AI-FriendlyHigh Profit

Start a B2B Data Aggregation Service

People search: “how to sell data as a business” (Emerging search)

Collect and clean a scattered public dataset (licenses, permits, inspections), then sell access to it via API or subscription to companies that need it.

Difficulty

Advanced

Startup cost

$500 to $3,000

Time to first $

90 to 180 days

Revenue potential

High

Profit margin

70 to 90 percent

Viability

7.2 / 10

Search demand

Low (Emerging search)

Where it runs

Online

Best for: Analysts, developers, researchers, detail-oriented builders

The opening

Why this idea is overlooked

It sounds technical, but the hard part is persistence, not code; valuable public data sits fragmented across government sites.

The roadmap

How to start, step by step

  1. 1

    Pick a dataset with buyers

    Building permits sell to contractors and material suppliers; new business registrations sell to lenders, insurers, and sales teams. Start from who pays, not from what is easy to scrape.

  2. 2

    Validate before you build

    Call ten potential buyers and ask what they pay for leads or data today. If nobody currently spends money on an inferior version, walk away from that dataset.

  3. 3

    Build the collection pipeline

    Write scrapers for county and state portals, file public records requests where no portal exists, and load everything into one Postgres schema with a source and date on every row.

  4. 4

    Make cleaning the moat

    Dedupe, standardize addresses and names, and flag stale records. Anyone can scrape; a dataset a sales team can actually import is what commands the price.

  5. 5

    Sell simple, then scale

    Start with a monthly CSV or spreadsheet subscription per county or state, then add API access once a few customers ask for it. Do not build the API before the first check clears.

  6. 6

    Poach from worse providers

    Your first customers are already buying stale or overpriced data. Offer a free sample of your fresher version for their territory and let the comparison close the deal.

  7. 7

    Automate the refresh cadence

    Schedule weekly or monthly refreshes, publish a data dictionary, and monitor for source site changes. Reliability is why B2B data subscriptions renew for years.

Your first move

Aggregate one public dataset (business licenses, building permits) into a clean database and sell API access.

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