How about a centralised place for visa application process for different countries?
If I could gather all this information and combine make it available in one web or mobile application? Do you think this is useful or you know anything similar?
Would you pay for a $1/month or 12$/year subscription fee for the up to date information?
No.
Why would I pay a subscription for something that I maybe need to obtain once in a few years?
Why would I pay for something that I can find on a gov website of the country I want to visit, for free?
Why would I trust a 3rd party website for that info? I don't want surprises like outdated or incomplete info, and would always rather study the embassy website. For this reason, I don't find visalist useful.
There are many pain points with the visa system, e.g. having to travel to a visa center (for most visa countries the center is in the capital — 900km from where I live), collecting paperwork, certifying translations for my legal documents etc. Getting info is the least of them.
P.S. I agree with @anabayan though on the point that instead of all info, you should rather do a very narrow focus. Also I'd say it's not a good idea to simply charge for the access to the website — the info is freely out there and I doubt anyone would pay (a few perhaps, but most will just go off to Google to find other search results on "how to get Xxx country visa" and ultimately find forums etc for free). What you could charge for (and more $$) is if you provided some services that e.g. would reduce applicants' anxiety — say, if you charged them for reviewing their documents before they submit them to the visa center and warn them on possible mistakes.
Lets say I am a young doctor (or IT professional or whatever). I'm looking at 5-6 countries that I'd like to work in, but I'm also open to suggestions of other countries.
Lets say I go to @usamanoman's site - put my basic details like age, nationality, qualifications, experience etc. If I can get a report back saying which countries I qualify for, which visas I qualify for, difficulty rating in obtaining the visa (US visa 8 out of 10, Germany 7 out of 10 - or something like that). Assuming this information is accurate and current, would I pay 12$ for it? Sure. Guess how much time it would take for me to build this comparison table myself, from free sites?
So yeah, I don't understand why people say they won't pay for a service like this. Anyone who has gone through the pain of applying for visas (or worse, permanent residencies) knows the value of accurate and timely information.
The days of easy immigration are gone. These days one has to submit tons of paperwork, have solid qualifications and wait for months and months to even hear back on the status of their application. Sure, there are still friendlier countries (Australia comes to mind), but they are far and few.
I simply replied to the question "would you pay…"
I would pay for something that reduces anxiety. Getting info from 3rd party site won't reduce anxiety for me: I wouldn't trust that it's up to date and has no disinformation (visalist has many of these), and would go study the embassy website anyway.
As for $12, I don't think it makes sense to make it a subscription. Why is everything a subscription these days? I'd say instead of that, make some basic info free and charge a flat access fee for personalized suggestions (e.g. $12 per search request with your specific data).
P.S. I've gone through getting a EU (Schengen) visa multiple times (luckily these days are over, we now have visa-free entry), and a UK visa once. The worst part of the EU visa was wait times, the worst part of the UK visa was having to travel to the visa center 900 km away. On the other side, UK immigration website was the absolute best. Those were traveler visas though.
Thanks @anabayan very informative.
Having gone through (extremely painful) US visa process, I can assure you people will pay for it - on this, I disagree with other commenters here. And 12$ per year is such a small amount that it is not even worth thinking about, considering immigration lawyers charge through the nose.
The problem is not if people would pay - they will, consider me as your first customer :) The problem is keeping this data up-to-date. How are you going to pull that off? There are so many visa categories, so many rules, so many nuances in each case - and these rules change often. The moment I see a wrong data point, I'm going to cancel the subscription.
Some ideas to think about:
Start with a narrow focus and do it very well - for example, visas for software professionals to certain countries only or visas for PhD holders only or visas for doctors only etc. Pick the top 10 (US, Germany, Australia etc) countries that people migrate to, and handle only those. And go from there?
I think I would pay for it. But!
You have a very small chance of getting it to work. Signing-up countries to allow you to process information like that for them would be nearly impossible.
I really like the phrase "permissionless entrepreneurship", where you don't need to get permission from external entities for your product or service. Having to get permission from lots of countries would scare me.
Companies are already able to process visa applications for individuals. He shouldn't need any permission from specific countries to do this.
The idea of what you want to do is really cool. There are a couple of sites that offer the same services like yours eg timbu.com/visa or https://hotels.ng/guides. Now these two sites i have used and they are top notch with up to date information. I am sure there are a lot of other sites out there too.
If you want to start up something like this, you have to give your audience a reason why they should pay subscription money for information they can easily get anywhere else for free. Again what is the guarantee that the information you will give me is updated cus visa application processes changes all the time.
These are things you should actually think about
Given what others charge for a database type site for coworking locations like https://nomadlist.com etc I'm guessing it would be viable.. I think the big question is how you handle all the variables of from what country to what country.. as many countries have different visa rules depending on your nationality.. So you would have to pick a few key countries of origin to start with.. IE USA to every other country, then add EU to every other country etc I think.
https://visalist.io/ something like this?
Yeah! more like this but it doesn't tell the exact step by step requirements for the visa application process.