive field it was. But it did not scare me. I have already been savvy and knowledge and experience. And I started developing a project by creating ideas.
The idea was as simple as a corner of the house:
1) The project should not be another clone of a successful real estate portal.
2) Must be as simple as possible. To enable those who post their offers to manage their ads as quickly and conveniently as possible. And for those who are looking for real estate, give the opportunity to look for it around the world with the maximum accuracy of their criteria.
3) I boldly decided that those popular resources that are - this is not the best of what was invented, this is the lack of an alternative.
Then I got into the skin of a simple consumer and wool the Internet in search of different apartments, offices and houses. I wanted to find something simple, flexible and powerful.
Probably, I found tens of thousands of all sites, portals and something remotely similar to the site that worked in real estate.
What conclusions from what I saw I did:
1) Probably, 80 percent, the sites I saw, are similar to each other. Clones with the same flaws.
2) Many sites were made and designed so that right from the first page they shouted: “User! I hate you. ”If they could, they would have spat in the face right through the screen.
Clones and similar sites from p. 2) I immediately dismissed, since they did not constitute competition for me.
3) Serious real estate portals had some strange properties. For example:
1. Almost everyone has a narrow regional focus. Globalization comes on our heels, a lot of gadgets are equipped with all the languages ​​of the world. So why shut up in only one country?
2. Almost everyone, only one interface language - Russian. But what about foreign citizens who still somehow get into the CIS countries, and without knowing the Russian language.
3. Many resources like interactive real estate search maps. For example, on the map of Moscow there are hundreds of tags with rented apartments. But such a solution seems to me absolutely not convenient. First, you need to know the areas to understand where you are looking. Then, at a distance of the card, all the tags merge into one. You need to do scaling, move the map in all directions and click on all the labels to get at least some information. I agree that it looks cool and beautiful, but personally I could not use it like this. Many users do not want to spend their time on the unnecessary beauty and toughness.
4. In the overwhelming majority of resources, sections such as daily rent, residential and commercial real estate, this is just the field of choice in the ad. But I considered that these are completely different objects with their own independent sets of fields. And there is no point in making porridge out of this when filtering. Therefore, I have divided all these properties into independent and non-intersecting sections with their own unique sets of fields.
5. Again, with most portals, filtering occurs by clicking on an infinite number of drop-down lists. Here the user is looking, for example, an apartment. Takes and selects eight parameters from a dozen filters. He presses the search button, and gives him: "No search was found for your search." And often it gives out in general what was not required. This is not just annoying - it makes the brain in full. Therefore, I made faceted filters. You will receive only what you are looking for, as in normal online stores. For many, this has become unusual. But as soon as the users tasted a bit, they realized what a convenient search is without a headache.
6. Limiting the number of characters, prohibiting the use of html tags, prohibiting the insertion of links to their sites, limiting the number of photos, etc. Everything is simple. I did not limit anyone and forbid everything. And on the contrary, even, I encourage users to upload large and high-quality photos of their real estate. Write a good and detailed description of your objects. I authorize the use of tags to highlight important points in the text.
7. Very often repeating the same sentences. Now I follow the portal and punish those who do not comply with the rules from day one. But in order to avoid the need to post the same offers, I made it possible in the user profile to update the date of my offer once a day. Then such an offer appears at the top of the list. Sorting property is the default publication date.
8. Insanely annoying ads "Raise in the Top." This sin many. For example, a user enters a section in order to find an apartment for himself, and he throws out five pages of yellow ads that he does not need and is not interested at all. But you need to scroll and view all of them. I think this is rudeness and disrespect to its users. Therefore, I fundamentally refused such a path. Those who want to somehow highlight their proposals, I decided to place them in separate VIP blocks that will not overlap the viewing of simple ads.
9. Services such as online booking for daily rent, import / export of xml feeds are paid features. I made them on my portal free.
10. And there is another important point that gives me confidence that I can compete with serious players. Many portals cannot afford to keep a highly professional senior developer. Salary alone will hit hard on the budget. As a rule, finances are invested in the project at the development stage, and then, what is already there, that is. Few people modify the functionality, improve their project and give new opportunities to users. And I release a new release every couple weeks or a month. I consult with users what functionality they need and implement it on the portal.
I mentioned above ten points that I consider to be key in the question of why I am sure that the project has a future.
The project itself took me two years of work. Approximately 3800 hours. Every hour I estimate approximately $ 30. I implemented the project myself on the Drupal 7 platform. For the reason that I professionally develop under it. It is the majority of the project time spent on the creation of its own modules and functionality.
The project itself, even before the launch of the first release, I redrawn again at least three times. Since already at the implementation stage it became clear that what I wrote in the TK is not optimal, or even fundamentally wrong.
On May 1, 2015, I launched the first release. It was significantly different from what can be seen now on the portal. Some functionality was not finalized, the design was completely sediment.
It was very difficult to attract new users who would agree to publish their property with us. Nobody wanted to publish on an empty site, many looking at the project, did not understand why it looks like something different than what they used to see on the Internet. I found all over the Internet contacts of various real estate agencies throughout Europe. Someone wrote someone called.
This piece of work was very difficult. Since the site will not come those who are looking for real estate, if there is no one who will publish it. It was a vicious circle.But now on the site more than 1300 sellers, and new ones are much more likely to register.
I also realized that at some point I began to walk in a circle. This concerned the improvement of usability and the overall appearance of the portal. And then I turned to the Drupal community for help on the Drupal.ru site, especially since I was a member of it for many years. I asked to constructively criticize the portal. Many users responded and together we were able to bring Best House to a more or less normal look.
Now on the portal the fifteenth release. Without criticism and an outside view it would be difficult to develop the project. Since everything is already familiar and different shoals were no longer visible.
At the moment the portal is not monetized. All functionality is free. I plan to earn on the creation of various paid services. For example, in the near future plans to create their own unique CRM system, sharpened by real estate. While I am at the stage of thinking.
Yes, I forgot about one more thing. About the domain. I thought for a long time which domain to buy. All beautiful domains, of course, were disassembled. I wanted the domain to be international, without regional binding. It was easy to remember and clearly written. The first domain was completely different. I made it as a result of the test. And so, I accidentally came across the domain best-house.org, which previously belonged to a Japanese real estate agency, and which was sold for sane money from the auction. At the same time, he already had PR 5. I immediately bought it out. Already I do not remember what, but not very expensive.
Here, in a nutshell, my life experience in terms of creating my project, almost 15 years long.
In the afterword, I want to give some advice to those who want to start their project:
1) If you don’t understand anything at all in IT, but want to invest money in a project (yours or someone else’s), then you better give this money to an orphanage. It will be much cheaper, fewer burned nerves, and most importantly, you will do a really good deed.
2) If you calculated the budget for the project, while calculating it very professionally and clearly, you can safely multiply it by five, if not more.
3) If you have your own idea and want to implement it in a project, together with your friends, then just think about whether you can finish this project alone if friends leave you.
4) If you find an investor who is willing to invest in your finance ideas, for a share in your project, then be prepared for the fact that you are likely to become a slave in the project rather than the lead one. And in the end, your ideas at the end of the project may have very little to stay. However, like your enthusiasm.
5) Most startups die at the implementation stage, never having seen their first release. And all because the comprehension of the need for your project, its obvious advantages, and its architecture, occurs already at the development stage, and not at the next stage after the birth of the idea.
And in conclusion, I want to say that after a project has been calculated, first of all, count the losses that you can incur, and not the virtual profit, which can be if a hundred “if” works.
You can view my project here.
And you can criticize it right in the comments. I am pleased to answer everyone who is interested in both the technical part, both financial and design.
Special thanks to those who mastered this opus to the end. He who seeks must find.
I want to share with you my experience in creating your own startup, a real estate portal.
The article turns out to be voluminous, but it will give an idea of ​​what a long way I have come to understand how to, and how not to do projects.
')
My name is Danilevsky Kirill and I am now 36 years old. I graduated from Kiev Polytechnic University back in 2000, and studied at the Faculty of Informatics. After the release, my independent developer flight began.
As a web developer, I have been working for more than 10 years. In my early years (20-25 years old) I was full of optimism and all sorts of bright ideas. I was taken to do everything. I tried to implement all my ideas myself.
One of my ideas that I implemented was my own PHP framework, in my opinion, I called it Site-Master. It was written procedurally and worked quite quickly. I built a couple of my projects on it.
In 2004, I created my own bulletin board, which was called E-Sale and a project that was something of a freight portal. Where it was possible to hire a carrier or pick up goods for transportation. He had the name Trans-avto.
These projects existed for about a year until 2010, after which I let them go, and let me rest in peace with the world.
Why did this happen? And the reasons, in fact, a lot.
1) This is procedural programming. When the project grew, maintaining the existing code was a punishment. I had to refactor the code all the time, rewrite old functions again. And it turned into a never-ending routine.
2) Use your own framework. Then, in my young years, it seemed to me that it was cool to lead a project on my own framework, this is proud, it speaks of my professionalism and experience. It was one of the fatal mistakes. The bulletin board was quite visited, up to several thousand visitors per day. Dozens of new ads were added daily. The speed was great, the interface itself was beautiful and comfortable. I created a large number of buns that competitors did not have. And he was very proud of it. But the site was hacked once a week. That through vulnerability in Ckeditor, then selected mySQL injection where I clicked in some function. And my work has become an eternal patching of holes. Plus, when I needed to add some interesting functionality, I had to write everything by hand, embed it in the code, test, refactor, maintain.
3) My faith in the user. I provided extensive functionality on the board, but there were rules that users had to follow. The rules are quite simple. Do not spam, do not write kapslok, do not duplicate ads, etc. I really did not have time for moderation, and I strongly hoped for the understanding of my users, and their integrity. But it is very vain! Most often, the rules for registration did not read at all. No one kept them. And in a very short time, the board began to turn into some kind of dirty trash. Once a week I started to commit atrocities and remove ads from troublemakers, and ban them themselves. But it did not help. For one deleted ad, ten more new ones appeared, from another account, from a different IP address. It all turned into some kind of mouse fuss. Then I ponastavil wherever you can captcha, but bona fide visitors suffered, who wrote me angry letters. As a result, I again had to think about protection from spammers. But, if the site immediately behaved tough in terms of moderation, then such a headache could simply not be.
4) Wrong advertising strategy. I strongly hoped that traffic would increase from white directories, various forums and other bulletin boards. But if the traffic came, it was so miserable that it was not worth the effort that I spent on it. Then I began to share my software solutions all over the Internet. Payment systems, counters with a system of reports for statistics, etc. People downloaded these solutions in large numbers, implemented them on their sites, but I did not get the desired effect. The traffic to the site did not increase, but the headache increased when I started to fall asleep to the mail with questions about how to install the script correctly, they say, it doesn’t work for me - help and other similar calls for help. I just could not send everyone. And I added a new unpaid job.
5) Sincere faith in all sorts of articles on SEO on the Internet. Frankly, until I came to the fact that all these articles are written only for one purpose, namely, to attract a gullible user to your site, and not to teach something, then it took a long time. With that, I read one article - I read everything! Finding the real experience of people, even if unsuccessful, was an almost impossible task. And all the time I banged my head against the wall in search of some way out.
6) The domination of amateurs everywhere and in everything. Somehow I began to think more often that I needed to hire one developer and one SEO specialist, who would partly relieve me of a part of the headache. It all ended with the fact that I had to dismiss all and again do everything myself. People had less knowledge and experience than I did. There was no motivation at all. Many people who read a couple of articles about CEOs, and of dubious quality, have already called themselves professionals. Approximately the same picture was with programmers. Time and money for salary were spent by me again for nothing.
In addition to all this mouse fuss with their sites, I had to somehow earn a living. And I was just torn apart between freelancing with clients who bring me profit, as well as between my projects, which eat up my money and suck all my juices out of me.
My working day began from the moment I got out of bed and ended with the moment when I went to bed. Such a regime greatly undermines physical health and mental balance, too. I became nervous and irritable.
And at some point in my life, I decided that was enough. Since I was already beginning to feel that I would soon be brought out of the apartment with my feet ahead. I spit on programming for a whole year and didn't even open an IDE. Just switched to home, family, other concerns. This allowed me to maintain my mental balance. Pull back from hitting your huge fiasco.
Somewhere in 2010, I took up the keyboard again. See it in the blood and not run away from it. But I went the other way. I was a little tired of the freelancing of previous years, of eternal clearing up of relations with clients and decided to get a large office for a normal salary. What I did.
Having worked for a foreign company for a couple of years, I realized that I also didn’t find peace of mind here. If I used to have many clients riveting the brain, then now there are only a couple of cool bosses, but no less than all the clients from freelance taken together. The problem was that business owners did not understand how the IT field in general as a whole worked. What to lower the team to do this and that in the morning, and in the evening everything should be ready, it is not possible in principle.
And the motivation was not at all the one I expected. For example, if you can’t do this in a day, then it’s not such a good developer. But before you worked a programmer who we fired, and he could do it in a day. And all in a similar way. I must say that the salary was very decent, but the stress was even greater. Or, as an example, this is still the situation. You are pressed from above, what is needed for yesterday, is forced to create new functionality overtime. You, like a squirrel in a wheel, rush about, but you do everything. And then the leadership still has no time for two weeks to look at this functionality.
But I must say that the work in this company gave me just a great experience. I was able to see all the flaws of the workflow from the side. I was able to understand how important the stage of planning and delegation of authority is. How important it is to keep technical documentation, without which in a month you don’t even remember what it was all about, and what we developed there in general. And the most important thing that I understood is that a large and rich company does not mean that it is successful.
I also received another interesting and very important experience that can only be obtained in a company with a large financial turnover. It is clear that no one listened to me as the main developer. And if they tried, they did not understand what I was trying to tell them. Namely, I often found bottlenecks, illogicalities and dead ends in their TK. Trying to explain this, they did not understand me, and if they did, they did not listen and insisted on their own. And at some point I saw right on a live project how my assumptions came true. After that, the team came down from the top, to redo everything, but this is already correct.
As a result, I learned enough to find the narrow places in architecture with high accuracy. And he could observe in practice how these processes occurred. Since the company had almost billionth turnovers, they simply did not reckon with such things. For them, this was the average error. But for me it was an experience that is not possible to buy for any money. And it was this experience that became the key in my life. So, how to keep finances at the design stage of your project is actually the key to the success of the project itself.
Since I remained a free artist at heart, work in an office could not keep me forever. Even a large salary did not motivate me, although it allowed me to make up the initial capital. And I quit. Also due to the fact that even with a high rate, I still have not found peace of mind.
Even in the office, I was thinking about my future project. I approached this issue carefully, without rushing with a good share of sober skepticism. I already had a great experience with a bulletin board. I knew what users need firsthand. I was able to look from the side at all my negative experience, and objectively criticize myself on my own.
Plus, I was always attracted to real estate. Why exactly real estate. Well, there are a number of objective reasons. First of all, this is a very difficult, but at the same time very interesting area of ​​business. Then - this is an eternal topic, a strategic type of business. Well, in addition - it is a huge financial momentum.
Naturally, I was aware of what a highly competitive field it was. But it did not scare me. I have already been savvy and knowledge and experience. And I started developing a project by creating ideas.
The idea was as simple as a corner of the house:
1) The project should not be another clone of a successful real estate portal.
2) Must be as simple as possible. To enable those who post their offers to manage their ads as quickly and conveniently as possible. And for those who are looking for real estate, give the opportunity to look for it around the world with the maximum accuracy of their criteria.
3) I boldly decided that those popular resources that are - this is not the best of what was invented, this is the lack of an alternative.
Then I got into the skin of a simple consumer and wool the Internet in search of different apartments, offices and houses. I wanted to find something simple, flexible and powerful.
Probably, I found tens of thousands of all sites, portals and something remotely similar to the site that worked in real estate.
What conclusions from what I saw I did:
1) Probably, 80 percent, the sites I saw, are similar to each other. Clones with the same flaws.
2) Many sites were made and designed so that right from the first page they shouted: “User! I hate you. ”If they could, they would have spat in the face right through the screen.
Clones and similar sites from p. 2) I immediately dismissed, since they did not constitute competition for me.
3) Serious real estate portals had some strange properties. For example:
1. Almost everyone has a narrow regional focus. Globalization comes on our heels, a lot of gadgets are equipped with all the languages ​​of the world. So why shut up in only one country?
2. Almost everyone, only one interface language - Russian. But what about foreign citizens who still somehow get into the CIS countries, and without knowing the Russian language.
3. Many resources like interactive real estate search maps. For example, on the map of Moscow there are hundreds of tags with rented apartments. But such a solution seems to me absolutely not convenient. First, you need to know the areas to understand where you are looking. Then, at a distance of the card, all the tags merge into one. You need to do scaling, move the map in all directions and click on all the labels to get at least some information. I agree that it looks cool and beautiful, but personally I could not use it like this. Many users do not want to spend their time on the unnecessary beauty and toughness.
4. In the overwhelming majority of resources, sections such as daily rent, residential and commercial real estate, this is just the field of choice in the ad. But I considered that these are completely different objects with their own independent sets of fields. And there is no point in making porridge out of this when filtering. Therefore, I have divided all these properties into independent and non-intersecting sections with their own unique sets of fields.
5. Again, with most portals, filtering occurs by clicking on an infinite number of drop-down lists. Here the user is looking, for example, an apartment. Takes and selects eight parameters from a dozen filters. He presses the search button, and gives him: "No search was found for your search." And often it gives out in general what was not required. This is not just annoying - it makes the brain in full. Therefore, I made faceted filters. You will receive only what you are looking for, as in normal online stores. For many, this has become unusual. But as soon as the users tasted a bit, they realized what a convenient search is without a headache.
6. Limiting the number of characters, prohibiting the use of html tags, prohibiting the insertion of links to their sites, limiting the number of photos, etc. Everything is simple. I did not limit anyone and forbid everything. And on the contrary, even, I encourage users to upload large and high-quality photos of their real estate. Write a good and detailed description of your objects. I authorize the use of tags to highlight important points in the text.
7. Very often repeating the same sentences. Now I follow the portal and punish those who do not comply with the rules from day one. But in order to avoid the need to post the same offers, I made it possible in the user profile to update the date of my offer once a day. Then such an offer appears at the top of the list. Sorting property is the default publication date.
8. Insanely annoying ads "Raise in the Top." This sin many. For example, a user enters a section in order to find an apartment for himself, and he throws out five pages of yellow ads that he does not need and is not interested at all. But you need to scroll and view all of them. I think this is rudeness and disrespect to its users. Therefore, I fundamentally refused such a path. Those who want to somehow highlight their proposals, I decided to place them in separate VIP blocks that will not overlap the viewing of simple ads.
9. Services such as online booking for daily rent, import / export of xml feeds are paid features. I made them on my portal free.
10. And there is another important point that gives me confidence that I can compete with serious players. Many portals cannot afford to keep a highly professional senior developer. Salary alone will hit hard on the budget. As a rule, finances are invested in the project at the development stage, and then, what is already there, that is. Few people modify the functionality, improve their project and give new opportunities to users. And I release a new release every couple weeks or a month. I consult with users what functionality they need and implement it on the portal.
I mentioned above ten points that I consider to be key in the question of why I am sure that the project has a future.
The project itself took me two years of work. Approximately 3800 hours. Every hour I estimate approximately $ 30. I implemented the project myself on the Drupal 7 platform. For the reason that I professionally develop under it. It is the majority of the project time spent on the creation of its own modules and functionality.
The project itself, even before the launch of the first release, I redrawn again at least three times. Since already at the implementation stage it became clear that what I wrote in the TK is not optimal, or even fundamentally wrong.
On May 1, 2015, I launched the first release. It was significantly different from what can be seen now on the portal. Some functionality was not finalized, the design was completely sediment.
It was very difficult to attract new users who would agree to publish their property with us. Nobody wanted to publish on an empty site, many looking at the project, did not understand why it looks like something different than what they used to see on the Internet. I found all over the Internet contacts of various real estate agencies throughout Europe. Someone wrote someone called.
This piece of work was very difficult. Since the site will not come those who are looking for real estate, if there is no one who will publish it. It was a vicious circle.But now on the site more than 1300 sellers, and new ones are much more likely to register.
I also realized that at some point I began to walk in a circle. This concerned the improvement of usability and the overall appearance of the portal. And then I turned to the Drupal community for help on the Drupal.ru site, especially since I was a member of it for many years. I asked to constructively criticize the portal. Many users responded and together we were able to bring Best House to a more or less normal look.
Now on the portal the fifteenth release. Without criticism and an outside view it would be difficult to develop the project. Since everything is already familiar and different shoals were no longer visible.
At the moment the portal is not monetized. All functionality is free. I plan to earn on the creation of various paid services. For example, in the near future plans to create their own unique CRM system, sharpened by real estate. While I am at the stage of thinking.
Yes, I forgot about one more thing. About the domain. I thought for a long time which domain to buy. All beautiful domains, of course, were disassembled. I wanted the domain to be international, without regional binding. It was easy to remember and clearly written. The first domain was completely different. I made it as a result of the test. And so, I accidentally came across the domain best-house.org, which previously belonged to a Japanese real estate agency, and which was sold for sane money from the auction. At the same time, he already had PR 5. I immediately bought it out. Already I do not remember what, but not very expensive.
Here, in a nutshell, my life experience in terms of creating my project, almost 15 years long.
In the afterword, I want to give some advice to those who want to start their project:
1) If you don’t understand anything at all in IT, but want to invest money in a project (yours or someone else’s), then you better give this money to an orphanage. It will be much cheaper, fewer burned nerves, and most importantly, you will do a really good deed.
2) If you calculated the budget for the project, while calculating it very professionally and clearly, you can safely multiply it by five, if not more.
3) If you have your own idea and want to implement it in a project, together with your friends, then just think about whether you can finish this project alone if friends leave you.
4) If you find an investor who is willing to invest in your finance ideas, for a share in your project, then be prepared for the fact that you are likely to become a slave in the project rather than the lead one. And in the end, your ideas at the end of the project may have very little to stay. However, like your enthusiasm.
5) Most startups die at the implementation stage, never having seen their first release. And all because the comprehension of the need for your project, its obvious advantages, and its architecture, occurs already at the development stage, and not at the next stage after the birth of the idea.
And in conclusion, I want to say that after a project has been calculated, first of all, count the losses that you can incur, and not the virtual profit, which can be if a hundred “if” works.
You can view my project here.
And you can criticize it right in the comments. I am pleased to answer everyone who is interested in both the technical part, both financial and design.
Special thanks to those who mastered this opus to the end. He who seeks must find.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/298184/
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