“One of the greatest lessons that one can learn is obviously from other people’s mistakes. My general rule of thumb is to conduct massive amounts of research before committing to any new business venture.

Interview by Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog

Michael Bahlitzanakis is the founder of City.com Media LLC.  Mike is also a domain name investor and developer.  His involvement with the Internet dates back to 1993, where he managed Lime Light BBS, one of the most successful BBS-ISP services in New York.  Mike co-founded BP Holdings Group, Inc. in 2007 and launched such sites as SEO.com, Prices.com and WebLog.com.

City.com, launched in April, is a local search website to help consumers discover and connect with local businesses. The site provides users with an means for searching, reviewing and rating the businesses in their area.   Features include maps by Google Maps, local events by Yahoo!, full Facebook and Twitter integration, and over 16 million local businesses in their search index.  The site is designed to provide more transparency to business and users and to provide a cost effective strategy for businesses to reach consumers.

MO:
Aside from a fantastic domain name, what is it that sets City.com apart from other local consumer search providers?  What does it meant to be providing more transparency?

Mike:
Well, City.com being a newly formed site allows us to take a fresh and new approach to how we present local search information. Our take is really more about socializing local search then just simply providing flat one dimensional data.  As for transparency, we’re ideally looking to create a balanced forum between user reviews and adequate merchant response.

MO:
When I went to City.com, it already defaulted to my town, which is nice. I also see that there are “Editors Picks” for businesses in the surrounding community.  Tell me how those are selected.

Mike:
We developed a neat and simple web-service that geo-locates your city by using your IP address. So yea that’s a pretty cool feature to have.  As for the editor’s picks, they are determined by special internal City.com criteria.
 

MO:
I searched around and tried to find a city that wasn’t listed or a category that wasn’t covered, but you have it all.  How have you been able to secure such a broad range of listings across so many cities and categories?

Mike:
Our broad breadth of data was a culmination of hard work which led us to a lot of trial and error.  Our database is very complex and is comprised of multiple aggregate sources of information.  Our main data-store approach primarily includes user generated content, white page listings and strategic commercial data partnerships. So City.com in turn takes this data and creates compelling search listings that direct users to relevant local results.

MO:
 Obviously a site such as City.com relies on advertising to generate revenue.  This is an area where most online entrepreneurs struggle.  What have you found to be the most effective method for attracting advertisers?

Mike:
We’ve seen a lot of outreach coming to us simply by our disruptive brand and through our regional major market sales forces. Our advertisers are actually local businesses.  We feel that the current local search market is severely underserved.  We’re experiencing a tremendous demand for local merchants to efficiently find cost-effective ways to advertise. Specifically, methodologies that allow businesses to better gauge ROI then traditional media advertising.

MO:
You have a history of great domain names.  How important is a domain name, in your experience, to a business’ success?  Are there alternatives to spending large dollars on getting the best domain?

Mike:
Boy that’s really a tricky question to answer. But in my opinion, I feel the importance of the domain to the project is actually relative. Meaning, for me to specifically answer the question, I would need to factor many variables to the equation. So let’s take what we’re doing with CITY.COM. We’re in a very competitive industry. We’re up against CitySearch, Yelp, Google to you name it. For us to have a shot of some kind of market disruption, we obviously need a killer generic domain. So in this case, YES the domain is very important.  However, the inverse would hold true if we developed something less industry competitive, and or more abstract business concepts.

MO:
You’ve had a great deal of success in launch online businesses.  What learnings can you share that might make a difference to someone looking to launch their own online business?

One of the greatest lessons that one can learn is obviously from other people’s mistakes.  My general rule of thumb is to conduct massive amounts of research before committing to any new business venture. Keep a close eye on your expenses.  If you think you can cut unnecessary costs, by all means do it. Expand only if you have to. Apply a stop-loss to the project or a worst case scenario. And lastly, break-down your ideas into a cohesive plan.