sarahjohnson

Not really, menupages.com is New York and surrounding areas, I'm in New Orleans. Allmenus.com, for New Orleans, has less than two hundred restaurants listed and I looked at about 15 of them and only found two menus. I have over 450 restaurants listed and 230 menus.

My target audience is more along the lines of people at work that are asking each other what to eat and they can't decide. I've done this a million times myself. So you get the folder that has a bunch of menus in it and thumb through them. If they went to my site, they could filter the list down to their part of town or zip code so that would make a much smaller list and see restaurants, most of which they're familiar with, to make a decision. I forgot to add, my original idea was to make a site where restaurants could update with their specials for the day or week. My brother-in-law puts out a bi weekly menu, something I've been putting up on my site. I'm going to be doing this soon. To the other poster about France, I was thinking that this could easily go national and even international, ala craigslist. I never think small.

Thanks everyone, lot's of food for thought! Just to clarify, the $275 is for a year in case that wasn't clear. Can you explain more about the relationship to $275 to $5000 in revenue. I find that interesting but I don't understand it fully. I do have lots more info that I can, and will be soon, listing for each restaurant, like hours, price range, more menus from the same restaurant. It's just that I wanted to get it started and that's even more work to get the info and type it in. But that's very soon. I don't know about other cities but probably only 10% of restaurants here have web sites. I was talking to a restaurant owner about my site, I go there a lot and know him pretty well. He was telling me his own experience with how difficult and frustrating it is to find menus online so just because a restaurant has a website doesn't mean that my site doesn't have a purpose. In addition to having a printable menu, I structured it to be sooooo simple and easy to find a menu. I hate sites that are hard to navigate. I did a test and searched for a restaurant that I know has a website and pdf menu. Other than the search, it took me 3 clicks to get to the menu. If I'd used my site, it would have taken 1 click after the same search. I had never hear of citysearch before I started this site and that's another difference between me and other sites. I have been advertising in the community with flyers, for now since I'm poor, but I will be doing print advertising once I get going. I haven't seen any of the other directories that are local here doing any advertising. They rely on search engine traffic. In only one week I'm getting 100 to 200 visitors every day and I think that's pretty good for the little advertising I've done. Also, over half my visitors have added me to their favorites so I know they'll be back and they've been emailing my site to others. I've even had one email thanking me for providing this resource. I'll have to do advertising if I can't get them to subscribe BUT I really don't want to. That's one of the big annoyances of mine are sites that are all cluttered with ads and popups. That's one of the points I make in my advertising to restaurants. The idea is that people searching the web want information and they want it fast and easy. Thanks for the suggestion for a 'owners' type web site. That would be very easy to implement. I'll put it down on my to do list. The blank area in the header is where I'm going to put featured restaurants, I think I'll have it done sometime today. I'm really hoping that's the only additional advertising I'll need to add. EXACTLY!Thanks every, any other ideas? Sarah

Ah, that's a great tip. I hadn't thought of that! Thanks. Thanks Doug too for your advice.

I recently started a web directory of restaurants. I'm from New Orleans so that's where I'm starting but I'd like to expand to other cities (eventually). I started this site about 2 months ago and I'm ready to market to restaurants to pay to be listed. I'm a computer geek and not a salesperson so I dread this part of the job. I have a unique idea and the traffic my site is getting is proving to me that I have a good idea. Now comes the marketing part. I'm asking restaurants to pay $275 per year to have them listed which I think is a manageable amount any restaurant can afford. So my question is what would be the best way to market my site to restaurants? I've tried to go to a few in person but it's time consuming and I obviously can't go when it's their busy time. Would it be ok to fax, email, or call? Would it do me any good? Just drop off in person literature about my site? Thanks in advance. Sarah www.TodaysMenuOnline.com