As this site is being discovered I am getting lots of interesting email. I see many interesting ideas and sites, and I’d like to share the more interesting ones with you.

Jason is a Java programmer. Thanks for your help, I’ll owe you a beer is a phrase that is said millions of times a day in the technical world (and in many other worlds, but let’s stick to what i know). It’s been said to me countless times, and I’ve said it myself. Jason’s idea and site are based on that concept.

The site is called YouGotBeer, and Jason has done a terrific job with it. Now he needs to get some traffic and some sales. The cost to send someone a beer is $5.99, and they get a $5.00 gift card from the restaurant or bar of their choice (Jason has a list on the site).

Here’s what Jason e-mailed me for:
If you get the chance, I’d love to get your thoughts on my site and the best approach to marketing it.

This was my response:

Seriously, I think your idea is a terrific one for us dorks. I think you should get some nice animated gif buttons made up and contact your favorite nerd websites. You mentioned that you had this idea when you wanted to send someone a beer for helping you out. I’ve been in the same position many times. So try to think of where people like us would hang out and meet someone they’d like to buy a beer (Experts Exchange, some of the big PHP sites, Java help sites, etc). SitePoint and Dnforum are also probably good places.

You might want to buy an interstitial ad for a week and see what happens. Probably cost you a couple hundred, but you’ll get a good proof of concept (try Adbrite to get an idea). The other thing that just came to me is e-zines and newsletters. They’re cheap, and guys like us read them. There’s a site I was going to mention in my blog that does this stuff really cheap (like $10) [The site is Partenon - Two Buck Ads.] You just need to come up with a good hook line and I think it would be a good thing to try. Let me see if I can find the URL and I’ll shoot it over to you.

Your POC should also include figuring out how much you’re going to spend in promotion — I’m guessing a REAL big piece of the profits. You might WANT to tack on that extra buck and come up with an affiliate program for sites that gives it to them when someone buys someone else a beer. You could even make up some nice microbuttons that people in forums could use to buy each other beers. Monetizing forums has been a big problem, and I think they would love a program like this. Pick one and email the guy who runs it.

There is a lot of brainpower out there. Please post comments with your suggestions for Jason as well.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 11:41 am.
Filed under The Basics, Internet Marketing, Your Site.
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