hello all, i was thinking about starting a vegetarian restaurant directory for my city. i have a pretty good domain name as well. i was thinking to add few other things such as recipes, articles etc. what do you think about the idea and the monetization options. thanks you! **i'm sorry if i posted this under the wrong section and would ask the admin to move it to the right one**
I think it depends on the size & culture of the city. If it's like New York, with thousands of vegetarian restaurants, it could work. Where I live (town of 20,000 people, most of them live on a diet of meat pies & chicken nuggets) it wouldn't work. You need to do some research if you think this will work though. To begin with, I actually suggest eating at each of the restaurants you go to, so you can offer an opinion on each.
That is a pretty small niche. If you are in a large city and you know the vegetarian scene well you can add some valuable content to attract people and search engines.
Before diving into your web venture, I would first find out how many vegetarian restaurants are in your city. If you have say over 100 or so, then you would have a pretty good niche to market. Also check to see if anyone else has such a web directory just to see what sort of odds you are looking at. On the other hand, if it's something you are passionate about, enjoy, then go for it and see what happens. Good luck and all the best with your directory.
I don't think it's that small of a niche. In fact over 1.5 million searches every month for vegetarian plus searches for vegetarian restaurants, recipes, etc. So if you have the passion for this niche, go for it. As far as making money out of it...I'm still trying to figure that out myself Good luck!
thank you for your input. i have a pretty good domain for my city and i see that we have "enough" restaurants to start a small directory. this would be my first directory and i just want to see how things would go. i don't expect anything big
Your best bet would be to monetize it by charging say $25 per month or $225 per year for inclusion. Use the proceeds to run ads on TV, in print and in other forms offline to people who are interested in vegan eating. Assuming you can get a large number of businesses on board, promoting it won't be a problem. TV advertising gets pretty cheap if you buy enough.
How can you establish a price for HIS work ? and for some you didn't even see what it looks like and what it can deliver ?
If you are interested in setting it up feel free to link from my directory, its not got a PR yet but I only set it up after the last PR update, expect it to be PR 1-2 minimum next refresh! Check it out on http://www.myveganplanet.com/vegan-directory.
i would use some keyword tool and find out what people search for like 'vegeterian (city)' then optimize yoursite for that if you have good content and get approaved maybe you can use adsense if not maybe you can find affiliates and banner advertisings