[Icelarry27]

i have a web site that i just started. its called DrinkUpDC.com

The point of it is to list all the happy hours for restaurants/bars in the Washington DC area. I use a google map so people can search if they know what area of the city they're going to be in, or a list in ABC order if they're looking for a particular bar.

heres my question: how do i increase traffic to my site, and how can i turn that traffic into money? right now i'm offering advertisements to bars and stuff but i don't see that working for the long-term or giving me too much money.

what do you guys think?

[Hooman]

I have an idea for you.

Your site is decent, but I think these are ways you can improve. First off, take off the Google Adsense from the sides. In my opinion, it makes your site look cheap. You can make money in other ways.

I'd also put the main navigation on the left side. Like...

Home
Happy Hours
> Monday Specials
> Tuesday Specials
...etc. (make the sub-menu options visible)
Contact Us

------------

But here's what I would do to get traffic.

Go out to the bars where they are having these specials, and take pictures. Post the pictures on your website. Get people (and hot women) to pose for the pics, and post all of these pictures on your website. Try to go to a bar a night, or if you can, get each of your friends to go to a different bar and take pictures. Or somehow let people post their own pictures on your site.

This will give you fresh content (something your lacking), and a reason for people to visit the site...And when you take people's pictures you can somehow let them know about the website...like get their email so you can send them the link to the website where their picture is. You can also promote the site via Myspace / Facebook, by making a group that local bar-hoppers can join.

Then, in a few weeks, you can go to the bars directly, and tell them here you have this website where locals get their pictures taken while partying/drinking, and so they're visiting the site. Then you ask the bars for like $50-$100/month to advertise on your site. You tell them the benefits, etc. You get 10-20 bars to advertise, and that's a grand or two, depending on how you price it.

I would even extend it having contests. Like getting people to have their picture taken, and then set it up so people can vote for the hottest guy/girl. Here's a really simple (and free) image rating script you could use: Destiney's Reality · Nashville TN based PHP, Ruby, and Rubyonrails Programmer Greg Donald

That's just an idea...that I would do if I wanted to make money with that type of site.

Best of luck.

[Aperio]

I wouldn't completely remove the Adsense ads, i'd just work on integrating them more into the site (they will be more effective if they appear to be integrated / support the theme of the site rather than sticking out like an ad).

I would also suggest you look into getting a more professional design in place. The concept behind the site and domain are good - but I think the layout doesn't do it justice. (This is not meant to come across harsh, just some constructive criticism).

Also I would suggest really focusing on SEO to try to capture some relevant search engine traffic.. it doesn't appear to be optimized at all. If you need some help with this, let me know and i'll try to find some helpful resources to point you to.

How about opening up the site for people to leave reviews of local bars? This and the suggestions Hooman gave above might be some good ways to spark more interest/interaction from your visitors.

Hope this helped.

[jasaunders]

Agree with Hooman. Get rid of the adsense and focus on making this into a legitimate business with real advertisements. He posted some good ideas. Many of these are things we did with Madbars. The main thing is to post fresh content that makes people continue to come back to the site and tell their friends about it. Pictures, contests, polls, message boards, up-to-date information on drink specials... these are all things that will help build loyal followers, which is what you need for a site like this.

You don't want random traffic to your site. The key shouldn't be to convert traffic to revenue, because your traffic is probably mostly garbage unless you are heavily focusing your advertising locally. You need to generate buzz by word of mouth and to do that, you have to give people a reason to keep returning to your site.

[hugh009]

This could draw media attention even from people like TechCrunch. you need to see if you can scale for mobile as this is one of the BETTEr apps I have seen for it! Good luck!

[bostonbrian]

There is something similar already, Going.com. Check it out, see what you can do to make it stand out.