Getting Money!

So we have finally finished making all of the pages for our book and now it is time to get the advertisements and make some money. In this coming week we are arranging meetings with the companies that we are advertising in the book and presenting them with the opportunity to purchase ads and add coupons. We are charging $25 for a half page and $40 for a full page advertisement and have 45 businesses in our book that we will be trying to get to purchase them. We have also acquired a sponsor who will be purchasing 50 books and distributing them around Lychburg, VA. Here are some of the locations that our book gives information on...

Putting It All Together

After finding all of the locations that we are going to feature in our book now we are coming up with the book format. We are also going out and talking to businesses to get them to buy adds in the book and add coupons. Here are some of our possible formats below. In this next week our goals are to complete the book and get it ready for printing. It will only take us two days from sending the books off to have it ready to sell so we should start making sales by at least the 28th :)

Awesome progress, but still a long ways to go...

So we definitely made some big progress today! The thing that really got us going was the information that we had all gathered over the past week. Alexia brought tons of information she had collected through various information centers about things to do in the area relating to restaurants, late-night fun, art galleries, and tons of other stuff. Albert and I, on the other hand, picked up information from UREC and bookstores like Barnes & Noble about lots of outdoor recreation. This is going to be a really important part of our project as this time of the year is optimal for biking, hiking, camping, fishing, trail running and rock climbing, like this picture from my hiking trip last weekend!! Since many people are definitely interested in that and there are so many opportunities here in the mountains, this is going to be a really strong part of our attractions book. In tonight’s meeting, we were able to divide up the remaining information seeking that we need to do to make sure that our book is thorough, interesting, and lists tons of really cool places and ideas that other people might not know of or think about when looking for something fun to do in the area. We are pretty sure the hardest part of our project is going to be the next couple weeks! Just like the real estate business is about "location, location, location”, our book is centered on “INFORMATION, INFORMATION, INFORMATION!” It’s going to be tough getting everything together to make our book so complete and captivating, and to completely design a book from scratch. So, the next two weeks will be filled with many library meetings, lots of creative planning and designing, and… becoming authors? Watch out, Bill Wales…

And we're off!

After our initial idea for an off-campus housing guide for students was totally done by The Breeze (we shake our fists at you, The Breeze!), we again went to brainstorming something that would be able to take advantage of our free printing source. We've finally settled in on our idea: a guide for people who are want to know what kind of stuff there is to do in the Harrisonburg area. The way this came up was the revelation that there are a lot of students that don't want to be knocked around in a dark Ashby apartment at 1 AM by strangers "dancing" to blaring music. We took this idea for class critiquing and we actually got a lot of positive feedback and good suggestions. Some of those included selling space for coupons to local attractions and selling to prospective students and new teachers. We also want to set up a Facebook group that people can use as a rider board and a place to post their own suggestions for things to do. Right now we're conducting our research on area activities.