[Question] Commercialise a database

[Houses4Rent]

I am fishing for ideas without going into to much detail yet.

Assume you have built up a database in 7 years of 30000 people in Excel with at least first name, cell and email. In my mind as a layman I would think that a third will fall away due to duplications and/or outdated info.

What would you do to gain an income from it without selling the DB which is probably illegal anyway? If possible MLM would not be the preferred solution either.

All (whacky) ideas welcome as a good solution probably lies in a mix of more than one idea.

[Greig Whitton]

Much depends on the nature of the people in the database and how their details were obtained, but the most immediate opportunity that comes to mind is affiliate marketing (preferably digital products).

[Houses4Rent]

Almost all of then were responding to our adverts - tenants looking for properties to rent. A much smaller part (approx 2%) will be landlords who did not give us a mandate.

[HR Solutions]

It sounds ver similar to a few databases we subscribe to on a monthly basis, which then gives us full access to by our staff. So in short what about monthly access ? Obviously you would need to jack it up by transforming it so that you would have control if a company did not pay.

[Houses4Rent]

HR Solutions, I am not with you. Would that not be the same as selling the data? Is that legal? It might still be now, but as soon as POPI is signed off I doubt it will still be legal.

[AndyD]

HR Solutions, I am not with you. Would that not be the same as selling the data? Is that legal? It might still be now, but as soon as POPI is signed off I doubt it will still be legal.

If it's legal it's still unethical to sell peoples data if there was no expressed agreement when it was given. I've got close on 50 email accounts because I often open a gmail account specifically for dealing with a specific company or signing up with a particular forum etc. There's been a couple of occasions where I've caught people red handed sharing my information and it hasn't ended well for them.

[wynn]

Start by sending out a very short monthly news letter discussing problems experienced by both tenants and landlords add a list of your present listings, recommend they forward the letter to their friends and encourage them to list their email addresses with you, never share the addresses they will know it is you, also offer an unsubscribe option.

The first thing that will happen is that they will start giving you repeat business.

Then mention advantageous systems that you can get affiliate commission on? gardening services, painting contractors, plumbers etc. keep it property related.

Then charge some or other institution to advertise on the letter? banks, insurance companies etc.

Keep adding to the mailing list.

[HR Solutions]

Its not illegal if people use your site to add their names to so that they can get known in the market for whatever they want to be known for. Example there are recruitment sites - if you are looking for a job you upload your details onto the site whereby recruitment agencies such as us pay a monthly fee to have full access to the site. Therefore perhaps you need to create something like this with your excel data base. Example: People that want to sell their houses can upload their details/house onto the data base. Just an example.

[Houses4Rent]

Thanks for ideas so far. My idea is however to make this a completely separate venture from my property activities. Ideally not even under my name. My name stands for property management and investment. If the database gets used for something else I do not want to be known for that activity.