As a serial entrepreneur, I am always looking at the next great business model or web startup to come on the scene. I love new ideas, branding and the possibilities of building an empire from these foundational concepts when paired with a great business model. But after the dazzle of the cool company logo, branding images and well copy written homepage wears off, my next question is always, “How are these guys making money? How did these guys just get another round of financing with this model?” I ask this not to turn my nose up at any particular venture, but as an honest question so that I and others might learn. Niche directories is one of those areas where I continue to be amazed on how many startups enter this crowded market even with powerful decision and search engines likes Bing and Google. Back in the 90’s most people would have put their money on Yahoo to forever dominate the web directory market across every niche, but people quickly grew tired of browsing hierarchical categories that needed to be maintained by someone with a degree in library science. Yet and still, many companies enter the directory market with the intent of building hyper-niche directories and search engines for various verticals and special interests. Today, I stumbled upon one such site called SeniorHomes.com.
This site is a free resource for finding local senior homes including nursing homes, assisted living, memory care and retirement communities. They also feature articles on important senior housing topics to help people in their search. While the site offers a very comprehensive list of resources, the core feature is still getting a list of senior housing options in an area of your choosing. And while this one feature could probably be replicated by Bing in a few weeks, this bold site is thriving and honestly we hope they succeed. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by my same question, “How are they going to make money and sustain?”
Well thanks to SeniorHomes.com for creating a section on their web site that explains this very thing on the About Us page:
“We make money by helping Senior Housing Providers find residents. Our featured listings (the ones with the photos) are for Providers with whom we have a commercial relationship. Featured listings show up on more pages and are displayed more prominently. We are compensated by our Featured Providers when we put them in touch with potential residents.”
Wow!! Clean, simple and out there for the entire world to see. I commend SeniorHomes.com for being so transparent with their business model. This may sound trivial to most, but when you start to find out how some companies like this are able to secure financing and make money on such a simple premise while doing it honestly, you wonder why others don’t succeed with seemingly “better ideas” in a less crowded space. If anything, it’s finding sites like these that always inspire me; it is simply too easy nowadays to talk oneself out of almost any business idea – oh that’s already been done, that space is too crowded, that business requires too much capital, too much legal risk, too much reliance on changing technology, too much reliance on manual process and people, blah, blah, blah. So thank you SeniorHomes.com for giving us hope.
You never know what actions will inspire others.
