ReelEstate.com

This idea came to me as I was touring around Italy during my Spring break while I'm studying in Europe. I was traveling with a friend of mine and we were in Venice for the day. Walking around in Venice is a great time, because there are winding streets and getting lost is probably the most fun thing to do there. It's incredibly unique and ridiculous because of all of the canals, and its a great city to just chat with someone.

As we walked into the Ca' d'Oro, which is an ancient palace located on the Grand Canal in Venice, me and my friend began talking about movies for some reason. He happened to share with me that one time, a film was shot on location at his home, and the film company (whoever was producing the film) had to put a light on a portion of his home's property and was paid around $300 for his troubles.

That was some pretty awesome news. I realized then that it would also be pretty cool if someone came across my house and wanted to film on location, because then I would make some money off of just living somewhere. I'd sit back and one day, someone would knock on the door and say, "We're shooting a movie across the street, but we have to stick this light on your lawn.

You don't have to say yes, but if you do, we'll give you $300." To me, that is one of the simplest and easiest ways to make some cash, and you didn't even have to do anything, except for being in the right place at the right time. But maybe, you could improve your chances somehow.

That is where ReelEstate.com (or some other catchy domain name like that) comes in. Essentially, the website would be a place where people, just ordinary (or extraordinary) people like you and me upload pictures of your homes, both inside and outside if you'd like, into a huge database. From there, you create a little profile for your location.

There would also have to be a profile that you set up about yourself (which is not searchable) so that the website can get in touch with you if a producer wants to film on location. For the location's profile (which is searchable) You provide a city and state, no physical address, and describe it a little. You can put anything in the description. It's your way of selling the location to prospective producers (we'll get to them in a second).

You can perhaps give examples of what types of scenes your location would be good for, what types of movies would be awesome if shot there, or you can ramble on about the long history and emotional ties that you may have to this place. It can be whatever you want. Additionally, you can tag your pictures with various keywords that are searchable and what you determine to be relevant. Alright, so that's what people do.

Just simply upload pictures of their own homes, in hopes that a movie is shot there and they make some money at the same time. Sounds pretty fantastic.

Ideally, the next step would be for producers of movies to log on to this website and search either by location or keyword used by the submitter for the perfect location to shoot their movie or scene. Once they find the perfect spot, they simply click a button that says something to the effect of, "I want to contact this person to possibly shoot on location."

The website then gets in touch with the person who posted the picture to say that a film could be shot on their location that they posted, and they need to get in contact with the film company. From there, the individual who posted the picture and producer who wants to shoot the movie collaborate and the job of ReelEstate.com is done. Now that I'm done being vague, lets get into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Testing for Realism:

• Does it have a targeted demographic?

Absolutely. I think anyone who has ever been to see a movie or heard of Hollywood before would enjoy taking part in this website. There is an allure to it that I think all people enjoy; that being fame and fortune.

The fame comes from having their home or location in a movie, which is pretty cool when you think about it. The fortune aspect comes from acquiring money from simply living somewhere. I think there are a lot of people in search of fame and fortune, and this gives them the package deal right there. I can see people that use IMDB.com also enjoying this website very much. It is simple, because all the individual needs to do is upload pictures of their house.

In today's world, many people have digital cameras, and the Internet is flooded daily with millions of new pictures. The Internet Movie Database is the 33rd most hit website in the world (according to Alexa.com) and number 18 in the United States alone, so there are a lot of people interested in movies and of those people, I'm sure many of them would like to see their own house or room in a movie one day.

• Does it fill a need?

I think that you can think about this is two ways. For people who are uploading their homes in hopes of a movie being filmed there, no, it does not fill a need for them. There are other sites on the Internet where people can upload their pictures.

So, I would say for about 90% of the users of the site, a need is not filled by ReelEstate.com. However, when you think about it from the perspective of the 10% of individuals who use this site to find locations all over the US and World, I think that it does indeed fill a need. The reason is because I don't think anything like this exists, and creating a database for these people would make their jobs unbelievably more efficient and productive.

Imagine sitting down at a computer and being able to search the world for a "yellow brick home with a white fence in Torrington, Wyoming." I think that something like this definitely fills a need for these type of people, and what's even more important about that is the fact that the people searching the website, not the ones uploading pictures, are the people willing to pay for the website's services.

• Can this be setup by an individual or group of individuals?

Yes. This website can definitely be setup by a couple computer programmers that know what they're doing. It is a little complex for an amateur computer programmer like myself, but I feel like most of the functions that make this website work are simple enough to be done in a rather quick amount of time. There are some elements to consider:

First, there needs to be a mechanism for uploading and storing the pictures. Then each picture has be linked to a person's personal profile for contact to be made (not searchable). I would envision a personal profile on the website to be a really simple Facebook profile, with or without a picture, and simply a contact number or e-mail and address perhaps.

Beyond that, there has to be a mechanism to search through the website, so there must be a customized internal search engine. There has to be a way of sorting the keywords so that the most relevant search results come first. When producers are trying to contact a location, they do not do so directly, but rather through the website, so there will have to be away that the website coordinates this communication.

This can be done either manually or automatically. A standard e-mail can be forwarded to the person's e-mail address that they have listed in their profile, naming the company who is trying to contact them. Manually would have to involve a person making a phone call. This pretty much runs you through the entire set of activities that takes place on the website. I think that these are all functions that are doable by someone who is slightly computer savvy.

• Can it generate income?

Absolutely! When I think about this website, I think about it in terms of a "LinkedIn" model of revenue. To truly understand what I mean when I say this, do not think about this website as a movie website, think about it as a communication website. Our task isn't to make movies, but it is to get people in touch with one another.

If you recall earlier, I broke down the websites usage to "Uploaders" equaling 90%, and "Producers" equaling 10% of the websites users. This might sound staggeringly daunting to make revenue off of just 10% of the users of the site, but it can work very effectively.

For those 10% of the users, I established that for them, this website would be a need, and it would be something that improved and optimized their job performance. So, why in world would they not pay for such a splendid service?

There are a number of revenue streams. The first is Search. In order to legitimize the website and also make it safe for people uploading, being able to search the website has to be paid for. This will put people who are uploading (90% of our website) at ease, because the only people who are searching the database are those who pay to use its services (and getting people to pay for anything on the web is a close to impossible task).

Being able to search the website can be done in two ways, as I see it. One way can be on a search by search basis. Buy a package for 500 searches for $50. Another way to make money from search is by making people pay a monthly subscription (with unlimited search) for $50. At this point, I am not sure which method is better for the bottom line.

The next revenue stream comes from "Producers" contacting "Uploaders." In order for "Producers" to get in touch with "Uploaders" to request filming on their premises, "Producers" will have to click a button to say, "I want to contact this person." If they click that button, it will cost them $1. Remember, we are a communication website. There can also be revenue from advertising, but I don't expect that to be the primary revenue stream at all.

Let's do some number crunching.

Assume there are 100,000 people who use the website. This means that 90,000 are "Uploaders" and 10,000 are "Producers." The 90,000 people don't pay a cent to use the site, so lets just forget about them.

For the 10,000 "Producers" this site fills a need for them, so they want to pay for its services. Lets next assume that it costs $30 per month to get unlimited search (about $1 a day). Lets then assume that the 10,000 "Producers" buy a yearly subscription for $360. So, revenue stream #1 = $360 x 10,000 = $3,600,000 per year. Excellent.

Next, we want to look at how much money we can make off of contact fees. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, there were 603 films released in 2007. Furthermore, according to Yahoo! Answers, there are typically 60 scenes in an average movie. This allows for 36,180 locations to be filmed on in a given year.

Let us then next assume that when "Producers" contact "Uploaders," sometimes the "Uploaders" don't respond, or the "Producer" finds out that the location is not the exact type of location that they were looking for. With this in mind, let us assume that each "Producer" has to contact 1.5 people on average in order to shoot a scene. The cost of contact is $1. So, revenue stream #2 = $1 x 1.5 x 36,180 = $54,270 per year. Great.

Next, we can look into our advertising revenue stream. According to Yahoo! Answers around 7,150 unique visits a day will lead to advertising revenue of $110 a day. By playing with the numbers a little (Approximately 13 x 7,150 = 100,000), we can see that if our website generated 100,000 unique visits a day, we can make around $1,430 a day. If we stretch this over a year we get the following: Revenue stream #3 = $1,430 x 365 = $521,950 per year. Fantastic.

By putting our three revenue streams together we get a yearly total of $4,176,220. These are conservative estimates.

• Is it marketable?

Yes. This is a simple and easy website to use, and one that people have had a lot of familiarity with (uploading pictures) so you're not changing anyone's habits too much. I think that you can start off by advertising on IMDB.com, because that is such a well established and niched demographic to target this towards.

Most of the advertising and marketing will have to be done by word-of-mouth or viral marketing. If the website is done well and runs smoothly, I see no reason why friends wouldn't discuss this around a lunch table, between classes, or at work.

I think that this website has a lot of potential and upside. There is a huge demographic of people who would want to partake in it evidenced by IMDB.com usage, and it streamlines, optimizes, and fills a need for the professionals in the film industry. It has a potential revenue stream of $4M based on conservative estimates. If the website is set up correctly by computer program professionals, I see no reason why something like this wouldn't work.