[teiji]

I want to start a website that collects information, ratings and reviews for local stores. The reviews will all be independant, but at some point these local stores may want to advertise on my site, and I want to encourage that so I can potentially make some money. The reviews and ratings would remain indep. If a business that has bad reviews on the site wants to advertise on the site, so be it. Anyway, what is involved here? How do I set up a site that allows ads like this? can one of the domain registrars like Go Daddy do this for me? do I have to incorporate as a business?

I know what I want to do but I'm confused about how to go about it. Any help or ideas about what technically and legally is involved would help. PS - like the headline says, I'm not talking about parked pages or Adsense like programs - I want local businesses to be able to advertise on my opinion site and for me to control it and get paid by them. Kind of like the reviews on Citysearch - you'll see reviews of restaurants and then local restaurants advertising on the site with links to that restaurant...

[hrychleah98]

I have been selling advertising on my websites since 1999, and here are some steps you need to take:

- Decide on your legal structure. You can be a sole proprietor and sell ads. You don't have to incorporate or create an LLC at this point. Get your website up and running first

- Buy your domain name. Don't go for free web hosting - you'll be limited in terms of the ability to serve ads

- Find a web host, and pay for your hosting. Paid hosting allows you to install scripts and more programs that will make it easy for you to run and serve ads

- Get traffic to your site. Advertisers will come to you if you've got traffic. No traffic, then no advertisers

- Prepare a media kit. This should explain what your website do, who your target audiences are, and most importantly, why should your target advertisers want to advertise wih you. Include metrics

- Determine your rate card. That means setting what ad formats you will offer (e.g. skyscraper, sponsored text links, listings in the directory), the duration of the campaign, the price (is this a monthly rate or based on CPM or cost per thousand impression or CPC cost per click)

- Consider an ad management software to help you serve ads, especially if you will serve an ad across all your pages and you've got several advertisers. If you only have 1 banner advertiser for example, you can easily hardcode their banner ad (href and img codes) into your page. But if you already have 2 or more for the same banner spot, then you need to be able to show one ad first and the second ad next.

Check out Google Ad Manager http://www.google.com/admanager or OpenX http://www.openx.com --- both are powerful and free ad servers.

[hurlee93]

First I think it is a bad ideal to do this, a lot of bugs can be in this,you may start your own business that will be better I think.

[rodd]

You seem to know what you want to do as you describe it in your question. Sounds a bit like a Local Directory. You do as you say. Collect all the info on local stores etc. Get the website written and add all the data (not cheap) . Then show the site to the local stores and see if they want to advertise. The difficult thing is monetising the site. How much would a store pay? What would that store get from the site? How would you know visitors from your site are going to the store? It's no good having an idea unless 1. you can get it up and running and 2. you know it will be profitable.