Muse Idea - Too Hard to Automate?

[Tim]

Hi guys,

Just finished the 4 Hour Work Week after having it sit on my shelf for months. I can't believe I waited so long to get to it.

I recently stumbled upon an idea for a website that I think is really unique and could take off.

The site I want to model is http://cheaperdrinker.com/

I love how they show everything on google maps, and for the current night. You can also click "more details" and a window pops up that shows the specials for every night. It's very simple and easy to navigate, unlike a lot of sites I have found in my area. Luckily they focus solely on the Minnesota area.

I would want to start small. With just the college and downtown areas where I live, and eventually expand nationwide. Obviously I don't live everywhere so it would be dependent on user generated content (wikipedia, youtube, etc). The revenue would hopefully come from bars wanting to advertise on our site and through our (local) mailing lists.

I'm just not sure how I would be able to automate this or if it would be realistic to attempt.

Once the site is up and running and I get the initial specials up. I figure I could eventually make it all automated, outsourcing moderating work of calling to verify specials and what not.

I could hire someone to run a mailing list in each area, but I'm not sure if it would be cost efficient.

I can't design the site myself and would have to outsource that, I'm not sure how much it would cost.

I would be able to maintain it myself (given a decent wordpress-esque control panel). I've contacted several people for estimates.

The one downfall to being a poor college kid working retail is that I have little to no money to get this project off the ground, I'll just have to keep saving I guess.

Thanks for any input you can give,
Tim

[froldt]

Could you set up a grass-roots site where the users provide the content? Something like Craigslist or wikipedia for happy hours? Then your job would be to get it started and keep up the framework.

[clanshrapnel]

That does seem to be a lot of manual work. Imagine how frequently drink specials change at bars/restaurants, and everytime they change, you'll have to update. If you don't update, then people won't trust your website as a source of information.

I think the suggestions as above make sense... leave that information up to the users to figure out. You'll need to give the users an incentive to want to post that information up (perhaps the incentive of getting the same information from other users may be enough ?).

On the otherhand, I've seen this model for online menu collection: hire people to collect drink specials from all of the bars and report them back to you. An online menu system in NYC collected its menus by paying someone like $1 per menu and collecting them all day. Even after that fact, it's still a lot of work to update, but you can probably figure out a way around that.


College towns definitely seem to be the place to focus on, as well as happy-hour bars near work areas.

Good luck!

[Caesar_X]

This site screams for a Web 2.0 approach. Set it up so visitors can update the site, and have a voting system similar to Amazon ("6 out of 29 users thought this post was useful") or Bugmenot ("17% of users found the drink specials to be accurate).

Let the community do the work for you and "reward" the community leaders (AKA the big posters) with something silly like a beer mug next to their username on the site. Strangely enough, people go crazy over online recognition.

Once you get enough content, you can start expanding the search capabilities.

"I'm looking for a ladies night somewhere in St. Paul that is open until 1am", etc, etc.

And you don't want to pay someone to verify specials anyway. You want to get it successful enough that the bars are calling YOU to advertise their nightly specials and paying for premium space on your site.