Brainstorm Explosion. How Do I Monetize Pepperoni???

[George Wright]

Hi All,

Pizza anyone?

Several months ago I was thinking of how I used to sell websites and space on my little homegrown local directory and one thought led to another and to make a long story short I wondered to myself, "Self, instead of going local go nationwide and instead of having a directory for any and all kinds of businesses focus on one...." Yes it was a "what if" brainstorm session with only one participant, me.

Several months later I was talking to a friend of mine and I ran the idea past him and he liked it so much he said he would bankroll it if I would implement it.

So we went to wikipedia and looked up "largest cities in the U.S." and found the top 200 cities by population. Needless to say each of these cities have a LOT of Pizza joints.

We decided to go with the top 100 plus a few more that we wanted just for the heck of it.

The idea being to buy the URL for "BestPizzaInNewyork.com" "BestPizzaIn Chicago.com" etc.

The first thing we found was that someone just days before we decided to do this had started buying "BestPizzaIn..." We checked the list one by one and found that this person had grabbed the first 60 cities. (Lesson, If you are going to do a check of URL avaliability be prepaired to buy them right now, you are being watched.)

We bought the next 50 and also went back and added "The" to the mix and covered the first 60 with "TheBest" thus we own. TheBestPizzaInNewYork.com and BestPizzaInHollywood.com etc.

Here are the ways I've thought of to monetize this.

1. Nationwide pizza directory (pizza restaurants pay for spots. Would this make "the best" angle biased???
2. Nationwide pizza wars. Get people reporting on "their" choice and receiving free pizza coupons, beer mugs, etc as prizes. Monetize with adwords, other things for sale.
3. Sell ad space on our directory to Pizza related items, i.e. soft drinks, beer, cookbooks, etc.
4. Sell the Domain names along with a blog/website to the highest bidder in a city. What Pizza Parlor wouldn't want to be "TheBestPizza" or "BestPizzaInYourCity.com" And Move on?

Would you do any one of the above or do you have another idea for me?

www.TheBestPizzaInAmerica.com

Thanks,

George Wright P.S. This is all in the baby step stage so any and all advice is greatly appreciated. G.W.

[phanio]

Why can't you try them all? Offer all of them. See which ones work best then stick with that. What you will find is that some markets respond better to one method and other markets respond to something totally different.

If you don't like that answer - go to each market and see what competitors are doing - then either copy them or find ways to improve on what they are doing (use them as a start place).

[DeePower]

I love the graphic it's so cheesy! If you sell pizza restaurant ad space by city I don't think anyone will interpret that as being able to buy the best pizza award.

Do you plan on having a kick off contest for each city? Perhaps you could pick 5 cities that you have friends in and have them judge 10 pizza places over a month's time and then award 3 finalists. Announce the finalists to the city's newspapers with the idea that the final winner will be determined by the number of posts they get on your forums. There would have to be some caveat like the posts have to be a minimum of 25 words or so. Otherwise you'd get the restaurants telling the employees to just post over and over again.

Dee

[Tenzo]

Hi George,

From your options, I like number two. My reasoning is that this would be a great topic to showcase user (consumer) content. People love to argue, and love to have insider knowledge of "the best" of something.

I've also seen how much the restaurants will work to get customers to participate in local reader polls and such. I can only imagine what could happen with a properly promoted website.

Interesting idea, and a fun exercise.

Best Regards,
Kevin