Starting a Disney website???

[disneycutie165]

My mom and I have been brainstorming ideas for ways to work at home and we think we may have finally come up with a way. We want to start a website for people who want help planning their trips to Disney! We would be kind of a travel agency, but only for Disney. But the reason I am asking this today is because we need help. Any ideas of how to start the website? We are not good computer people so should we have an expert help? And how would we advertise. I started here knowing that Intercot would be the best place to start advertising, but how else can we advertise. We also want to start doing seminars on Disney vacation planning. Anyone know how we could get that started??? Does anyone know where to start in general???

[dnickels]

If you're not computer people then you certainly will need to hire someone to help you set up your website. Once you have the website up and running you can start advertising with Google or some of the other search engines. With traditional print forms of media you simply need to call the newspapers or magazines you want to advertise with and their ad departments will work with you. Also keep in mind that when setting up a business centered around Disney you need to be really careful about copyright and trademark concerns. Disney takes that stuff pretty seriously and if you don't understand the legal issues you'll probably be receiving some letters from their legal department.

FWIW, I think you're talking about a major uphill battle here. Any planning information you could give is either a) already available for free, or b) readily available by asking a question on places like Intercot, again, for free. Are you going to charge people fees to help them plan?

As for the seminars, you would start contacting areas with convention space (typically hotels), and finding out what their rates to rent various spaces are. Then it's a matter of getting attendees (again, advertising online or through print). I think you're going to run into the same problem though, I'm not sure why anyone would pay money to attend a seminar to plan their Disney vacation when they can get the information for free.

Truly, I wish you the best of luck, but if people were willing to pay money to have someone tell them about Disney or help them plan their park days, meals, etc., I think half of Intercot would be already be doing it. :twocents: A true travel agency is a different business, and if you're talking about setting up something like that you need to speak with some people in the travel agency business.

[DizneyRox]

The Internet has destroyed so many business models it's amazng. This would be one of them... Everything is already freely out there in the web. With the cost of a Disney vacation, I'm not at all interested in spending even more.

If anything, you want to get your hands on that vacation commission and that will require being a travel agent.

All the copyright stuff is just gravy for not starting this type of business if you ask me.

[brivers222]

That is a very tall order here... having to hire an expert to set up a website for you is a very tricky situation... just watch 'the social network' and you can see the hastles with starting and maintaining a functional money making website.

as others have said, the internet has made 'paid informative businesses' almost obsolete. nowadays any question you might have about anything can be found free (with a monthly internet subscribtion, of course) online. Even Disney travel agencies are putting out their expertise for free to consumers... One of the sites sponsors, Magical Journeys, is a prime example. Since finding them for this last trip, I wouldn't think twice of doing it on my own or using anybody else.

Its a great idea to start a disney based website/business...but in reality, I don't see it being that much of an income generator. Free is always better than pay, and so much informatio on planning a disney trip is available for free online :(