« ask the industry « | Main | Hiya »

September 26, 2002

There's Got To Be a Way To Make Money off of This

As readers of the late, great DeadLaszlo.com may recall, I live on the street that leads to the Hollywood sign. Every day, tourists stop right in front of my front door, hop out of their cars, and snap photos of the sign from the street. Ours really is the best view of the sign, and I giggle every time I see people excitedly glimpsing the sign I live beneath.

Keith and I were driving down the Sunset Strip recently and he spied one of those Star Maps salesmen on the side of the road. These kids set up little stations every few hundred feet or so along the strip and sell photocopied maps of the area, with certain celebrities' homes highlighted. They sell these maps for $5 apiece. I figure that's a HUGE mark-up over the cost of copies and the highlighter they use. As for research on whether these homes really are the stars' they purport to be... I have my doubts on whether that aspect even really matters all that much.

Keith asks me how on earth these folks make any kind of money. Puh-lease! That's simple! Tourists will pay for anything like that! So, that brings me back to our little place in front of the Hollywood sign. How could we make money off of the tourists who stop on our street every day? Easy... let's sell maps to the sign itself. If we set up a little stand right in front of our door, I KNOW that at least one tourist a day would stop and shell out the bucks for a map that leads all the way up to the sign itself.

But, much more interesting--to me, anyway--is the idea of a cool little web-based financial venture. Considering the fact that most tourists find out about our street (not the most main of drags) by doing an online search of "best view of Hollywood sign," I figure it's only poetic justice to make a buck off the web for all of the traffic it sends our way.

Here's what I propose: each time a tourist stops in front of my door, I want a camera set up to take a photograph of that tourist and his car. This would be like a side-angle view of the photographer as subject. Okay, next, I would put these photos up on a website. The coolest underground thing would be to find yourself on that site. We'd do a "search by date," "search by car," and "search by goofy tourist outfit" version. Finding yourself on the site would be like a Where's Waldo for Hollywood looky-loos. Can't you see the potential for greatness here?

But is there potential for cash? Can't see it yet... so perhaps this brilliant concept will be back-burnered for a while.

Posted by bonnie at September 26, 2002 1:36 PM