
Tell HN: I mixed Yelp with Craigslist and got this. - proexploit
http://iowacityaccess.com
======
nailer
I _love_ _love_ _love_ your design (so much I've bookmarked it as a reference
for my own projects).

It's the perfect mix between extreme minimalist and professional.

~~~
proexploit
Thank you so much. Minimalism is my guiding principle in designing things. For
this website, I took it even more to the extreme than usual, to focus on the
ease of use and helping users find the content, but this is literally one of
the best compliments you could give me. :)

~~~
az
I agree, its very neat, clean and easy to use. Its so straight forward its
amazing!

------
smokinn
It's a pretty good start but I would suggest doing the same as for new events
with the bars and restaurants. When I clicked on the "are we missing" link, I
expected a form where I could add one (either automatically or moderator-
approved) but instead got a popup window with a single text field.

If I could easily locations I would (well, actually I wouldn't because I know
nothing about Iowa but if it were available in my location I would) but I'm
not going to start writing prose to get a location added, especially not on a
mobile device which is where sites like these are most useful.

EDIT: Another suggestion would be to rename the Events header to be more in
line with the verb theme leading up to it. Drink - Eat - Play for example or
something similar to that. Breaking the theme is jarring.

~~~
proexploit
Thank you for your suggestions. I always like hearing about other user's
experience with the website.

The reason I have the are we missing link? instead of a complete form is
because of the large amount of information I collect on each bar/restaurant. I
wouldn't expect a user to give me enough information, and I wanted to allow
them the flexibility to say something like: "the summary seems like it was
written by a two year old" rather than a form they need to say.

@EDIT: Funny you would say this! Originally, the design did say eat - drink -
play (there's even a banner still saying that on my Facebook group). I felt
that play didn't describe general events well enough but I may have to
reconsider.

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with me.

------
steveplace
You can generate some nice cashflow working on niche local sites like this.

General process:

1\. Scrape listings off yellowpages/yelp

2\. Start ranking for local keywords

3\. Call restaurants/bars/auto dealerships to confirm info and generate lead

4\. Offer ad sales on site, as well as design/SEO -- can outsource the latter

There's a great discussion on wickedfire with respect to this field, if you
can tolerate the profanity: <http://bit.ly/4L1Rya>

------
ZitchDog
I like this. I live in Iowa City and have been thinking for a while now that
Iowa City is sorely lacking a good place for entertainment info. Goiowacity is
widely used even though it's terrible. If you're looking to collaborate on
this or other projects my e-mail's in my profile.

~~~
proexploit
Sent you an email. Glad to know there's others in the area!

------
lunaru
If you need more local content, you can try pulling some data from Oodle
(<http://developer.oodle.com/oodle-api>). I know for a fact that CL is very
guarded about scraping their content.

~~~
proexploit
I think my title may have been a little misleading. I don't scrape the data
from Yelp and Craigslist, I meerly used them as my inspiration. All of the
content is added manually by myself (hence the empty parts of the site).

~~~
seasoup
Would be great if people could go on and add their own businesses. There is
only so much you can by yourself.

~~~
proexploit
The biggest issue I've been dealing with, and one of the main causes for
creating this site, is inaccuracy of information available. There's dozens of
Iowa City bar or restaurant sites, but none of them have good data, and none
display it well. I do have a portal (iowacityaccess.com/portal - you won't be
able to use it, but can see it) that allows business owners to let me know
about changes and additions while verifying with their personal 8 digit code
that I've mailed to them. It's optional, but it may help me cut down on some
of the work in the future.

------
apowell
I'm doing something similar with <http://www.desertdrinks.com>, and I like
your site. However, unless the dollars start flowing in rather quickly, you're
going to find it difficult to keep the data current. Once you appear in Google
for some local terms (perhaps some specific bar/restaurant names), business
owners will seek you out. Are you prepared to monetize that?

Your "advertise" page suggests you're not serious about monetizing this site,
which means it's likely to be dead before summer.

Regardless, I wish you the best and I'll bookmark it so I can watch it
develop.

~~~
proexploit
First off, love your site. Great stuff.

I have a small monetization feature built in (homepage featured and search
results featured). I really want to stay away from Adsense and other "annoying
ad" type income generating. I am offering web design service to all the
locations in my "welcome packet" in an attempt to generate some recurring
income (offering sites for $99/month. Minimum 1 year contract).

May I ask what you do in terms of advertising / featured listings etc? If you
don't want to share the details, I'd be happy to have you email me as well.

I acknowledge that monetization has been one of the overlooked parts of the
website, as I wanted to create a resource first, make money second. Your post
gives me second thoughts about that.

~~~
apowell
Desert Drinks is a side project for me -- an experiment in the potential of a
focused local directory. Right now, I have a single sponsor (the tall banner
on the right).

I plan to more aggressively market and monetize the site this year (I just
left my day job last month, and I have a to-do list a mile long). Even in the
best-case scenario, I think it would be very tough to make a living on Desert
Drinks alone. I can see it generating ~$1000/mo in this market of about
400,000 people.

I think the key is to figure out the formula and then build nationally market-
by-market. In my opinion, that's how I think an individual could bootstrap
this sort of business.

------
minalecs
I am on the opposite end of your design, feeling like its hard to navigate or
figure out, because all the filters are displayed in several different content
boxes in the same column, and each column representing a different option.

The beautiful thing about craigslist is that there are few options and when
they do give you options they bundle it in a nice little box at the top. Yelp
is beautiful because of the filters and ability to drill down to areas
quickly.

Overall not something I would use as I feel yelp does a good job of this
already, but overall good job.

~~~
proexploit
I appreciate your comment. However, I am having a little trouble understanding
it. I personally find my design easier to navigate than Craigslist and less
crowded. I understand this isn't the case for you, and I would really like to
hear more detail about this.

As far as filtering, you're absolutely right. I wanted to include a sort of
advanced search that constantly narrowed down the options using AJAX as you
selected things, but it proved too difficult to implement and I settled for
second-best.

------
djb_hackernews
Without much content I'm not sure how it's going to work. And you plan on
manually adding in all of the content? Is that really feasible? Are you
updating the movies everyday by hand?

Voting should be ajaxified.

I know you are trying to be the informal, formative resource, but, for me at
least, it is a major turn off when I detect someones bias in what is supposed
to be just that, a resource. It's obvious we have different tastes, why would
I return to your site?

~~~
proexploit
I did a soft launch with only the downtown bars enabled as that's going to be
huge to the students in the area. It was a minor goal that I was able to set
that leaves the site up and "functional".

The movies are not updated by hand, but added via an API. Everything else,
shouldn't change often, so once I get it in, it should be manageable. I guess
I'll find that out with time. I'm more concerned with having accurate content
rather than taking time to update the content.

I agree that voting should use AJAX and will implement that in the future.

When you discuss the bias, are you referring to the summaries of the currently
added bars? I don't intended to be biased (but it's very hard to control I
imagine), so I'd love if you could give me an example or more details. The
summaries were unfortunately not written by me, but a couple writers I hired
in the area. I'm one of the worst writers I know, and I couldn't handle that
aspect.

------
ekanes
Fantastic stuff. A usability suggestion would be to change the color of links
that lead to empty "no results" pages. You could of course "unhook" the links,
but that would make it harder for people to navigate there to "add" an item,
which is the way some people visualize the right way to do it. Good luck with
it!

~~~
proexploit
Very good idea. Right now some links to lead to no results pages, but only
because I have such a wealth of information to add. In the future, any link
available will have at least one result.

I launched it yesterday because I'm finally happy with the functionality, and
I have most of the downtown bars listings complete. Iowa City is a college
town, and I think a huge draw will be the Today's Specials listing of where U
of I students can get drunk and lose the morals at the lowest possible price.

------
noodle
that is pretty neat. any plans to open source it, make it more generic or open
up separate sites for other cities?

is it using APIs for CL/yelp or is it a custom job separate from the two and
the description is just a comparison of functionality? i'd love to run it for
mine and see how it looks.

~~~
proexploit
This started as a project for just my city, as there's a ton of work that goes
into information collection. I also want to be more involved in the area, have
giveaways events etc, so something bigger would be too much for me to manage
and I think, dilute the overall project.

As for open source or API, I've had some thoughts of selling the source to
some other areas, but I don't want it to be so diluted that a dozen different
hobbyists can attempt to mash together something for their own city using the
script. Is that just me being selfish? I'd love to hear more.

It isn't using an API, the data is collected by me, and added manually. I've
developed a pretty good admin panel behind the scenes with some other great
features.

I think its important to note, that I'm not the main developer on this
project. It has been my project for a long time, I've done all of the design,
concepts, etc. But I've worked with a very skilled coder to implement
everything.

~~~
blasdel
Trying to sublicense it non-competitively to only one hobbyist in each area is
a _really awful idea_. FreeCycle turned into a massive clusterfuck because of
this.

If you want your implementation to spread to other cities either make a
franchise business out of it or make it open source.

~~~
proexploit
I'm afraid of open source just turning it into a project that consumes my time
and money with no return. I'd definitely be interested in "franchising" it so
to speak so that other areas could use my work in their specific non-competing
area and hopefully get a little bit of my development costs back. Anyone who
has experience with this, I'd be happy to hear from you (email is in my
profile).

I'm a sharing guy, really! I just don't want to jeopardize the project I've
been working so hard on.

Thanks for your comment.

~~~
noodle
then i would suggest this -- develop more automation into the process, and
make it something that can simply be piloted by an admin, and then
hire/solicit admin to come and pilot the their city's site. set it up so that
they can somehow get a cut of the revenue. for example, allow them to add in
their adsense code and the site will display their ads 80% of the time.

you keep control over source, you keep some revenue, and it gets franchised
out with locals at the helm of the individual sites.

~~~
proexploit
More automation as in API from Yelp, etc?

I agree with the rest of what you're saying, but to me, the data gathering
(while time consuming) is part of what makes my site better than others in my
area. The information is confirmed, it's accurate.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

~~~
noodle
in my head i was thinking of a process that puts things in an authorization
queue. pull in all data that is probably accurate, and have an admin either
hand-verify it or hand-edit it so that its right.

------
jcnnghm
I developed something pretty similar to this. Check it out at
<http://barsannapolis.com/>.

~~~
proexploit
I like your website. It gives me some solid ideas for some things to add in
the future hopefully. I'm so full of ideas that I can only do so many of them
:)

~~~
jcnnghm
Are you developing the software yourself, or working with someone else? It's
very clean.

~~~
proexploit
I'm working with a Ruby on Rails coder, but I am the sole owner, brain,
designer, etc.

------
racerrick
You should add a twitterbot too and get specials from local businesses that
use Twitter.

------
jpwagner
you should get the bars to pay you to increase their rating :P

~~~
proexploit
Haha. Ratings will be authentic unless some obvious tampering happens or
something. I do have "sponsored" functionality built in for the future. I.e.
for a fee, any bar can appear first in the search results that they appear in.

~~~
jpwagner
what if multiple bars pay the fee

~~~
proexploit
For the homepage, rotation through all the featured listings. On the search
pages, rotation in position.

------
ntulip
nice - open source it.

~~~
proexploit
In reply to your email as well, I'm unsure of my future plans for sharing the
code. I do appreciate open source software, and it may be something I do, but
I've spent thousands of dollars of my own money developing this. I'm 22. It's
a big deal to me. I don't want to create another Yelp.com, I think that user-
edited information can be too inaccurate.

I wouldn't want someone to be able to download my source, and start 3 more
sites in my area as direct competitors. If I have a solid competitor, I'd like
to know that they spent their time and money on it as well. As I stated above,
I'm not 100% against open source, and would be happy to hear arguments for it.

~~~
ntulip
My apologies. From the title and the minimalist design it appears I didn't
consider the financial resources that went into the project. Quite honestly -
I can only hope that tools such as this knock Yelp and other out of their
place. I wish you good luck. Thanks for the down votes everyone.

------
philipn
An empty, undeveloped website? Why should we care?

~~~
brm
Snark is a terrible way to comment. You could offer him constructive advice,
not upvote him, or even flag the post if you choose. There are many less
damaging and less mean ways to express your displeasure.

See the section on comments in PG's essay here:
<http://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html>

