Mike, I've had friends sell dogs off Sirus, but you have to wade through a lot of BS ads to find good ones. And there's a lot of simply false advertising on that site in many people's opinions.

True, but there will be BS where ever there is anything for sale from unscrupulous sellers. The problem is, who decides who is allowed to advertise? Just one person? Too much room for personal bias. Maybe 2 or 3 people review and approve ads on a new setup? Maybe have breeders that want to advertise fill out a sort of resume or something so that they can be prescreened, then after that they're allowed to list ads without having to be screened each individual time?

Good ideas there, Mike. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

There has to be some way to stop the scammers from placing BS filled ads - it'd just be nice to be able to deal with buyers/ sellers and not have to worry about that.

Well, if you have experienced people on the "staff" that know a lot of people in the breeds (that will be advertised) and how to look into trial results, those can be the screeners to keep out false advertising. Have that staff do a random screening every once in a while of ads placed. They could also be the ones that approve/deny on the initial application to advertise on the system, to cut down on necessary man power. I mean, the only way you'll cut out a lot of the crap and BYB listings is to have someone dealing with the BS behind the scenes.

What might be difficult is getting the word out about it and convincing people that the only ones allowed to place ads for litters/dogs for sale on it have been approved by a "board" of knowledgeable people. So that would mean you'd need a couple of people that research pedigrees, decoys/helpers, TDs, and experienced breeders to sit on this "approval board." It's going to be a lot of thankless work!

Sure, but you can also be very upfront with what the requirements for being allowed to post an ad on that type of board would be - and have those that lie or try to sneak by the requirements get also listed on the site on some kind of "wall of shame" area.
Advertising works *both* ways...

I think you need to make the site very democratic. Let people put their shit-tzu litters along working lines provided you have accurate data.

This gives you as much dog related traffic as possible and develops a 'brand' presence of sorts. You are the best place do find a dog litter. Period.

You need in to incentive-ize people to come to this site and post there and to post quality data. Quality meaning honest. Perhaps the 2000th litter poster gets $1000? Or every 300th poster gets $250? This has worked for data generation for some .com enterprises.

Fundamentally, working dog buyers want to find a working dog. They simply need information to make good choices. You can’t sell somebody a hole when they already know how to own and operate a drill.

So here are the measures I propose to ensure data integrity:

1) Charge for contact information– this qualifies the customers to breeders. You know someone wants a dog because they have paid to get in touch with you. This would have to come at a later lifecycle phase and might not work but is something to think about.
2) Charge breeders by the marketing information they want to convey. If they want to simply post a backyard litter, make them identify that they are a hobby breeder. Furthermore, enforce them to justify why they think they it was a good idea to breed their dogs. This is a good ‘moron’ finding question.
3) If you have a working litter you need to tier up the charging. This finances further information investigation. Essentially, I think people should fax trial results in to the system for the public to view. Or AKC certs. Or whatever proof they have. You have to pay extra in order to have the site minders look at this information. This also qualifies people as genuinely interested in selling a litter that is deemed to be working.
4) Explain to users how to find a good breeder i.e. give your customers the drill to make their own holes. Have an appendix that describes what each certificate has.
5) Make breeders click-to-agree that false statements made on the site for the purposes of fraud or otherwise will results in litigate from the site owning the company as such actions damages said company. The company only has value if the data it owns has value. This is a reasonable legal argument. That being said, don’t let anyone post from a place where you can’t sue. That probably means only USA breeders can use the site. This is ok by me. I think we have enough importers of dogs from other countries based in the US to make that feasible. When you have cash, become a corporate entity in other countries that will allow you to sue.
6) Have the user base police the site through testimonials but also by feedback. Ebay’s feedback system might be something to draw from . They offer a limited amount of character space to do it you can’t be ranted against or slandered. If you do get bad feedback, you get an equally small amount of space to retort. This gives you a strong signal to noise ratio on feedback. For example, if you know a sire is not a good dog. You would have perhaps 75 characters to explain why you thought that way.

There’s the beginnings of a business plan. My consulting fee is $200/hr - I wish! You won’t be a .com multi-millionaire but I think you could generate some respectable money with this idea.


I’d implement this in java with a mySql backend. You can likely cross sell this platform to other non-dog specific customers if you picked a strong platform to run it on. PHP is garbage once you get working in the real world.

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Sure, but you can also be very upfront with what the requirements for being allowed to post an ad on that type of board would be - and have those that lie or try to sneak by the requirements get also listed on the site on some kind of "wall of shame" area.
Advertising works *both* ways...

Yeah, then you just block them from ever submitting an ad again and if they try, have it link to their spot on the "wall of shame" rather than the ad they tried to place. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I think that the google ads on the Sirius site are annoying and would really deplete the purpose of a working dog based site. Any crappy byb can advertise with google and leerburg would have to spend all day blocking their ads.

If the site was to cater to the working dog world it would be hard to have other breeds outside of the working dog world. Based on the majority of people serious about working dogs, they don't seem to agree with the breeding of certain dogs for just pets- ex. am.gsd, dobermann, rott, hunting breeds etc. By letting breeders advertise their non-working or show dogs on the site to pet homes, it would almost be contributing to the destruction of the working breeds. It would seem that the site would have to be a strictly working dog breeder/buyer site. It would be hard to sell both. Personally, if I was looking for a working dog from good lines & good kennel/breeder and I stumbled upon a site that also sold AKC american gsd show dogs also, I'd quickly pass it up.

Assuming the purpose of the site is to specialize in working dogs, working bloodlines, and improving the breeds for the work they do, Do you think advertising both sides of the dog world would turn-off our potential viewers, buyers, or sellers to the site?

I suppose it begs the questions:

If you can search by working litters only and that data is qualified do you care about the data you didn't ask for (pet litters)?

Do working breeders need a channel to sell their dogs to people looking for a working dog? Does it matter if this channel is democratized?

Can it be conveyed to working dog breeders that the success of carrying on working bloodlines requires that people buy well breed working dogs and that their cause isn't forwarded by causing people to NOT buy dogs from pet litters? i.e. if P -> Q does not mean ~R -> P.

Not that I want to get cerebral about the issue...

Well, my thoughts on it (pet breeders) being allowed to advertised on a working breeders' directory (just to call it something other than IT right now) are pretty simple...

If someone is looking for a serious working dog or has interest in working dogs, are they really gonna give a crap about some pet litter? Also, are there not pet quality pups that pop up in working litters?

One stop shop, no catering to the masses or the froo-froo's...I'd say strictly working type dogs, no Poodles or Yorkies! That's the only way the "directory" would get a reputation as THE place to look for a working prospect.