Internet business accountability

Hi, in my first venture into online business, I would really appreciate advice from those of you with experience in this field.

Our site would list service providers, and the customers roaming our site could contact the service providers through some kind of form on our site. If the service provider agrees to go with a customer, they would pay us a "finders fee" for finding their customer and making the contact a lot easier through e-mail.

My question is, how do we keep the service providers accountable? How do we track down every time a service provider agrees to work with a customer? Again, the customer would fill out a form, and so that plays a role... would it be recommended to have the form sent directly to the provider, or to us, or to both? As always, keeping our work to a minimum is desireable.

Thanks for any suggestions, even if it answers only one question.

 

I have some sites like that, and I think the only guaranteed form of income is if you charge for actual listings on your website, maybe have a free and a gold listing?
It is much better than having to keep track of orders.

 

I think the best way would be for you to collect the form information yourself and forward it to the provider. You can sign an agreement with them, and they either pay you per lead, or per approval.

Pay per lead may be a better option for you, because you have no idea how bad a business could be at converting their leads into customers. You are guaranteed a fee with this way and although smaller than an approval fee, you would always get it.

 

What I would do in this situation is email "partial" form to the service provider .
Like:
If I want my car serviced and am contacting a garadge from your site,
I will send the following to garadge :
Order number - 54256
Required - oil change, wheel alignment checked etc.
Location - Delhi.

Then when the garadge chooses to pick the order , they can give me the share and I will provide them with the complete address , and email so they can go and do the needful.

All of this can be automated .
Step 1 : Send 3 form fields to service provider email and complete form to your database.
Step 2: The garadge pays you via paypal or some credit card on your site
Step 3 : Verify successful payment .
Step 4 : Send the form ordered number 54256 ( as above) to garadge from your database.

Bye
jeet

 

Jestep, I like your idea of pay per lead, not just per approval. Of course we would lower the payment required per lead. My one concern is that in this business, once a service provider approves a lead and starts working, they will be on the job for months... I doubt that they will be wanting to pay for leads during this time, and so they may be tentative to sign up in the first place. Our plan is to have the initial listing, comprehensive and intricate as it is, free. So for those of you with experience in this area, how do you typically handle this? Any other ideas? I REALLY appreciate the responses already, and I thank you all for the responses.

 

Internet Business accountability answer by Internet Business Expert

Your question is about Internet Business accountability ?

Your question should be about your own Internet Business accountability !
That is plain the best business advise : you can only be accountable for
your own actions and therefore this question shows you hold your problem
in the wrong light look on it from another angle, who is your customer here
and what situation can you control to be accountable for your own action to
be able to improve some metrics to get better sales result.

This is totally about the process
You sell brokerage here, ops (other peoples services) Your focus on who
do you see as your customer is important.

What is the relation here ? many to many,
that is why you have chosen this market.

who is the product ? the people looking for hosting providers
who is the customer ? the people providing the hosting

The beauty here is that you can switch one to many relations

1 >= many and
many >= 1 where the domainrange is
the many providers you write a contract with.

1 host searching person can get
many hosting offers by more hosting providing people then 1 .
and vice versa !


You can keep your business healthy by having a written contract per
provider where you get paid per lead, You are responsible for setting up
a salespage with a special deal and a pay button.

Make it reversed dropshipping and make same deal packages with
the providers you resell.


Your safety in this business plan is in the amount of providers you have
in your portfolio to switch to, in your contract you have a pre set option
of packages reserved for you that your business is going to sell.

The more provider the stronger your position to negotiate.

You can contact me for more detailed advise,
Thank You

internet business expert,
Themelis Cuiper
social media marketing, internet consultant, seo





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