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Ask HN: I built a proof of concept and now I am lost. Help?
I love food related shows and wanted a way to find restaurants featured on various shows I saw on my favorite networks. I thought this would have been done, but to my surprise no one had did it. I worked with a buddy and we pumped out famousfoodfinder.com. I didn't spend too much time focusing on a user base because I merely wanted to use the tool.
Fast forward a few months and now we are looking at a site we must maintain. The design is not pretty and could be better, BUT is it worth it? We called up the Food Network to sell them the site and they requested a business plan. I sent that in back in early July, but I haven't heard back anything yet. Is it worth it for use to redo the site in a more efficient manner or just move on to the next idea?
My biggest thing is that we could create a community, but it seems like a waste as the Food Network already gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day. Do you think a low visitor count would influence their decision to buy the tool or use us as a source? If you can't tell I am a bit scatterbrained on the whole situation and have been left here wondering what the best approach is...
- mattmiller 16y agoThe more visitors you get the better the value will be. Get yourself a small community ASAP. Also, call more than one potential client. You could call every medium to large restaurant corporation and every good sized general or news website that wants a link bait feature. I would also contact local newspapers and offer to make them a regional subdomain that you brand with their name and logo. Like sandiego.yourdomain.com that only shows the san diego region. Get the San Diego Union Tribune to pay you to brand that subdomain with their logo and links to other san diego stuff on their site. Do that for every region in the US, and charge a variable amount per month based on your traffic levels. Also, release press releases. Try to get picked up by small papers. Potential clients like to see these things. Good luck.
- x0ner 16y agoThanks a lot for the advice. We got put in a local paper, but there wasn't much action from that. The hardest part of the whole site is that the marketing is literally to everyone and just not one area. With that said, I really like the idea of using subdomains for each location to condense it down. That really helps with the marketing aspect.
- mattmiller 16y agoThats great about getting in the local paper. Local coverage didn't convert a lot of people for us either, but we showed those articles to every client we contacted. I don't know if it helped, but I like to think that it gave us some credibility.
- minalecs 16y agoI don't see how this site is anything more than a feature for another site. Just keep it up for people and put ads on there. Host it off your home computer, can't imagine you're getting much traffic and should be free. Think of something creative to do around it.. I really don't have any ideas on how you can do anything more with it.
- x0ner 16y agoIn its current state I would agree. That was my general question though - should I embark on trying to build a community on the site? Have users talk about the shows, comment on restaurants, etc. I am torn on whether to put more time in or not.
- krisneuharth 16y agoI am currently working on a restaurant review site that aims to aggregate reviews and ratings from other sites. If you had an API that would let me query for restaurants on your site I could potentially send people your way.
- x0ner 16y agoPlease shoot me an email or some more information about your site. I could easily put together a few calls to have you access the information and tie in.