4 ms·

I make about $5/month on Food Trucks Near Me [1] through ads. At least it's not losing money! [1] http://foodtrucksnearme.com http://foodtrucksnearme.com

noirman 14y ago
I assume the hosting is not free?
- philip1209 14y ago
  I'm on a single Heroku dyno, which is free.
matznerd 14y ago
PUT MORE ADS! In between each row should be an ad unit! Contact all the Food Truck owners and get them to put up an ad on a monthly basis. Food Truck owners are relatively easy to sell to (I have experience here) because their business is small. Take that money and reinvest it back into generating traffic and build your own list of food truck customers and then charge for blasts etc...
- philip1209 14y ago
  Fair enough! I'm writing a Stripe page to allow food truck owners to buy a 'priority listing.' It's currently set at $100/month and you are put in the top row. I'm thinking of dropping it to $20/mo. Any input on pricing?
  - phil 14y ago
    Impossible to offer pricing advice without knowing about your traffic. Done right, you are offering a fairly valuable form of advertising and one that restaurateurs understand well.
  - matznerd 14y ago
    Since you have 4 cities, you can test different prices in each. $100 sounds a bit steep for a food truck unless you can guarantee ROI for them. I think it would be smarter to just add more cities and keep the price lower. I would try something like $25 a spot and try to make them sign a 3-month advertising contract. If they balk, just remember you have 30 other food trucks and only 3 spots. This makes more sense if you had a good amount of traffic.
    - philip1209 14y ago
      Multivariate testing? Now you're talking. I am considering a lower pricing tier for a menu. Currently only St. Louis has a couple menus, because curating and formatting the menus is a pain.
      - mapster 14y ago
        thinking the paid version would depend on local competition. Pay more to get more if you have a lot of competition. if low competition, they would pay less for the ad. You can determine which truck should pay how much based on geospatial statistics if you have a location for each truck (let me know if you have any questions about this). also, my brother in law has 2 food trucks on a Hawaiian island - and there are plenty here in California, so I hope you will add more locations.
alanfalcon 14y ago
Vegas has a great and growing food truck culture, and I'd dig a site like this for the area. Not sure what's involved in expanding to new cities, but I figure I'll throw this out there anyway.
- philip1209 14y ago
  Awesome, I'll do Vegas next! Kansas City is set for release this week - the data is already loaded, just need to do some aesthetic tweaks.
  - ffumarola 14y ago
    Philly has a lot of food trucks, too.
arohner 14y ago
I've wanted exactly this site. Please add SF and Austin as locations.
- philip1209 14y ago
  The problem is the twitter API - I'm currently rendering with JQuery clientside, and the number of trucks in SF would exceed an IP's call limit. I've been working on a cached serverside implementation that uses multiple IPs to overcome this, but it's too much of a pain. In addition, I would have to completely redo the UI to accommodate that many trucks. I think that the current site will stay for mid-sized cities (30-50 trucks) unless a developer steps in. I had almost finalized giving 49% of the company to have the rails shop in town completely redo the site and do the caching.
  - arohner 14y ago
    49% is a whole lot. For that much, you should find a co-founder who will work full time. Also, to reiterate what other people in this thread have said, find better ways to monetize this. Think about bigger ads, charging trucks to send email to your subscribers, etc. Traffic solves one of the bigger risks for a food truck. Having a real business plan here means you can give away a much smaller chunk of the company, or pay cash, and give away no equity.
    - philip1209 14y ago
      All good ideas. I hadn't considered the email - I am using Systematic Revenue for emails and this could be a great way to take advantage of the system.
negrit 14y ago
Damn you should try San Francisco(The bay area). The food truck business is big there ! There is food truck 'party' every weeks. May be LA and Seattle as well. I was looking for a website like this when i was living there.
- philip1209 14y ago
  I just answered a similar request here [1] - but basically the site can't support a city with that many trucks because of Twitter's beloved API call limits. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4470623 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4470623

noirman 14y ago

I assume the hosting is not free?

philip1209 14y ago
I'm on a single Heroku dyno, which is free.

matznerd 14y ago

PUT MORE ADS! In between each row should be an ad unit! Contact all the Food Truck owners and get them to put up an ad on a monthly basis. Food Truck owners are relatively easy to sell to (I have experience here) because their business is small. Take that money and reinvest it back into generating traffic and build your own list of food truck customers and then charge for blasts etc...

philip1209 14y ago
Fair enough! I'm writing a Stripe page to allow food truck owners to buy a 'priority listing.' It's currently set at $100/month and you are put in the top row. I'm thinking of dropping it to $20/mo. Any input on pricing?
- phil 14y ago
  Impossible to offer pricing advice without knowing about your traffic. Done right, you are offering a fairly valuable form of advertising and one that restaurateurs understand well.
- matznerd 14y ago
  Since you have 4 cities, you can test different prices in each. $100 sounds a bit steep for a food truck unless you can guarantee ROI for them. I think it would be smarter to just add more cities and keep the price lower. I would try something like $25 a spot and try to make them sign a 3-month advertising contract. If they balk, just remember you have 30 other food trucks and only 3 spots. This makes more sense if you had a good amount of traffic.
  - philip1209 14y ago
    Multivariate testing? Now you're talking. I am considering a lower pricing tier for a menu. Currently only St. Louis has a couple menus, because curating and formatting the menus is a pain.
    - mapster 14y ago
      thinking the paid version would depend on local competition. Pay more to get more if you have a lot of competition. if low competition, they would pay less for the ad. You can determine which truck should pay how much based on geospatial statistics if you have a location for each truck (let me know if you have any questions about this). also, my brother in law has 2 food trucks on a Hawaiian island - and there are plenty here in California, so I hope you will add more locations.

alanfalcon 14y ago

Vegas has a great and growing food truck culture, and I'd dig a site like this for the area. Not sure what's involved in expanding to new cities, but I figure I'll throw this out there anyway.

philip1209 14y ago
Awesome, I'll do Vegas next! Kansas City is set for release this week - the data is already loaded, just need to do some aesthetic tweaks.
- ffumarola 14y ago
  Philly has a lot of food trucks, too.

arohner 14y ago

I've wanted exactly this site. Please add SF and Austin as locations.

philip1209 14y ago
The problem is the twitter API - I'm currently rendering with JQuery clientside, and the number of trucks in SF would exceed an IP's call limit. I've been working on a cached serverside implementation that uses multiple IPs to overcome this, but it's too much of a pain. In addition, I would have to completely redo the UI to accommodate that many trucks. I think that the current site will stay for mid-sized cities (30-50 trucks) unless a developer steps in. I had almost finalized giving 49% of the company to have the rails shop in town completely redo the site and do the caching.
- arohner 14y ago
  49% is a whole lot. For that much, you should find a co-founder who will work full time. Also, to reiterate what other people in this thread have said, find better ways to monetize this. Think about bigger ads, charging trucks to send email to your subscribers, etc. Traffic solves one of the bigger risks for a food truck. Having a real business plan here means you can give away a much smaller chunk of the company, or pay cash, and give away no equity.
  - philip1209 14y ago
    All good ideas. I hadn't considered the email - I am using Systematic Revenue for emails and this could be a great way to take advantage of the system.

negrit 14y ago

Damn you should try San Francisco(The bay area). The food truck business is big there ! There is food truck 'party' every weeks. May be LA and Seattle as well. I was looking for a website like this when i was living there.

philip1209 14y ago
I just answered a similar request here [1] - but basically the site can't support a city with that many trucks because of Twitter's beloved API call limits. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4470623 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4470623