Bumblebee Garage Business Plans

The only real plan we have for our new search engine is to make money. And I am pretty sure that is a key element in any good plan. Needless to say, our plan is anything but good. Like most other things we try, we just do it and figure out what to do with it later.

So we don't really have a plan. As much as I would love to outline a step by step growth process and financial projections through the roof, there just aren't any.

All we want to do is develop an alternative. And expand our already large footprint in the online automotive market and expand our web hosting services to used car dealers.

Once the database is completed we hope to offer a web feed API that will allow any automotive webmaster to run their own privately labeled automotive search service for free.

We are currently running this technology in a smaller capacity with our automotive search feed at buzztrader.com. You can see how the web feed concept works at http://buzztrader.com/webmasters.html.

The simplified form allows any webmaster to copy and paste a simple javascript onto any static page instantly converting static content into a dynamic automotive search. Giving a small website access to a huge database and visitors access to information that a single webmaster could never manage.

Advancing that idea with a complete automotive industry search engine, we will be able to have a free service that can be used by mllions of people from thousands of remote websites. A free service that gives the webmaster the potential to capitalize on their own traffic just like google does on its own search. Additionally we will build one of the largest portals for locating online automotive related content.

It's a new concept and we have all the tools to launch it right from our garage. Well, at least to start building it in our garage.

With an already large base of webmasters using our existing automotive products, launching the search should be quick and efficient.

Ultimately we need to ask, how do we make money giving away a free service? That is a great question, and one I do not have an answer for. But I am sure some suit will come by with an MBA from Harvard or Yale and figure out a way to get 1.65 billion dollars for the whole deal. Or at least I hope that will happen otherwise, I am doing a whole lot of work for nothing.

It seems like every good idea starts with good intentions, like google. A couple of students that created an awesome search engine. Now billionaires that spend more time in court than programing. Accused of every wrong doing from copyright infringement to the support of the growth of communism in China.

Two guys that just a few years ago were hoping to get their PHDs and find jobs at companies they now own.

What started as a good service ends in corporate greed and survival. Expanding to keep shareholders happy, becoming more commercial daily while the search results become more ladden in spam and useless jibberish. The company spends more resources on pleasing stock holders than building the actual product. They likely have more lawyers fighting for them now than the original search had websites listed.

If at all possible, we would like to avoid that. Maybe just have a great product, not make all that money, at least not with the search. We have a great hosting business and it puts food on the table.

I think personally I would be happy to be recognized as the biggest innovator in search technology and the industries leading expert web programer. If I make a billion dollars in the process great, but its not always about the money.

Maybe, it just time for a simple search that works, filters spam and is not self serving. If there is no profit from the search, then there is no financial conflict in the results. It also makes getting volunteers to review sites easier when we have no financial gain from their work. The world just seems to work better when things are free.

Searches like ask.com and altavista.com offer 10 ads formatted like results then 10 results and then more ads. at least in the man list, then off to the right the google type side ads and a few links at the bootom with more ads. If the interest was in giving you good results, you would never click the ads. But the goal is to have you click the ads as if they are the results.

In my opinion, google is the only site left with at least some integrity, as low as it may now be, it is still more than most others. At the same time the onslaught of made for adsense sites and proliferation of spam pages has evolved from google's adsense program. Since they benefit from sending traffic to those sites there seems to be little effort to stop them.

Integrity. Its a great idea, but in the end will greed win or will we stick with our ideals?

Either way, we are off, in the race to build a better search engine. One alternative to the sea of advertising. one companies shot at the American Dream.

Not every dreamer has a plan. Some of us just buy lottery tickets and pray. Our lottery ticket just happens to be bumblebeegarage.com. I just wish it had only cost me $1.