While working in DC for UMA, I followed the Department of Transportation and other transportation regulatory agencies. The DOT only regulates two areas of business that deal directly with consumers, the bus industry, and the moving industry. Consumer complaints for moving companies were quite high at the time. I felt that if I were to ever build another website, it would be in the moving industry. After a 10 month break from BusRates, I began building a moving company directory.

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I think of producing a website as similar to producing a movie. You are combining several parts into one, finished vision. I hired several work from home contractors to help collect and analyze data. They would complete a complex, rough file on a given US state, and then I would run the final process on each listing, confirming that all listings were accurate.

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Writing the initial content took about 3 months. I basically collected every piece of information I could about the moving industry, and then slowly narrowed it down into the most concise, relevant and simple bullet points or articles. Once completed, I went back and revised each section every week or so, or as I learned more about the industry.

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I designed blueprints and evaluated designs for about 8 different themes for MoversReviewed before settling on the current layout and colors. Many functions were scrapped or revised several times over the course of 10 months and beyond. We launched before many of the back end functions were completed. There really is so much more to the project than meets the eye. I can see how web developers can easily underbid a job if they do not price their work by the hour.

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One of the easiest things about the project for me that would be considered the most difficult for someone new to start ups, is the signing up of advertising customers. I have seen dozens of competitors, employees and peers struggle with the sales process. Making your first phone calls to companies to sell them something is frustrating and nerve-racking for most business people. If you don't know what you're doing, it will surely result in an angry hang up. I've been a curious student of selling since I was 12. I am at a point where I can close nearly everyone I talk to, and I can do it with efficiency. Even more importantly, I have figured out how to win customers by email. When I first started BusRates, I was lucky to sign up 1 or 2 new customers per week with great effort. By the time I left BusRates, I could sign 1 company per hour by phone, usually only 5 per week the way time was allotted. For MoversReviewed, I signed up over 1,200 moving company locations in 5 months. The reason for the revolutionary improvement is that I know exactly how to present the service by email, instead of one at a time by phone. I also have the confidence to go straight for the largest corporate accounts, instead of the smaller local companies. There are several other subtle factors I am leaving out.

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When building BusRates, growing traffic was easy because no one had heard of Google Adwords. I could attract 12,000 visitors per month for $1,200. But when launching MoversReviewed, it cost roughly $3,000 just to get 1,500 low quality visitors. Growing traffic among heavy competition would be the biggest challenge of the entire process. So when a large, popular, national real estate site with established traffic made an offer to purchase the site, I accepted. It's just getting too late in the game to start a dot com unless you have great connections or deep pockets.

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Any future work I do in web development will be to help someone else on their project, rather than start my own. Of course, I couldn't stay away and ended up building yet another startup.

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Below are some snapshots taken of MoversReviewed as it was when the site was sold in December of 2012.