Evite's Business Model

So, evite launched user generate reviews of bars and restaurants with the goal of increasing real estate for contextual CPC advertisers.

This provides a glimpse into what drives evite's business model and their new feature development focus: cost per click advertising or what many small businesses (eg restaurants and bars) call online lead generation.

I met with a limo company the other day. He praised google adwords and overture and lectured me on the difference of spending on online branding and lead generation. He likened CPC as lead generation. He sees his traffic go up, he knows how much he is spending for it, and he knows how many leads actually turn into sales.

Evite/Citysearch is smart to jump on this cpc revenue stream, because small business owners are getting it and they like it.

On the flip side, I am also a very happy man if evite sticks to that business model. While they let users generate free bar and restaurant reviews, there are a handful of us innovating to bring online RSVP's and tools that foster offline community at events online b4 and aft the event... to the next level

The funny part is that they call these user generated reviews: "social software". Even Marketing Vox gets carried away with calling this social software. Come on here. If you want to talk social software, atleast get back to its roots.

If you want to peak into the mind of someone that is thinking about how to create a compelling online experience to complement an offline event, take a look over at this post by Gregory Narain.

And not to toot my own horn, but we just launched some landing pages for WhizSpark's premium services. We'd love some feedback.

SideNote to Marketing Vox: Where's the freaking trackback link? oh, Not there: Selfish & Elitist!