Web Scraping is a powerful tool.

So powerful indeed, that you could build an entire business based around scraping data from the internet.

After all, data has value. Specially if you can turn that data into valuable insights for other people.

Today, we will go over some business ideas based around web scraping.

What is Web Scraping?

First, a quick review of the basics. What is web scraping in the first place?

Web scraping refers to the process of extracting data from a website into a new format. In most cases, web scrapers will export data into an Excel Spreadsheet or JSON file.

By using a web scraper, you can essentially build an API for any data set on the web. Be it product data from an eccomerce website, stock prices from a finance website, or more.

Want to learn more? Read our guide on web scraping and what it is.

Web Scraping Business Ideas

Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of things. Here are some web scraping business ideas.

Keep in mind, there are hundreds of uses for web scraping. These are just some ideas to get your thoughts going.

Price Comparison / Tracking Platforms

A very popular use of web scraping comes from Price Comparison and Price Tracking platforms.

You could set up a web scraper to pull product details and pricing from multiple retailers and display them on one single website. Allowing users to find the best retailer to buy a specific product.

You can also use this approach to also provide pricing history for products, letting users know if the current price of a product is the lowest its been sold for.

Lead Generation

Web Scraping can also be used for lead generation. Either in the B2C or B2B sectors.

You could use web scraping to build high-quality leads lists for all kinds of businesses. Of course, you wouldn’t want to tackle this project lightly.

Check out our guide on using web scraping for lead generation.

Web Listing Aggregators

Web listing aggregators are great businesses that rely on web scraping. The best part of this concept is that it is extremely versatile.

You could create an aggregator website for job listings, real estate, automotive listings and much more.

It’s all about finding a niche of listings that can draw the attention of enough people that can find it useful.

Here are some guides you can follow:

Financial and Marketing Analysis

You can use web scraping to extract large amounts of data from all sorts of industries.

These datasets can then be data-mined to extract valuable industry or market insights. These can then be sold to companies in said industries. Or you could run these analyses on-demand for your clients.

This might be one of the most involved and complex ideas on the list, but also one of the most profitable.

Some examples we came up with are:

Sports Data Service

Sports data is huge and can be interpreted in many different ways.

With web scraping, you can extract data from all sorts of sports and leagues to collect them all in one place. Be it for further analysis or for sports betting.

You can read several guides on extracting sports data:

How to get started with Web Scraping

At this point, you might be ready to get started on a new web scraping business.

But how do you get started?

Luckily, web scraping is way easier than you’d think and we’ve put together the perfect resource to get started.

Check out our guide on how to start scraping data from the web with a free web scraper.

Continue reading: Web Scraping Ideas: 5 Ways to Get Started Now