Looking for advices, ideas...a partner maybe?

[MarcoITA]

Hi all guys, I'm the founder of www.pet-files.com, a social network for pet lovers. It currently allows users to create profile pages for their pets, with unlimited photos, videos and facts. It also allows to create slideshows you can embed into an existing blog, or keep a blog directly on pet-files.

I'm currently looking for new ideas and advices to make it evolve and become more popular. I'd be also interested in establishing a partnership with someone that likes the idea, and want to expand it.

What do you think? Is there anyone out there who likes this? Thanks for your time and consideration, I hope to read some answers soon! Best, - Marco (Italy)

[marc_fawzi]

Hey Marco,

Why are you looking for 1 person as a partner when you can "crowdsource" it? i.e. get as many people as possible (your friends, family, friends of friends, random strangers with pets, etc) to contribute ideas.

Make the target users your partner.

[MarcoITA]

Well, I'm already doing that :) But people with experience in growing an idea from the entrepreneur startup might have more insight on this...

[ideas101]

congratulations for beautiful web-site .... though there are too many things on the home page - you may want to tweak it so that it doesn't look crowded ... also if u r in italy then may be u will require someone to do off-line marketing for u in north america (the biggest pet market) ... by the way u need to provide ur email add so that enthusiast can contact u.

[MarcoITA → ideas101]

Tanks for your post. I'd actually need someone in the USA that can take care of the marketing. Interested people can contact me through the website's Contact page

[ideas101 → MarcoITA]

what's your marketing strategy for offline and online? u may also hire a small mktg/pr firm but they need to be paid in cash ... which i dont think u will opt for???

[MarcoITA → ideas101]

The offline strategy (which I haven't started yet) would be marketing the site at dog/cat/pet shows, competitions and meeting.

Online would be maybe sponsoring a few good sites, but mostly relying on the word of mouth of pet enthusiasts that discover the site, and embed thier pets' slideshow into their blog (the slideshow links to their full profile page of course). I'd also like to grow the number of people blogging on pet-files, which would bring new readers, and possibly new writers

[ideas101 → MarcoITA]

do u have budget for these strategies? are u generating any revenue at present?

[MarcoITA → ideas101]

The site is pretty new, and I currently have zero ads on it. I plan to put Google Ads on it in the future, but only when I'll have a bigger traffic.

Budget for the marketing is one of the things I'd like to get from a partner, besides some help on strategic guidance :)