We are in the process of setting up a price comparison site abroad (not able to tell where as I have signed a confidentially agreement and have shares in the company). It will be for money and insurance comparison. We are planning to setup the business and register the name in the UK. We have appointed a local web designer 6 months ago who has experience in comparison sites and search engines. We gave him an initial brief on image and contents based on UK comparion sites. So yes, we will be another "me too" but in an emerging market where there are currently only 3 price comparison sites ( 2 for money and 1 for insurance) which are pretty simple and rely on any type of irrelevant advertising and one on direct sales as they are also insurance brokers. We have good relationships and a network with banks and insurance companies through other partners business interests. We will be giving them a 6 month FOC trial period. We have also managed to interest national papers and magazines to give us space for our search engine on their websites finance section for a 50:50 profit share. We will also going to be putting a lot effort into press releases. We have a limited budget and can not afford to do much paid advertising unless it is piggy backing. I would like some advice on what else we can do to increase traffic on the website and what the rate/click or commision from sale rates are in the UK. Since most of us (apart from the company we employed for the website) have no experience in running such a business we have also considered asking an established UK comparison site to give us their business model for a % share in our business however not sure if we need this?
You have an uphill struggle there... its a competitive sector. Your ideas, however, seem sound - perhaps you should now be focused on marketing the site?