Crazy idea: Build, buy and sell individual web pages not websites.
I've been thinking about an idea for building, buying and selling webpages.
So, imagine a way to host a domain which could allow multiple people to own a page on the website.
If it takes about 40 pages of content in a niche to build out a website it could easily get into the $1000s of dollars(assume paying for content) to build out even the smallest niche sites. What if you only had to build 4 of articles and the domain owner could rent the url to those 4 pages to you and 10 other people(for a small amount like a $1-5/yr) . It would lower the risk because you could own pages on different websites and buy and sell pages.
I know it's a little nuts. To me it would be a great way to test the waters in niche affiliate websites.
I think this idea very cool. It would be easy to build a MVP without much dev, just find like 10-15 very good pages that you would like to rent (I think the rent side awesome), talk to the owners and offer the deal. If they approve, create a super simple website offering the pages and a pay button. There is no other way to check if the idea is good. Opinions are worthless.
My biggest issue with renting only a few pages of the whole would be the effect of differing quality.
I don't want to write 4 awesome posts while the rest of the site is filled with spam or poor information. If only 1% of the site is good content that other 99% is seriously going to effect the rank-ability of the site as well as the perception from users.
It's definitely a unique idea, but that's a big issue that stick out for me. Maybe requiring some sort of content approval process? Not sure how that would work though.
Is the general idea kind of something like ClickFunnels?
Top issues:
Quality. maybe a group vote on whether a page is exceptable or not. or maybe the final edit of the pages are outsourced to the same author. or page ideas, drafts, research submitted to group for approval. maybe like 50% vote.
maintaining ownership. possibly an escrow or marketplaces. at scale.
would definitely be a targeted niche site. like best shower head or something like that. something that a 40 or 50 page site could rank for.
I think the underlying idea isn't that crazy. But for me the domain and topic of the site would have to be focused on one niche. It couldn't just be a general site with different page owners writing about completely different things. There would also be the inevitable issue of different styles of writing. As a user if I visited the website and the pages varied hugely I'm not sure I'd stick around and become a loyal user.
I'd also be concerned about the long-term. Would there be agreements in place that the owner of the domain would do a certain amount of promotion? And if so, what sort of promotion? The last thing I'd want to do is rent some pages, agree to rent for 2 years, and then the owner soon disappears.
I'm also not sure about whether I'd want to rent pages and add value to that website, only to then not get the value later down the line. If I could legally buy the pages and own them, to later sell on if I want to for a profit, that might be more appealing.
Overall I don't think the idea is too crazy. But in practice I find it hard to see exactly how it would work out.
You wild. I like it
I can think of 2 related hurdles of owning a domain where you sell access to pages: spam and viruses. Low quality/spam posts could lower the overall search engine score of your domain. And if you give full access to the HTML/JS, you may have to worry about JS viruses (stealing secrets and cookies, crypto miners, etc).
They're not insurmountable problems, though. Is the goal to have high quality sites with good SEO?
And since you're posting your idea, I'll provide a related idea that's been in the back of my head:
A community site that acts as a sort of wiki for sub-topics and learning.
I love community websites around particular content, but I think the rolling post format limits their usefulness. What if they were more organized so they could be used to learn and figure out a path?
For example, IndieHackers could have categories and learning paths that are populated with top posts or comments. Stuff like validation, marketing, writing software as an IHer, growing, making money, motivation, etc.
I think it'd be really cool to have community software that helps collect and organize the collective wisdom of the community :)
I own the domain 4startuptips.com
which was going to be a microtip sites. where people could submit tips and vote, add hashtags etc.
Kind of like a useful version of twitter.
Isn't this just what medium / wordpress do or are you thinking more along the lines of http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ but instead of 1 page full of pixels, it's pages or sections, like a directory site.
It would be something like what's the best shower head to buy
Showerheadreviews.com or something like that. with a couple comparision pages, a few personal reviews. cool features. etc.
total random example. Have idea if that's a good niche or not.
ah that might not be a bad idea, if you could find the right niche you could build a producthunt style page for showers. Different doors, shower heads, and then sell the pages to the manufactures or people with a thing for showers :)
I think if you got the right niche it could be very good, sort of like affiliate marketing used to do.
it's 100% like affiliate marketing. I just don't have to do it by myself(or not willing to risk it).