A genius way to make money
This basically seems like one of the easiest ways to make money on the internet there is. So there are a number of places that apartment communities advertise. Many, like Apartment Shopper's Guide, cost the company a flat monthy fee per month. Yellowpages.com costs $495/month and when communities start look for places to cut advertising, they're going to cut sites like yellowpages.com that don't bring them any leads.Others, like the internet's biggest apartment website, Rent.com, don't charge the apartment community anything to be listed online.
Here's the Rent.com business model:
1) Allow apartment communities to be listed for free
2) When someone rents an apartment, charge the appartment community $398 for filling their vacancy as per the agreement
3) Give the new resident $100 for listing you as a referral
It's quite genius, especially considering that most people look at a bunch of different websites and are going to list you as the referring site if theres a $100 kickback for them (even if they viewed another site first).
Recently, ApartmentMonster.com came onto the scene offering a $175 kickback to referrals. It's pretty easy to establish yourself when you're giving away money. Start up costs? All you need is server space and someone that knows how to code a professional web 2.0 style website.
So if anyone wants to make some money on the internet, start offering $200/month and let me in on the profits.