
Ask HN: Thoughts on a simple business idea - kolemcrae
I run a digital marketing company along with a bunch of other stuff. I saw an ad on Facebook for someone that will teach you to &#x27;rent websites to businesses&#x27; even if you don&#x27;t know how to build website.
Of course, I didn&#x27;t bother to sign up. I actually know how to build sites and have access to my own server....
Which gave me an idea:
Rent websites to businesses. Yeah, not very original.
I would scroll the yellow pages, find small businesses without a website and email them.
Offer oculd be something like $40 a month, rent the site. I build it (super simple site!) and if they stop paying it goes off the internet!
I host it on my server and just point a domain name to it.
I could even have an upsell of like $10 or $15 per month for simple updates (such as updating a menu?)
Thoughts? Is this oversaturated? I tried basic site design before but businesses were being inundated with requests to do this. Seems kind of dumb.
Thanks!
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sjs382
Things like this are done _all the time_ , especially in the medical &
insurance fields. Companies will buy up domains like diseasename.com &
service-city.com and create a site, do some inbound/"organic" marketing/SEO
and then rent it out for the purposes of lead generation.

Some companies that do this in the medical & service field will control the
customer communication chain and supply their call center and appointment
setting, too.

It can be fairly lucrative if you can get the right niche (medical,
malpractice, etc) and are good at inbound marketing.

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tmaly
I think doing a simple digital marketing checklist on top of just having a
website would be worth while for a small business. My brother runs a small
vape shop that helps people quit smoking.

He gets hassled all the time by people wanting to do his marketing for his
website, and he cannot tell the difference between someone that is going to
help his business and someone who is a snake oil salesman.

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grok2
Feels a little like extortion specially if you've acquired a suitable domain
name, but yeah, for a lot of businesses that aren't savvy, seems like a good
idea.

