i wrote a blog post on this sometime back he can refer to that http://tinyurl.com/39apck

if his IDEA is unique and he is Nw Savvy a good PR campaign can bring a lot of user to his service .

He cna contact CA, Auditors,Tax Consultant ,Finance Guys to help spread the word in their circle .
He can cut a deal with all the Tele calling /DSA company to sell membership.
beyond that its very specific to biz and person . ask him to contact me

i am toooo young for giving advice but here my thoughts.
(this comments is bit longer !)

First of all congrats to the person to be very frank, and congrats to you, people are sharing their thoughts and open to learn from you ! Kudos.

Second point. Its good to have mentality to develop prototype model (without VC-funding) and existing customers. [its good, he may thought to raise VC funding before development ! i personally dont favour].

There are two advice, one is even you dont want to have fund raising, prepare b-plan approach few VCs ! Intelligent VC may ask you “Real question” and as they may want to sepend money it is kind of real test and “Fact Finder”.

Second advice is try to bring someone “Proffessional sales/marketing folks into team”,
I dont want to say your current marketing people is not good. just they dont know reality. it is not always bad to raise money (Listen Raxit….!). Many people good at “boot strap” but not as good as “Scaling” , competitors [i got e-mail from one of campers that someone cloned mykavita.com !] Try to get the person who is more expert in scaling, title may be advisor, VC,sales/marketing, CEO, xyz !

Anyway amit, this is great idea. [i was thinking for something on case studies, will tell you some stuff off-line]

-Raxit
http://www.m4mum.com
http://www.mykavita.com

I have a website on personal finance and have created it more as a hobby. I have some ideas on a possible business model for which i am giving the link here: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddk9x7bw_45cgpdsbgn

I have not yet started working on this model. I would be keen on getting in touch with the emailer since I feel I have some knowledge of the domain that he’s working on!

Based on the information and its implied derivatives on the forum, it seems to be a case of enhancing web-traffic for a b2c portal operating in the SME paradigm.

Given the liquidity concerns raised by the business owner, any high-risk strategy can be ruled out on face value. I think that your assessment that the web may not be the most optimal model to create leverage is also accurate.

Are you in a position to share some information on the investment made for google/rediff(has that made any impact on the traffic/sales)? A related SEO/SEM strategy could be the best bet in terms of minimal time-to-market/investment.

Cheers

Arun

I have to understand his business first, but I can contribute Search engine marketing would be better option for him. Affiliate Marketing he can try buy joining in various affiliate programmes such as clixgalore or click bank. I am sure he will get some quality leads by this programmes.

Good Luck