MensClubGuide.com ( http//www.mensclubguide.com ) is a well trafficked
site that is frequented by mostly men who are travelling to various
cities. The site has been online since 2000. There are over 3300 strip
clubs listed and their data as well as reviews are available free of
charge to anyone visiting the site.  The club information is listed
free as well. We have seen several comparable content sites going to
"subscription based" sites.  Our original thought on generating
revenue was to offer "premium listing" like the "sponsored links" /
top-listing anytime when someone searches for clubs at a city. 
However, our initial attempt to convince the club owners/managers to
list premium was not very successful. We couldn't even find someone to
solicit ads from the club owners even though we offered 40%
commission.  So, I would like to receive some specific ideas in
generating  income from this site. Please include any execution /
implementation strategies that you would recommend.

Expect great feedback for well thoughtout answers.

After briefly reviewing your site, I would say that your two
most-saleable assets are your traffic and your content.

I see that you have already implemented many of the "traditional"
strategies such as banner/newsletter advertising that make good use of
your traffic. With that in mind, have you considered ways in which you
might profit from your content? I am also assuming you are looking for
ideas that are outside the kinds of things you have probably already
tried.

For example, you could sell edited versions of your articles to
webmasters who are looking for content for their newsletters or
website. A local radio host where I live has made a good deal of money
reselling her computer tips to other websites looking for
computer-related content. She implemented this solution by selling the
other websites access to a special database-driven page that they
could inline into their own site using ASP or PHP. I also worked with
a large hotel reservations site that made extra revenue by selling
"branded" versions of their hotel search to other sites. The branded
version of the hotel search ran the same search code against the same
database as the main site, but the results pages had the logo and look
of the website that bought the content. In addition to your articles,
you might be able to package your club listings and reviews for sale
in similar ways. For example, you could dynamically create "Top 10
Lists" of clubs in major cities and charge webmasters local to the
region a monthly fee to inline the list.

For more ideas on the types of content that people sell to other
webmasters and how they implement it, check out the site Free Sticky.
(http://www.freesticky.com/) Free Sticky is a directory that lists
freely accessible and low-cost content providers. Another useful site
for ideas is Content Finder
(http://www.electroniccontent.com/conFinder.cfm), which is also a
directory of licensable content.

In addition, you may be able to repackage your club listings and
reviews as useful offline content. For example, you could offer a
searchable Palm Pilot version of your database that users could
download for a fee and take with them when they travel; in essence, a
shareware software application built from your existing data.

Finally, you could create a wireless version of your site designed
specifically for cell phones that would be a paid "premium service"
for your visitors. Ideally, this implementation might be similar to
what MovieFone offers for movie tickets.
(http://www.moviefone.com/help/palmhelp.adp) You could sell on-demand
instant access good for 24-hours worth of searching for a
micro-payment of only a couple of dollars, as well as sell "discount"
annual subscriptions for whatever seems a fair price. The idea here is
to hit the impulse buyers who want to know what's near them now and
have nothing but a cell phone in their pocket.

You could even use the wireless application as a kick-start to getting
clubs to buy the premium listings you wanted to sell before. You start
by offering clubs enhanced listings both on your website and in the
wireless app free of charge with the stipulation that in exchange they
provide some sort of discount to your customers, a kind of "electronic
coupon". You make these discounts available only to your
premium/wireless customers and use the discounts as a sales tool (i.e.
service pays for itself in discounts to your favorite clubs!).
Eventually, if enough clubs buy into the idea and see that the
advertising works, you can start selling them the premium listings. A
common tactic in the print publication industry is to quietly offer
"free" [very visible] advertising to a leading business, and then a
few months later go around and sell similar ads to all of the
business' competitors... who are much more eager to buy ads when they
feel like their competitor is getting exposure that they aren't.

You can learn more about developing applications for the Palm Pilot at
Palm's Developer Site. (http://www.palm.com/developers/) Many
applications for the Palm and other mobile devices are written in
Java. You can learn more about Java for mobile devices at Sun's
Developer Site for Java, Micro Edition at http://java.sun.com/j2me/.

If you have any questions or need clarification, do not hesitate to
ask.

Good luck with your endeavor!

Spot

---

Request for Answer Clarification by efoal-ga on 06 Jan 2003 17:06 PST

Spot,

Thank you for your answer. Do you have any data (examples?)on the
success of 1) selling Palm applications of the content that is already
available, 2)any data on selling subscription to customers?

Thanks again.

efoal

---

Clarification of Answer by spot_tippybuttons-ga on 09 Jan 2003 16:16 PST

Let me clarify what I meant by "offline" content -- I realized that I
ran a few different ideas together there -- and then follow with some
statistics that I think will answer what you want to know.

According to a 2002 report by comScore Media Metrix, of the 19.1
million users in the U.S. owning a PDA, only about 5.0 million have
Internet access from those devices. While the number of consumers with
mobile Internet access has grown significantly in the last year, the
number of Palm and other handheld device consumers *without* mobile
Internet access is still substantially larger than the number of
consumers who do.

That means for any Palm application, you have two markets available to
you: the "offline" market of 15 million or so Palm and handheld
consumers who don't have Internet access, and the "wireless" market of
several million consumers who do.

When I said "offline" Palm application that customers could "download
for a fee and take with them when they travel" I was specifically
thinking of the market without Internet access from their PDA. This
group of consumers, in effect, does *not* have access to your
content... especially when they travel. In this case, I would expect
the sales to be comparable to that of any other shareware application.
The total sales of a shareware application are highly dependent on a
number of factors, particularly distribution; however, practically all
well-written shareware applications have a similar "registration"
rate. If you are not familiar with the shareware model, most shareware
applications offer a free time-limited demo, after which users must 
"register" the application in order to continue using it. (Some
applications limit features instead of usage period.) The typical
registration rate of a shareware application claimed by most authors
-- regardless of content or platform -- is usually between 1% and 3%.
I'm not sure exactly what your site traffic is, but your web site
traffic is probably a pretty good gauge on the number of downloads you
can generate.

As far as wireless subscription applications, I wasn't able to find
any hard numbers, however, I was able to find a number of articles
about the state of the industry in general. Links to these articles
are listed below for your review. Many of the major players, such as
Disney, Playboy and ESPN have begun offering paid wireless products in
the last few years. While these products have not been making
substantial revenues yet, most of these businesses have remained
committed to producing new wireless content because they believe that
these types of products will become profitable in the near future.
Most analysts agree. According to Yankee group, the total number of
wireless data users (cell phones, PDAs and other platforms combined)
is expected to grow to over 96 million by 2006, which represents a
very large potential market. In addition to direct subscriptions, it
seems that many content providers are selling their content to larger
networks and service providers who are looking for features to entice
subscribers to their service.

The biggest lesson that seems to be learned from other companies
trying to enter the paid subscription content market is that there is
no "one size fits all" solution. The entire market is very new, and
because of that there is no "generic" business model yet as everyone
is still experimenting to find out what works.

With that in mind, you could try doing a survey of your visitors to
see what they would be interested in and what they would be willing to
pay for. Realistically, you'll be marketing to your own established
web site visitor base first, so it would make sense to find out what
appeals to them most first. This will help you best determine what
type of features a subscription/wireless service would need to provide
to encourage your visitors to buy.

Good luck,

Spot


comScore Media Metrix Report on PDA Internet Usage
http://www.comscore.com/news/cell_pda_082802.htm

Making Wireless Content Pay
http://www.ecmag.net/r13/2002/kuchinskas8_02.html

Wireless News Factor, Wireless Content Flood Ahead
http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/16014.html

B2B, Forbes.com Study Finds Business Users Will Pay for Wireless
Content
http://www.btobonline.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=10285

Consumer Stance on Paid Content Shifts
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=8878481

Disney's Internet Restructuring Pays Off as Sites Turn Profitable
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB103704675429610828,00.html


I also thought you might find this interesting. It seems that there is
already someone doing a Palm application with club listings, although
their database is smaller than yours (about 2,000 clubs):

Pocket Strippers 
http://www.pocketstrippers.com/strip_club_list_info.htm

Spot,

I very much appreciate your well thoughtout and researched answer and
clarification.  I will be able to use some of these ideas to generate
some revenue.

Thanks again.