Skip to main content

ApartmentReviews - Australia's Largest Dedicated Apartment Resource

Today we showcase the story of an exciting venture, from Brisbane, Australia, ApartmentReviews - Australia's Largest Dedicated Apartment Resource, founded by Shane Moore.

In a recent email-based interview with Shane, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us:

• How long it took before it was up and running
From the initial concept to having the first basic site live was around 3 weeks. The current design took another month or so to get right, at which point I started advertising through Google Adsense and posting on forums.

• Stage of Venture
The site launched in 2007 and since that time I've been concentrating on building traffic and attracting real estate agents to list their details. The next step will be to transition the 30 or so real estate agents we have into paying customers (currently it is free for them).

• Which Market Segment
Anyone looking to rent or buy a residential apartment.

• Customers
Anyone looking to rent or buy a residential apartment, and real estate agents that specialise in apartment buildings.

• Targeted Age Group
All above 18

• Users Using Service
Around 6,000 unique visitors per month, plus around 30 real estate agents listing on the site. Over 500 individual real estate agents are subscribed to our monthly apartment popularity (traffic) report.

• Marketing Technique
Organic search results (where most traffic comes from), Google Adsense, letterbox drops in large apartment buildings, and print advertising in local publications.

• Measuring Success
The site was ranked 29th in Australian Anthill Magazine's inaugural Smart 100 list. Traffic is growing each month (albeit a little slower currently as the marketing budget has been significantly reduced) and we're attracting more real estate agents wishing to list their details on the site.

• Monetising/Revenue Model
Currently Google Adwords plus individually negotiated banner ad campaigns. The next step is to monetise the agent listings. Each building has five positions available for agents to list their details on, and they will pay a monthly subscription fee for each building they list on.


• Main competitors
None yet, as we aren't a classifieds site like realestate.com.au and the like.

• money required
Around $10k has been spent on development costs and advertising so far. Ongoing costs related to the site itself are very low.

• Main Barriers
Hundreds of hours of manual research to get all of the apartment building information. The work never stops because more apartment buildings are popping up every week.

• Advice For People
Sites that use all user-generated content, as opposed to our site which is half generated by us (the apartment info) and half generated by the users (the ratings and reviews), take much less work!

• External Funding
None

Ongoing coverage on Australian startups, innovation, business and tech trends, and interviews with experts in various domains can be found here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sensis and the Australian Search and Directories Market

Background: I have undertaken this report to explore, learn and analyse the local online search and directories market to understand the developments that are taking place in this area. There are more than 18 players, from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to large corporations trying to get some share of this market. The main focus of this report is on Sensis and its competitors and how it can reinvent itself in a rapidly changing local market. Note: This report can be downloaded as a PDF from here . Introduction: Australia’s online search and directories market is rapidly growing and to this date, there are 18 players in this market segment , worth $235 million as reported last year (2007). It is expected to reach $532 million by 2010. Sensis, (owned by Telstra) is a dominant player in the directories market and Google in search. The online search market only represents a portion of the much larger local online advertising market. The local online advertising marke...
10 comments
Read more

99designs - Connecting Designers from Around the World

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture co-founded by, Mark Harbottle in 2008 from Melbourne, Australia, 99designs - it connects thousands of designers from around the world with clients who need design tasks completed fast, and without the usual high cost and limited choices you get from most traditional design firms. In a recent email-based interview with Mark, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I’m 34 years old. I have a degree in computer systems engineering. I started my wo rking life as a programmer, but I eventually found I was much better at online marketing, which back in 1995 was an area not many people had explored. I’ve worked with pure internet businesses for 13 years now. The first 4 years after I graduated I worked with one of Australia’s first internet companies, and the last 9 have been spent working on my own businesses. I started...
Post a Comment
Read more

Plutext

The 9th participant is Plutext . Plutext enables collaborative editing around docx documents, where docx is the default file format in Word 2007. In simple terms, it's a word processor like Openoffice Writer and Google Docs. Based out of Melbourne, it was created by Jason Harrop in 2007 and this is the second venture he has started, previously he was involved with SpeedLegal (now Exari). Let us explore a bit further about Plutext from Jason, on various facets of his startup: Q. How long it took before it was up and running? A. A couple of months to build a proof of concept, whilst also doing other things, before giving it 100% focus in September 2007. Q. What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional? A. Beta mode. Q. What is the main objective/mission behind your venture? A. Enable people to work on a Word document at the same time. Provide an environment for doing this irrespective of whether you have Word 2007. Q. What is unique about your ventu...
1 comment
Read more