I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

Perhaps this would have been a great business model to start astroturfing big pharma by focusing on SEO, allowing users to upvote meds that worked well for them and letting big pharma pay to bump theirs to the top or highlight it or something like that. Or for a given class of med, charge big pharma or individual chemists a certain amount for referral back links.

As a consumer your flow is probably naturally: what type? which brand? where is cheapest in my area?

There are plenty of energy comparison companies making money that way. They have a lot less tangible data.

I’ll be honest - the tech is so cool you nearly made me want to reach out and buy where you got upto. 'Nearly' is code for, yes I'd be interested, but I don't have enough $$ to make you interested vs the work required to build a profitable model.

SEO on medical topics without expert backing is a notoriously uphill battle as Google can arbitrarily apply heavy penalties to the search results.

> We have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL [Your Money or Your Life] pages because low quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact a person’s ... health

> The Lowest rating must be used for any of the following types of content on pages that could appear to be informational:

> * YMYL content that contradicts well-established expert consensus.

> There is no evidence that the author has medical expertise. Because this is a YMYL medical article, lacking expertise is a reason for a Low rating

Source[0] is 175 pages. Grep for "medical" or "YMYL" for more details.

[0]: Google Quality Rater Guidelines https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...