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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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