Thread: My Idea for this year, Please Critique

Concept: Creat a site that lists all of the Bar Specials for a specific party University.


Need- people want to know where the party is at. Nowadways people are searching and planning before they go out at night. People now want instant gratification and I believe my site could deliver it.


Entry-Difficult, although the market is not saturated it would require building the site from scratch, going b2b to recruit bars/liqour stores/restaurants. From what I have learned from MJ, is that few people are willing to actually execute and idea and put in all of the work.


Control-I would have full control of this venture. If I can't code something, I will outsource the coding temporarily. Once traffic is driven to this page it will be easy to maintain/modify.


Scale-This university is rather large, and once a template is built it could be easy to duplicate at other schools. I don't really see this as a fastlane site, but more or less a revenue generator/first time project while I finish my degree.


Time-It will require a good amount of time starting up. I don't feel that it would be a heavy amount of coding/keepup once the initial traffic flow is at the site.


Revenue Model-There are two based ideas that I have. 1. make it a subscription based format for bars/restaurants with monthly fee of X dollars (the university I go to has a decent city life atmosphere so this would start to stack up, especially once the other restaurants/bars/liquor stores see it growing.




Marketing- In Internet Marketing I have found that it is best to focus on 1 aspect (Copywriting, Article writing, SEO, Graphics). I am currently studying the art of SEO and making it my passion. I will use SEO to drive traffic to my site. I also have a decent amount of campus presence and plan to market via flyers all over the campus and social networking. (conicidentally I plan on using this for info products as well)


The only question I am trying to figure out is how to start it out. Should I build a WP blog talking about awesome deals/specials going on throughout the city, and fuel this with Adwords, or should I build the site, use some of the top restaurants and basically give them free advertising. Once I can show the owners that I have a strong market share and I am a key asset to their marketing business I can then start charging a monthly fee.


I would really appreciate any critiques toward this business model, as it is my first venture that I want to work towards.

THANKS!!!!

A local business where I live has a facebook page called "[City] To Do", and all they do is post restaurant lunch specials, bar drink specials, local events, etc. I contacted them to see about having them post some things for my business, and they told me they charge $100/year.

It appears he has < 50 businesses doing this, so he can't be making more than $5,000/year and yet he spends a bunch of time on Facebook every day updating these statuses... seems like a terrible business to me.

At my college (a top 5 party university), the college newspapers all advertised the drink specials, and they were consistent from week to week, so after the first month of school everybody already knew the schedule.

Thanks CParsons,

I took this business plan model from Torrey, and I'm going to use it for all of my ideas. I am really going for something like this http://www.newbrunswicknightout.com/ and I think that this example has a little bit more substance than a facebook page, and it probably costs a little bit more. Now that I look back at it, I think the most I could make is 15K a year. (50 bars * $25 a month * 12) probably not worth all the work..

To add value I'd promote user content. Ratings like yelp/trip advisor. I'd encourage users to upload status of a club and/or mobile video. Real time info to show which place is happening. Busy clubs might want to link up a real time web cam. "hey the party is here, cmon out".

"Where is the party" with today's technology, people want to know "where is the party, RIGHT NOW"

That's a pretty innovative idea. Do you think that it could be automated though? I am all for doing a ton of hard work as long as it can eventually be something automated?

Sounds like it could be automated. It's almost like a social networking site where the users provide the content. You write the code for how the business, party, & party-goer profiles will look and they'll do the rest. Provide a voting scale/rating system so they can vote on the different venues which would give each place a grade or starred rating. The site should pretty much run itself from there.

Originally Posted by Cparsons

A local business where I live has a facebook page called "[City] To Do", and all they do is post restaurant lunch specials, bar drink specials, local events, etc. I contacted them to see about having them post some things for my business, and they told me they charge $100/year.

It appears he has < 50 businesses doing this, so he can't be making more than $5,000/year and yet he spends a bunch of time on Facebook every day updating these statuses... seems like a terrible business to me.

Update on the business I was talking about - they now have 5,000 facebook fans, charge $75/month and put a couple landing pages for you on their website, increasing their SEO value. They probably have closer to 100 businesses now, which would put their earnings at $90,000/year. So obviously this business model has some potential...

For my business, I don't see the access to 5,000 facebook fans being worth $75/month indefinitely. I'm considering using the service just for the peak holiday months, when it would likely be worth it. At that point, the facebook users who've seen my updates will likely have either been to my store or liked my own page - making "[City] To Do" no longer valuable.

Originally Posted by Cparsons

For my business, I don't see the access to 5,000 facebook fans being worth $75/month indefinitely. I'm considering using the service just for the peak holiday months, when it would likely be worth it. At that point, the facebook users who've seen my updates will likely have either been to my store or liked my own page - making "[City] To Do" no longer valuable.

This is true but there are always new businesses opening up or new owners buying an existing business or special events you want to promote. Also there are always new people moving to town especially in a college town, every year there is a fresh group of people that could use somebody to show them around.

Plus at 90k/yr he could replicate that 10times and he would be making a killer living. If updating the posts became too time consuming hire some employees.

Originally Posted by Pete799p

This is true but there are always new businesses opening up or new owners buying an existing business or special events you want to promote. Also there are always new people moving to town especially in a college town, every year there is a fresh group of people that could use somebody to show them around.

Plus at 90k/yr he could replicate that 10times and he would be making a killer living. If updating the posts became too time consuming hire some employees.

Very true, and this business hasn't been around that long so if they continue to grow their number of facebook fans at a fast rate then obviously they continue to provide value.

I don't think you should do a monthly thing, but instead do it like a promoter who gets paid based on the number of referrals. Promoters make decent money, so this seems like a good idea.

This is a good idea, i had actually thought of something like this last year but didn't do much with it.

The way I would go about doing this without you doing much work is making it user generated content. So, I would make an app people can download and then if the place that they are at they can update on the app on how the vibe and crowd is during that time. This could work in real time as long as people will constantly update about the bar or club.

Sell app

Well that is my take on it.