Continued Growth

The local rocket has been viewed in over 18 countries and 23 states!

The top 7 countries on average spend 1 minute or more on the site, with New Zealand topping out at 6 minutes!

We started to increase our marketing this week by posting the local rocket to the JMU subreddit and Hacker News  (run by ycombinator). The results were very positive. We got 9 comments on the hacker news post and 15 up votes, and 2 comments on the reddit post with 12 up votes. Nearly all of the comments were positive, and many appreciated the design of the website. Posting the site to those boards increased our page views quite a bit, resulting in us breaking into triple digit revenue. Next week we plan on posting to some other sites to further spread the word. We're also working on plans for some on-campus marketing in order to get more students to the site. 

Hunter Knott

                  This past week I approached my boss where I work in Bridgewater, Virginia.  He is a financial advisor and current partner at the supermarket I work at.  He looked at the site and after explaining to him how the site works he admitted he liked the innovation and creativity.  He also agreed that it has potential to take off and expand farther out than Harrisonburg.  His only disappointment from our website was the site was currently focusing on the Harrisonburg area alone.  He gave his word that if we ever expand out to say, Bridgewater, he would be interested in investing in the site to draw more people to the supermarket.  Though we are only currently generating revenue through google ads, this commitment and interest in our site, outside of Harrisonburg, gives us confidence to possibly range out farther.  This of course will not take place until we feel we have a product worth expanding and or marketing strategy established.

                  Another quick note, I currently have a meeting with Applebee’s on Tuesday to talk about establishing an agreement on advertising for them on our site.  If this idea falls through we are planning to email and approach as many restaurants/businesses for advertising as possible until the end of the semester.  This will be for the class alone, but after the semester we plan to continue the website and dealing with businesses.