City Deal of the Day/Week
Some cities have online restaurant and entertainment review sites. Many cities do not. A savvy entrepreneur with a small start up fund for web hosting and domain name registration could use a software like Wordpress to create such a guide for their city.
Although the business could earn money through traditional online advertising, affiliate marketing and such, the model could be expanded in a way that benefits both the business owner AND food and entertainment venues within the city.
Consumers LOVE coupons. They love deals. Not enough review-based websites leverage this.
A review site that features a “deal of the day” or “deal of the week”–which would be an online coupon that visitors can print out–could see its traffic rise substantially over time as repeat visitors come back to check out that week’s deal. The deal has to be sweet enough to keep people returning to site, such as “buy 1 adult meal, get 1 free” or “25% off your next bill” or “2 for 1 bowling.”
The site owner charges a local business to feature a deal of the week. In turn, the local business sees an increase in traffic during that week’s deal.
As traffic on the site increases, the site owner could charge more for the “deal of the week” placement.
Consumers get something of value, local businesses see a spike in growth (particularly helpful during slow seasons) and the person who runs the site/business could see a pretty decent profit over time if they price their deals right.
A few tips:
-Don’t try to get rich off the bat. In fact, consider allowing some restaurants or places to be featured for free, just to help stimulate interest in the site.
-In the mid-term, consider buying traditional advertising to promote the site.
-Maximize the site’s SEO through smart coding, good title tags and meta descriptions. As the site begins to earn money, consider putting some of that income back into hiring an expert for better placement on search engines for terms like “(your city name) restaurants” or “(your city name) entertainment” or “(your city name) deals/coupons”
-Grow the site into a value-added place for your visitors by writing rich, funny, or highly unique reviews of various entertainment and dining spots around your city. Avoid the usual cliches that most review sites do, and actually create content that makes people laugh, smile, or piques their interest in a particular area of the city.
-Visit your local visitor’s bureau (if you have one) and see how they might help promote your website to visiting tourists. Tourists also love local deals and are a great audience for your site.
-Don’t forget to use a measuring tool from the start such as Google analytics to help demonstrate traffic growth to local businesses. This helps solidify your value if you can prove “10,000 people a week will check out your coupon and possibly print it out.”
-Consider a business’ objections to your model and work on responses to them. Common objections might include “But people will print out 5 copies of the coupon” or “Your price is too high for what we get in return.” When possible, find actual figures and data to back up your value (compare the cost of placing a coupon on your site with how much potential business, in dollars, the business could receive in a given week)
One final tip: if you write reviews, include photos! People love imagery, and it helps spice up the look of your site and make it more user friendly.
 |
 | This idea was generously donated by Reese. As a thank you for the donation of the business idea this site and the Myvesta Foundation have helped to fund the business of entrepreneur Yaren Sok.
|
Leave a Comment