Idea for service thoughts?

[mikka1]

Crashem, so, in essence, you want to build a kind of "Credit card builder", like it's offered on many lenders' websites, but with the only (or the main) difference of looking not only at the offerings of that particular lender, but at the market in general, correct?

I think such an idea can be extremely interesting and very useful for those who are not very sophisticated with credit-related matters. Frankly saying, I was thinking about somewhat similar, but in a quite broader way of providing a kind of "experience-based advice" to those who for certain reasons feel lost not only with credit, but with some other day-to-day matters. Due to my past as a recent immigrant, I was mostly thinking about other newcomers to the US who often fall under the wrong influence and make lots of mistakes in the very beginning (not only with credit, but also with other life matters). 

I think, as a matter of principle, you need to understand if you want it to be a purely online-based service, or you want it to have more of a personal flavor. Needless to say, it will, in my view, drive the whole bunch of other possible decisions. The second issue that I see is how you want to get rewarded for your advice. The ideal option would be to get 'rewards' from those you address your advice to, but you should really offer something valuable and easy to digest for your target audience to open their wallets to you. I suppose this has already been mentioned several times in this thread. And the third point which is closely related to the previous one is possible bias. As correctly mentioned above, all or almost all services of similar kind are just pumping Cap1 and other low-tiered cards and services simply because these are the only (or few) companies willing to pay for this (in a form of referral bonus or any similar way). You will always need to fight a temptation of offering a person something you will be paid for or something that is really good for his/her particular situation. 

Not sure if such a discussion is appropriate here (and useful for others) but if you want, I'm ready to share some other ideas via PM or any other way you prefer as this is something that interests me too. 

Cheers!

[SwampSystems]

I may not fully understand your idea, but is this not similar to the services already offered by sites such as CreditKarma, CreditSesame, and others?

[Crashem]

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@SwampSystems wrote:

I may not fully understand your idea, but is this not similar to the services already offered by sites such as CreditKarma, CreditSesame, and others?

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They really don't look at your credit and provide accurate advice info.  This is more personalized.  Got rejected by Chase, call their recon department on this number  Ask for CLI from these GE cards as it has been 4 months.  App for Amex as I see you had old Amex and your score is good enough to help with AAoA.  Ask for AMEX CLI since it has been 6 months.  Interested in Chase card, well your CLs are low so you are likely to get low limit and CLI from Chase are hard pulls.  Maybe you should reconsider.  Just BKed, here is the list of unsecured and secured cards that are immediate post BK friendly and you should get two cards to start building your credit profile.  Your a college student with no credit.  Here are some options: 1) get AU accounts and then app these cards 2) no au, then app for these cards in this order 3) etc.

CK, CS and others don't do anything like that.  Not even close.  Even with their card recommendations, they can be highly inaccurate in giving you chance for approvals.

[compassion101]

I'm totally the entrepreneurial type as well and have thought about a few ideas myself in the credit arena from things I've learned here.

The average person does not want to devote the time to learning the nuances of credit by reading these forums all the time, so I think there is a market to provide/apply this knowledge for a fee. But is there a long enough list of people willing to pay what your time is worth to get the info, and will you be able to effectively market to reach those who will.

I think the idea of tying into an existing CMS might be pretty solid. i.e. lets say xyz cms service charges 12.99/month for cms, you agree to send them all your customers and in return you get a discounted bulk rate (say 6.99). You then sell a service to customers which includes CMS (rerouted to xyz cms) and your credit advice service for a total of 17.99/mth. It might have some wings. But the time involved may be substantial compared to the number of people who will sign up. You'd have to make the service seem very solid.

Another idea is to run a non-profit giving the advice you mentioned. You can collect money from various sources, possibly gov't grants, donations, run events, memberships, etc. If you feel you can make a profit on this you can even take a reasonable salary as executive director.

[Crashem]

I actually know the credit world from my old work pretty well.  Funny thing is credit montioring costs like $1 a month in costs.  Credit reports are what are expensive since there is a monopoly and they don't want people to compete with them.