Voice Mail Services Offered:
A brief list will be presented first, and then there will be detailed discussion on each service.
1. Key West Voice Guides (general and gay guides), Florida Keys Guides and event listings for each area. A kind of talking yellow pages that will be searchable.
1. Key West Voice Guides (general and gay guides), Florida Keys Guides and event listings. A kind of talking yellow pages.
Key West (and the Florida Keys) has many printed publications, ranging from regularly published newspapers to small guides and maps. The market, and thus the competition are fragmented. Some of the publications do not make much money or loose money. Recent victims include the Key West Classifieds (now CityPaper), Celebrate and others. Although these are not guides in a strict sense, they do have pages that serve that purpose, as well as event listings.
The weakness of a printed publication compared to voice mail is that it must be produced, printed and distributed. This is time consuming and expensive. Then, it is up to people whether they pick it up. Granted, our system requires people to dial a telephone and listen to the system, and we must make people aware of the telephone number, but once a person knows the number, puts it into their cell phone and so forth, half the battle has been won. We still need to advertise to remind them to use the system, promote our services and features, but we are still far ahead of the crowd, so to speak.
The guide will offer a yellow pages type listing under categories which will be similar to the phone book, though with more limited categories. The primary listings will be related to the tourism/hospitality industry. The individual advertisers will have sufficient room to store multiple greetings/ads which they can then select from on any basis they desire. In the future we will be able to allow advertisers to decide which ads would run based on the day of the week and/or time of day. Advertisers can change and update their greetings anytime they want, allowing the most up to date information to be available on the voice mail system.
There will be separate guides for Key West, Big Pine, Marathon, Islamorada and Key Largo and a general guide for other areas, most likely. All calls within 305 are now local calls so the physical location of the system does not matter. Being able to market to the entire county increases the size of our market considerably. (Offices in Marathon and Key Largo are future possibilities for marketing/sales purposes. Sales agents working from home are a possible marketing approach.)
Voice ads are separated by area and by guide category. Some categories will have a search function. For instance, people wanting to find a hotel room could easily search for hotels with specific features. This will keep the guide from getting cluttered and make it much easier to use and more effective.
Print publications in the Florida Keys are not even in competition with us for lodging ads, as they do not reach people making lodging decisions. Lodging needs to reach people on a national and international basis. This is done through the internet, especially with travel sites, and by print advertising. FKVM, due to low cost long distance and with its web sites offers a national and international reach. The websites will have web links to the advertisers which helps them with their search engine rankings and provides another means to reach the potential guest. People interested in the personal ads and chat will be exposed to hotels on our system. I know of a hotel that spends $500 a month just on having their website ranking in search engines optimized. I doubt if any sizable hotel is going to worry about $49.95 a month, even if it only resulted in one guest a month, though I am confident it will do much better than that. Besides, that guest is likely to be staying more than one day and probably not alone.
This system will raise the profile of Key West on the internet to such a degree I expect it to have a profound impact on hotel stays and the purchasing of other activities and services in the county.
Tourism activities such as water sports of various kinds will be a major series of categories on the system. I also expect that entertainment venues will be major advertisers.
In addition to the guide, there will be listings of events which will be connected to the advertiser's box. The guide will also have a general version and a gay version. The gay listings will probably be in the general guide as well, but there will be a separate gay guide covering Key West for the gay/lesbian market.
The pricing for the guide will be attractive compared with print advertising and so that a business of any size will be able to afford it. It is suggested that the cost will be $49.95 per month. There will be discounts for quarterly and annual advance payment. It is estimated that there would be at least 300 advertisers throughout the Florida Keys within the first three months of launch at an average cost of $39.95 (due to discounts/commissions). This would be a total monthly income of $11,985.
To be fair, the FKVM Voice Guide also competes with the information booths around the islands, so they probably will not like us, especially as we are a low flat rate and will not be charging commissions, a major competitive factor. (Commissions would destroy our competitive advantage and are entirely impractical. They are not feasible anyway, so we will use that to our advantage.) Guide callers listening to an advertisement for a business will be transferred directly to that business with the press of a single key.
Keep in mind that these estimates are not just for Key West, although that would be our primary market initially, but for all of the Florida Keys, so these estimates are in my view quite reasonable. At the same time it will take a serious marketing effort to sell businesses on a totally new advertising approach. However, it is not that different from a radio advertisement, and the cost does not require any real risk.
The reach of the voice mail system will also be extended in the future by placing the entire voice mail system on the internet. The voice mail system stores everything in .WAV files which are a standard sound file for computers. The voice mail system will have a web site that is generated in real time, meaning that the web pages are generated from a database and updated when new ads are added to the system. This will take significant programming and will probably come six to nine months after launch.
The web site will also offer links to the web sites of advertisers. Dan Schramm has registered a number of internet domains related to this business which are listed later in the proposal and would become the property of the corporation.
The voice mail system will be advertised on a personal basis by direct sales call to the most likely customers and will be promoted by direct mail and other means to others. The DID trunk lines can also be used for outgoing calls. Additional customers will come onboard after being exposed to our general advertising to potential callers. (See the Marketing section for more detailed information.)
Customers will be able to sign up and create an account in a number of ways. They can come into our office or simply call the office. They will be able to signup 24 hours a day on the voice mail system itself. Customers will also be able to signup on the web site. Both the voice mail system and web site will be able to accept and process credit cards in real time.
The voice mail system will be very popular with new businesses opening up which will have to wait a number of months to get into the next printed telephone directory.
Services for individuals will be handled the same way until the personal ad system and prepaid long distance system are launched. At that time there will be a retail component which will allow us to signup customers and collect payments effortlessly through a large number of retail locations.
2. The above in a variety of foreign languages.
This is another feature that no printed publication or information booth can touch. It would cost a fortune to provide any printed publication in a variety of foreign languages. With the voice mail system everything is spoken, so it is fairly straight forward to record smaller duplicate systems in other languages such as Spanish, German, French, Czech, Russian, and others. If possible, we probably should have at least one Asian language. There are many immigrants, legal and otherwise, in Key West so finding well spoken people to record the foreign language systems should not be difficult. Just walking down Duval Street you will often hear many conversations in a foreign tongue. Granted many of these people visiting have some or working English, but I am confident that they would be appreciative of the businesses that explain things in their own language, especially in complicated matters and in situations that could give rise to confusion over pricing or terms.
Businesses could provide more detailed information, so that employees would not have to try to explain everything in English hoping they will be understood. The foreign language systems would likely be more static as they could not record the ads themselves (though they can if they want to).
The foreign language systems would be sold as a package. They would likely be priced at the rate of $49.95 per month. This would be an add-on option. Although the foreign language systems would not get the traffic or use of the general systems, the foreign language system will be much more expensive to produce compared to the general system. Even with less traffic this will probably be an income opportunity many businesses will not want to pass up. When talking about renting a hotel room, or selling a boating excursion, fifty bucks a month is not a lot of money compared to the possible return. This will also be a service that other tourist areas are not likely to offer. Live translation ability may be a future service.
When the voice mail system is placed onto the internet, the foreign language system will also be on the website, which will provide virtually free access to anyone in the world who has computer access. This will be a big selling point.
It is estimated that at least 100 advertisers (or one-third) will take the foreign language systems option. That would generate about $4,995 per month in gross income.
Hiring, as independent contractors, persons with good foreign language and English skills, would cost, for example, $15 per hour. It is estimated that a total of 2 hours per week per person would be needed and people would be needed for 5 or 6 languages. This would be a labor cost of $600.00 per month. Telephone line costs would be about $200 per month (on a proportional basis) and an overhead contribution of $500 still makes this service an extremely beneficial profit center.
The monthly fee would include a limited number of minutes of recording advertisements for business customers. Additional recording time would be available for an additional payment. The customer can also record their own foreign language ads if they desire in the language(s) of their choice. We will provide the others. There is no discount if they do this but it gives them more direct control of their advertising and saves us money.
Should the foreign language option be more popular than estimated, we will want to consider providing a live translation service. People hired for this would be independent contractors. They would be on-call and could work out of their own homes or from a cell telephone, so office space for them would not be needed. Individuals without telephones could work within our retail location or in nearby office or apartment space. Nearby space that we could run lines to from our voice mail system would likely be cheaper than the retail space and the translation service would not compete with customers for space or be interfered with by the noise in the retail business.
With the low cost of long distance telephone service, the live translation service could be marketed to tourism businesses all over the United States. South Florida itself would be a natural market. We could have a local number in Miami, for instance, that is forwarded by the telephone company to us in Key West. National customers would be provided with an 800 number and they would pay a basic monthly fee like $9.95 a month which would include 10-20 minutes of usage and they would be billed for additional usage. It would be possible to sign up tourism businesses at a low monthly fee and perhaps even sign up chains of hotels, motels, amusement parks, cruise lines and other businesses. We could also have agency agreements with businesses close to where cruise ships dock to provide translation service for anyone getting off a cruise ship.
Businesses or individuals that did not have accounts could simply pay with a credit card, debit card or through a payment service such as PayPal.
We could also provide live translation over the internet on a web page, and as a side business translate documents and email for individuals and businesses. Perhaps we would also be called upon to provide translators for public meetings, news organizations, and other types of events. Using the web, we could also provide translations for the deaf and hard of hearing as another side service.
The reader might think that this is a service already available, and it is, but an internet search turns up little competition. The TDC offers through a third party a translation service for members. We would be in a position to obtain that business.
3. Business advertising in the Guides.
In addition to the ad/greetings in guide categories on the system, there will be opportunities for general advertising which will deliver far more traffic than an individual category ad will receive. The event listings are a big example. Event listings will be done for free as a community service. If we limited it to paid advertisers, the event listings would not be complete and we would probably generate a lot of bad will from potential advertisers and callers to the system. Enough event listings will be from paid advertisers to make it worthwhile, plus many one time events will advertise as well and giving them a free listing will be a good opportunity to get them to advertise.
The general advertising will be based on the traffic levels to the system. The news and opinion sections of the system should be popular and will be advertising supported. An advertisement of this nature may well be $100 per month or more. In the future when the system is larger and programming time permits, the system will be programmed to rotate advertisements in time slots and provide accounting information to us and individual advertisers.
It is estimated that general advertising will generate at least $1,000 per month
4. Direct connect telephone service for guide listings and advertisers.
It may not be possible to program this feature prior to the launch of the system, though it will become available shortly afterwards. The direct connect feature will allow a caller to the system to directly connect to the advertiser's place of business. This will take higher priced conferencing boards and development software, so investment toward the higher end of the range will be needed. The system will call a predetermined number on another line and will patch the lines together. When the call ends the system will disconnect the external line and return the original call to the voice mail system. Three-way calling can also do this but is not nearly as reliable though that still requires programming the system.
Because outgoing calls on business lines are charged on a per call basis, it will be necessary to have an accounting function on this service and do monthly bills for the telephone calls above a certain preset and prepaid number.
Direct connect will cost on average $35.00 (est.) per month and it is estimated that half of the advertisers will also take this option. This will be a small price to pay to make it convenient for the caller to do something like rent a hotel room. This would generate about $5,250 per month.
5. Listings and events for non-profit organizations.
Although we could make a bit more money selling advertising to non-profit organizations, it is proposed that we give them a basic advertising package at no charge. There will not be a charge for event listings and it would be a public service to allow the organizations to provide additional information. This would generate good will and serve an important public service. All nonprofit organizations are working with tight budgets and they are only becoming tighter, so we probably should donate boxes to them and benefit from the goodwill. By making information available to the public about all social services and other nonprofit organizations, we are providing an important public service.
Finally, this free information will generate a good amount of traffic to the system and general advertising opportunities/sponsorships will make this free area profitable nevertheless. We can also use the opportunity to advertise the services available on the system in the absence of enough paid sponsorships.
6. Personal Voice Mail Boxes
The second main use for DID trunks is to enable personal voice mail boxes with their own telephone number. Using a general system and giving people extensions is another approach but is amateurish and lets everyone calling know it is a voice mail service. Such an approach is not considered professional or desirable. With DID and personal numbers the caller does not know it is a service bureau. The DID cards read the number that is dialed and sends the caller directly to the voice mail box belonging to the person we have assigned the number to. (This is also how paging systems work.)
Basic voice mail service will be priced at $4.95 per month, payable quarterly or annually. Paid monthly it would be $6.95. Enhanced and premium voice mail boxes would also be available and are described later, priced at $9.95 and $14.95 per month.
Although many people have telephones with voice mail or have cell/mobile telephones, there is a sizable population in the Florida Keys which have neither. If you do not have home or business telephone service you cannot get voice mail from Bell South. There are many working people who cannot afford a home telephone, or who do not have suitable living arrangements to have their own telephone. People who rent rooms and can use the house phone might well want to have their own telephone number and secure personal message taking. Many people probably would like to have a permanent telephone number that would not change when they had to move.
There will also be customers who have home telephones who would like a separate secure number they could give out to people. I would guess there are a significant number of people who would like to have a separate telephone number so they are not bothered at home unexpectedly.
Plus there are many homeless people who do not have homes, much less telephones. Providing voice mail to the homeless (which might well be paid for by various community and social service agencies as they do in other cities) is both a profit center and a community service. With their own telephone number, the homeless are more likely to be able to find jobs, stay in touch with families and so forth. Social services providers will have a reliable way of contacting them and should be big supporters.
Part of the business plan is to have at least two semiprivate telephone desk/booths in the retail space that individuals could use at no charge to check their voice mail and record new greetings. We would also offer outgoing local and long distance calls at a profit. Further the business will have a pay telephone mounted outside that would provide free calls to the voice mail system 24 hours a day. Additional pay telephones will be installed throughout Monroe County that would also offer free access (limited by time though, depending on the part of the system being accessed) to the voice mail system. These telephones would offer additional services/features discussed in a later part of the business plan.
There are many other reasons people will want our voice mail service including people who want to be able to have a private number to give out without having to give people their home number. I am confident that there are many people in the Florida Keys who would like to have a private and secure telephone number for only five dollars per month.
Further, there are people called vagabonds, who are not bums financially speaking, but are constantly traveling and would be interested in voice mail and other services.
Service 22 is part of this as well, but is focused on providing personal voice mail boxes to RV owners and boaters. This service would also include mail forwarding which is discussed later in the proposal. This is a service that is provided by businesses and RV organizations around the country, but nobody in Key West is offering it and I am sure many people would like a Key West telephone number and mailing address. The current private mailbox businesses (of which there are 4) do a profitable business in private mail boxes, but nobody does mail forwarding or is marketing to the RV crowd.
It is estimated that about 200 basic personal voice mail boxes will be rented within a few months of launch. This service would thus generate $990.00 a month. This does not include the potential of boxes rented to RV users and others on a local, statewide and national basis. This does not include income from the corporate identity service.
There will be two higher priced personal voice mail boxes. These boxes will offer a number of different options. Some possible options include more space for greetings and messages. For instance, someone could record a message for a specific caller, and give that caller a code to retrieve the message. Another option would be to allow a caller to record a message, go to our web site and send the voice message attached to an email to another person's email address. Message delivery would also be an option, with priority codes which would control how and when messages would be delivered. The system would make an outgoing call to the box holder, and after a security code was entered, the system would play the messages. All messages will be date and time stamped.
7. Personal ads and live chat between lines.
Personal ads and live chat will be, it is predicted, a major source of income. The system will contain personal advertisements under different categories which people can listen to and leave responses. The system will also tell callers which personals advertisers on the system are currently online and provide a means to connect to them. Thus, two individuals will be able to speak directly to each other.
Personal ads will be priced on both a long-term basis and for short periods of time for tourists. Live chat will be based on the amount of time. Time will be sold in blocks.
Unlike 900 lines, chat cost will be reasonable. 900 lines have a bad reputation and telephone companies are reluctant to force customers to pay their 900 bills. The high cost of 900 lines is due to two major factors: (1) the cost charged by the long distance carrier who is really the one making all the money and (2) the high level of nonpayment. As there is no long distance involved, 900 lines are not needed. 900 lines do make it easy for the customer as no credit card is needed, but FKVM has some marketing options which will achieve the same thing. I am thinking of calling it the KwTalk card or the KeysCashCard (both registered web domains) and that will be the working title for that part of the proposal. (See the section on Marketing for more information.)
Live chat will likely be priced at 35 cents per minute ($21.00 per hour) for tourists, due to the short window during which they will use the system and 25 cents per minute ($15.00 per hour) for locals. The income potential is dependent upon the number of lines the system has and how well it is promoted, together with the level of tourism in Key West and the Florida Keys. There will be separate areas of the system for Key West, Big Pine and area, Marathon, Key Largo, etc.
Having a reasonable price for chat is important. First, more people will use the system and will use it for longer periods. Chat systems are not successful unless there are people to chat with. Secondly, because the cost is low, people will not be counting every minute. People using the system do not have to be concerned about large bills, but can spend their time having fun without worrying about the cost. In the long run, this will be a much more successful strategy.
In the future when the voice mail system is on the web, we would be able to add other services. For instance, we could allow people to update photos to the web site which would not just be available on the web, but that telephone callers could have sent to their cell phones for a small additional charge.
All T1 Dialogic boards can do one to one conferencing for chat. A T1 ISDN line contains 24 channels, which consists of 23 voice channels and one data channel for signaling. One-to-one chat is the ideal for chat in a personals system.
Assuming ten lines have chat for one hour (avg. $18 hr.) per day that would be income of $180 per day. That would amount to $5,400 per month. Of course weekends would be the busiest period and some periods such as Spring Break and Fantasy Fest would be very busy.
There are a lot of people here for both events, and other events too, that do not hook up with anyone. The personal ad/chat system would give them another opportunity and because they would have some chance of getting laid as a result, the use of the system should be popular. Chat would provide the best opportunity to meet up in short amount of time. The personals and chat system would need heavy advertising to reach the tourist market. The company web sites would promote the system too, as the ideal would be to have tourists sign up for the system before they even arrive in the Florida Keys.
The system would give priority to personal advertisers and those who had paid for chat time. Depending on the amount of chat time sold, the system would be expanded in additional blocks of lines. (Ideally we will have a spare T1 card at all times in case of any card failure.)
The personal ads and chat system is much related to the Long Distance Debit Card part of the operation and both would be launched at the same time. The marketing of these services and their retail component are directly related. This will be discussed later in the proposal.
Chat is between two people, so we are making 50 to 70 cents for every minute of chat going on. We may also have the option for one person to pay (at a discount) for both people in the chat system should one party not have a chat membership or a way to immediately pay for the chat time.
8. Live Chat in Clubs and Other Businesses
You may have visited or heard of nightclubs and sometimes other places that have telephones on the tables and customers can call other tables in the club. This generally requires an expensive PBX telephone system, and has other problems. Many of these installations used flashing lights on the tables rather than the telephone ringer, which would quickly get very annoying. But at the heart of it is a good idea, although I am not certain at this point how clubs and other businesses might react to my version.
FKVM will take this idea a bit further to make it more practical and usable. Although this is a long range idea and will take some considerable time and money to implement, it is discussed here because it is substantially the same as Section 7, Personal Ads and Chat.
In this scenario we would install telephones at tables in clubs around Key West. These telephones would not be connected to telephone lines in the conventional sense. They would be our own private telephone system.
Regular telephone lines would be impossible to control and would cost a fortune. We would have to become a CLEC, or Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, and that would be complicated and extremely expensive – many hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Rather we would rent non-powered unloaded alarm circuits from Bell South. These are copper wire pairs that go from point A to point B. They have no power. They do not go into a Bell South switch or anything else. They are for alarm companies to use to monitor central station alarm systems. They are also used for other purposes and in the early days of DSL, were a cheap way for ISP's (Internet Service Providers) to get into the DSL access market. The RBOCs didn't appreciate that at the time. These circuits, depending on the market and distance, can be had for as little as $15.00 per month.
Voice does not take a large amount of bandwidth, especially if it is compressed. There is a large amount of potential bandwidth on a pair of copper wires. Voice multiplexes or channel banks could be installed on each end of the circuit. These units, on the used market, costing in the hundreds of dollars would permit 4, 8, 12, 16 or 24 voice channels (in theory) over a single copper pair. In other words, there could be 24 telephones plugged into one end of it and at the other end, the multiplexes would connect to 24 voice ports on our voice mail system. (The multiple voice boards have their own buss to be interconnected and multiple computers can network the voice boards together allowing large scale systems.)
If some technical problems prevent use of channel banks or multiplexes, the line would certainly handle a single telephone which would, in effect, be directly connected to the voice mail system. At a cost of $15.00 per month for the circuit, the single telephone would still be profitable. It would take only 60 minutes of chat use to pay for the circuit.
Thus, all of these telephones, together with the regular incoming lines, would go into our personal ad/chat system. People in all of these locations could listen to personal ads, place personal ads, and connect live to chat with other people on the system.
All the calls would be going in one direction, to our system. There would be no ringing telephones on the tables in the clubs.
Live chat on this system would likely be priced at about 55 cents per minute and each club would get a cut of the revenue, probably something like 10 cents per minute. They could also sell the kwTalk cards and make some additional money on that.
The kwTalk cards would allow all of these telephones to also be used to place local and long distance calls and to access other parts of the voice mail system, although that access would necessarily have to be restricted and controlled. The cards would be sold in the clubs to provide income for the club, but also to make it possible for people to place personal ads and pay for live chat conveniently.
In other words, hundreds of people could use this system at the same time, all of them paying us 35 cents per minute (after all commissions and costs) for live chat. A 96 line system in use an average of one hour per line per day would earn over $2,000 per day!
Even if one were to figure that the 96 line system would only be full for one hour each day on Friday and Saturday nights, (and didn't make a cent the rest of the time) that would still generate $16,000 per month.
Other than live chat, people would be spending most of their time listening to personal ads and also recording their own. There would be a charge for this as well. All use of this system, beyond an introductory sales pitch, would be charged on a per minute basis, like a 900 line, but much cheaper.
If we charged 25 cents a minute, for example, for all access to the system, accounting would be easy and listening to or placing ads would all be paid for. The cost would be reasonable and people would not think twice about spending longer periods of time on the system. This approach would probably generate even more money than simply charging for live chat on a time basis and flat amounts for listening to responses or placing an ad. We really couldn't afford to let people tie up telephones for long periods of time and then never chat or place an ad – activities that would otherwise be charged. (However, that approach does work for a number of personal ad chat lines, so some experimentation will probably be needed to find the best approach.)
The system would let people pick and listen to the personal ads of other people who were on the system at that moment and then connect live to chat with them, if the other person accepted. We could let them record a little short personal message asking for a chat opportunity, and the requested party could hit one touch-tone key to have the system play the requesting parties personal ad, another to accept the chat request, and another to reject the chat request which would also let that person record a short personal message to go with the rejection. A caller could also listen to personal ads of people who are not on the system at that moment and leave a message for them. The requesting party, if or if not rejected for a chat, would also be able to leave a personal message in the personal ad mailbox. All of this time would be charged and would be income in addition to the higher rate charged for the live chat in which both parties are paying us.
This system would have ads organized by location in the Florida Keys and there would be a division between long term ads from local users and short term ads from tourists. I believe that people outside of Key West would also use the system to make arrangements to meet local people and other tourists. We would promote the system on the web and in other low cost ways for people to place their personal ads before coming to the Keys so they would have a greater chance to meet other tourists and locals with similar interests and the like.
Live chat earns us $21.00 per hour at the rate of 35 cents per minute. I would estimate that the user would chat for an average of 30 minutes. I would think that even on a slow night, there would be at least 30 people (throughout Monroe County) chatting this much. That is $315.00 for one night for a monthly total of $9,450.00. Frankly, on a $50,000 investment, a profit of 20 percent per month would be spectacular and this is just from one service.
I believe we could generate as much as $30,000 a month with this system during major tourism periods, subject to events, tourism fluctuations and local interest. To reach that level and certainly to sustain those sorts of levels would take major promotion and advertising (such as late night cable), so realistically one third to one half of that amount, or whatever the income level is, would be spent on advertising and promotion.
9. and 10. Wake Up and Reminder Service<p>
Both are very similar outgoing call applications. Both would be priced monthly and based on the number of wake up calls or reminders that the customer required. Although the target market is individuals, it could be used by medical practices to remind patients of appointments, and non-profits could use it to remind members of meetings and events, as a couple of possible examples.
There are no income estimates for these services at this time, but it would likely be a couple of hundred dollars a month.
11. Group Notification Service
Very related to the above Reminder Service, the Reminder Service is for individuals and the Group Notification Service is for businesses and organizations. The pricing is far different as is the user interface. The Group Notification Service can also be used for emergency notifications such as by the electric company to notify media of power problems or the police to notify all pawn shops of stolen property.
12. General Classified Advertising
This will be a big pain in the side of the Key West Citizen and other publications with classified ads. We will offer low cost and perhaps free classified ads in many categories such as For Sale, Wanted, and Employment. This will likely be the biggest job hotline in the Keys.
The Key West Citizen charges $12.00 for a one time minimum classified ad. If we decide to charge for our classified ads, our price would be very competitive in comparison, although free ads with paid sponsorships would probably be more profitable.
One area of classified advertising would be real estate ads. At first glance access to these ads would not seem very efficient. Normally, how would a caller find an ad for a specific type of property? Few would want to listen to endless ads. There would be categories for real estate ads based on location, but other things are also important. I have a solution for this problem which will make real estate ads practical. The voice mail system can read (and write to) a Microsoft Access database, and key information for each ad will be entered into this database, allowing callers to search for specific information and thus listen to voice advertisements relevant to their search. Real estate advertising will be a bit more expensive to cover the cost of entering this information manually into a database. At some point after launch there will be a web interface so that customers can enter this information themselves. (The real estate system will not be available at launch.)
This will increase the profile of FKVM and provide a community service. This also provides us with a large amount of time to sell spot advertising into, such as a category sponsored by a local business advertiser. It would be pretty much like selling and buying radio advertising time. In the long run it will also help the Citizen to want to buy FKVM, at which point we would decide if the offer was big enough and how much money we are making. After a year or so we could well be making $30,000 or more per month, which would probably put the value of the business well above a million dollars.
There are no income estimates for these services at this time, but it would likely be a few hundred dollars a month. The real money would come from selling sponsorship ads for local businesses. The advertising sales should bring in several thousand dollars per month.
13 Local news, opinions, etc. which is advertiser supported
These are open ideas. We could do polls/surveys for various purposes and customers. It would also be possible to do different types of games, especially trivia games. There is currently a cable channel doing trivia games for a cash payout, and we could do the same thing. Players with a KeysCashCard could possibly pay a small fee to play and be able to potentially win money that would be placed on their card.
15 Weather
These several previous items are all basically the same service. The system will be able to provide local news, weather and other information. There will be a section for personal opinions. It will be similar to the Citizen's Voice but will allow uncensored opinions to be provided, though of course it is not “totally” anonymous as someone might recognize a voice which will make it all the more interesting for callers. All of these things will be free and should generate significant call volume.
We would also have instant news, and would have a box for the electric company to use to provide information to the public about power failures. If the electric company did not want to pay for the box, we would do it ourselves as a community service and make money by selling spot advertising in the box.
Income is generated by selling advertising in this section. Income is estimated at approx. $1,000.00 per month. The rates would depend upon the number of people calling. We would promote this service and get people in the habit of calling. The system can be automated to rotate the ads, control how many times each is played and keep track of statistics to deliver to the advertiser.
16. Bus Schedules
Although I have no idea if the bus system would be interested (at this point) I believe that our system would be ideal for use by the bus system. Bus stops would have numbers added to the back of the signs. A person could call our system, enter the bus stop number and be told the upcoming times the bus will come by. The system knows the time of day and day of week, so it would provide the most relevant information first. It can have more sophisticated functions as well.
Either the bus system will pay for the service (I estimate $300.00 a month) or we could do it ourselves and sell advertising time on it. In other words, all callers would hear an advertisement before the bus information.
The other bus services in Monroe County are also likely to want to have their schedule on our system as will the ships running to Ft. Meyers, etc. on a regular schedule.
17. Probation and Parole Monitoring
This service may or may not be practical or desired but is possible. The system could call persons under supervision and confirm they were home or at work. It would provide notifications to parole/probation officers and printed reports would be automatically emailed out. Once the system is up and operating we would explore this opportunity with local law enforcement and court systems.
18. Hosting other voice mail systems, telephone information lines, emergency information
Businesses that are operating information lines and government units that need to notify a large number of people are candidates for us to host their voice mail systems. Using our large system would be more effective, more reliable and cheaper than operating their own. It would certainly be much more cost effective to use our system for emergency and similar types of notifications than maintaining a system and telephone lines for an occasional event. One use that comes to mind is to provide information in the case of power outages for the electric company. We could provide information notifications for the city and county to hotels in the event of hurricane evacuations. We could provide overflow coverage for government information lines which could be forwarded to us. The voice mail system will have a large uninterruptible power supply system that will keep it operating for a number of days in the event of a power failure. Longer power outages will require the use of a generator.
The public telephone system operates on battery power and the battery facility is generally able to power the system for three days. The telephone company has generators to recharge the batteries should the electrical grid failure last more than several days.
19. Order taking, signups and other call center services.
These are services offered by a call center normally with human operators. Generally they can be located anywhere but a local call center would be attractive for some. We also could bid on the contract for providing tourist information for Monroe County. A small call center could be operated in conjunction with live translation services, so the people working there would provide multiple services, making the live service more practical.
20. Pay Telephone Operations/Services, WiFi Access Point, Web Cams
Although the pay telephone business is not considered a profitable activity these days in most parts of the country, it would be a profitable business in Key West, even without the enhanced services we will be offering. In fact, in October 2003 the City Council of Key West routinely approved new pay telephone locations. In late 2005 advertising supported payphones were installed in Key West by a private company.
Placing pay telephones around the Florida Keys would allow us to offer free or low cost access to our voice mail system. It would allow us to make money on long distance calls and local calls, thereby lowering our costs for our own prepaid long distance telephone cards. Bell South offers pay telephone lines, or a regular telephone line can be used with smart payphones. To allow certain calls to be free for certain periods, smart payphones will be used. These smart payphones cost about $500 each.
The pay telephone locations would also have web cams and WiFi access points for use in conjunction with a co-located business, the Key West Media Center. The Media Center concept is discussed in detail later in the proposal.
21. Prepaid long distance telephone cards.
Prepaid long distance debit cards are a big business in Key West. Even people with telephones are purchasing them. The cards allow telephone owners to escape the high monthly service charges, taxes and the Universal Services fees that are tacked onto all long distance bills. (Even AT&T is getting out of the long distance business.) My very conservative parents no longer have a long distance carrier and use these cards. Tourists and immigrants use them regularly to call home.
There are big differences between the card we will be offering and the typical one. First, our card isn't just for long distance. It is a payment card for all of our services, including personal ads and chat. Secondly, it will be a Key West/Florida Keys specific card design offering a tourism souvenir benefit. (There are people that collect these cards too.) It will also be a thick plastic card just like credit cards, but without a magnetic stripe.
Although retailers generally speaking would not be thrilled about adding yet another prepaid card, the local and unique features of our card will make them attractive to retailers. The retailer will make money on the card and the card will be purchased for many other reasons than just long distance. This gives them a benefit they will not see with any other long distance card. The cards will also bring people into the stores to purchase them and renew them.
We may distribute them through a major prepaid card distributor if there is too much market resistance to a go-it-alone approach. Collecting on the cards and activation of the cards would be much simpler using an existing company such as Blackstone which already has its own activation terminals in retail locations and a method of collecting the money.
Our big advantage is that our cards will be available throughout the Florida Keys and are easy to purchase. We will especially want locations open 24 hours a day so people can purchase and renew cards after bar closing or at any other time. Nightclubs will likely want to sell the cards and there is no competition in that market. Nightclubs that have our in-house telephones when that system expansion takes place will certainly sell the cards.
In addition to the local locations, the cards are also renewable on the voice mail system and on the web using a credit card. The retail locations are especially important to us to reach people who do not have credit/debit cards and those who do not want to use their cards for a chat system.
People will also be able to walk into our main retail location and purchase the cards and pay to put time onto them. This is one reason we need retail space. Prior to the launch of the KeysCashCard, this will be especially important and afterwards, we make more money if the customer purchases the card or places money on it directly with us.
The KeysCashCard is discussed in more detail in a following section for those interested. A full report on it is available at a web address given at the end of the proposal.
The voice mail system will be able to function as a long distance debit card system although special software will be required and it most likely will have to be purchased. These programs are several thousand dollars at minimum. The system itself can operate in a couple of different manners. The cheapest is to get lines with 3 way calling. The 3 way calling feature is used to make the outgoing call, thus only one telephone line is used per call. There are some risk factors with this approach and it is not considered entirely professional or secure. The second approach is to use one line to accept and process the call, and then bridge that line to a second line over which the outgoing call is made. This ties up two lines but is much more secure and scalable. With enough volume and using T1 trucks the per line cost is reduced and by having a T1 going directly to a long distance provider the cost of the outgoing calls is substantially reduced.
A T1 is a four wire circuit consisting of 24 voice or data channels, or 23 channels if ISDN-PRI. It is leased from point to point. Thus, outgoing long distance calls never enter the Bell South system but go directly to the long distance company.
22. Voice Mail plus related services for RV owners, boaters, vagabonds and others.
Virtual corporate offices with voice mail, postal mail and registered agent services
Lots of people do not have permanent fixed addresses. The voice mail system, as already discussed, will provide these people with a permanent telephone number and private voice mail. The voice mail system, under my plan, would be co-located with another business called the Key West Media Center (KWMC) which is discussed later in this proposal. The KWMC would provide the rental of private mailboxes. There would be a package deal of a telephone number and mailing address/box.
Like the office center, we could also provide corporate identity services and act as the registered agent for corporations. KWMC or our office service would also do mail forwarding, which is not done or well promoted by local mail centers. A good opportunity exists for offering these services to U.S. ex-pats living in Costa Rica. Social Security and many retirement funds will not mail checks out of the country. (There are a few in Miami doing this, but nobody in Key West, which I think is a much more desirable address). Quite a few people from Key West now live in Costa Rica or have second homes there.
The voice mail system fits into the operations of KWMC perfectly and this is discussed further later in this proposal. It makes better and more profitable use of the retail space and employee time and increases the overall profile and attractiveness of the business. The media center would be using the most obvious space. It could be a second corporation, though this would be decided by the stockholders and board of directors.
23. Talking Self-Guided Tours of Key West
Used by the National Park Service and others, self guided talking tours make use of cell telephones. There is normally a charge to use the system.
The audio presentation can include music, narration, expert descriptions and re-created eyewitness accounts.
At Minuteman National Park the fee is $5.99 for the first sixty minutes which cover the first two parts of the tour and $3.99 for an additional 30 minutes for the third part. This fee is split between the National Park Service and a business providing the service. FKVM will be able to provide the service and produce the content so the fee will not have to be split with anyone. We may need to spend some money to put up small signs (cost of sign and perhaps a small monthly rental) that would provide information and indicate the start of a tour. There would be a number of tours available starting and ending at different points.
This system would require significant resources to produce all of the content in a professional and accurate manner, but the operating expenses are minor. The system would provide guided tours at any hour of the day or night. At a modest fee of $4.99 it would be competitive with the trolley and train tours for people who had the time and ability to walk.
It would also be possible to allow interruptions in the tour in a future version which would provide a code to the customer and the system would remember when they hung up. When the customer called again and entered the code, the tour would begin where they had left off on it. If they use a KeysCashCard, we could then allow them to interrupt it and start again at any time.
It might even be possible at some future point to receive GPS information from the cell telephone and provide the voice guided tour on the basis of where the telephone is located at any particular moment. I am not sure how this would be programmed, but GPS information from mobile telephones is available for a fee from the telephone carriers. At this point I do not know how accurate it is, as mobile telephones do not use real GPS but a variant of it.
The guided tour system will make use of a database of voice messages, rather than long recorded narrations requiring customers to follow specific paths. Each property in fact can be a separate file, and they can be streamed together. This makes changes much easier and faster and makes the tour much more flexible. Thus, the guided tour will be able to be delivered in a large number of ways. If GPS information could be obtained, every tour would be a custom tour with the database providing voice guide information based on the exact address the person was located at. Without GPS, the system would allow the person taking the guided tour to enter a starting location and direction using their touch tone keypad. We could also, with some limits, find out what street they were on, what address they were standing in front of and the direction they wanted to go, and then deliver a customized tour automatically. We could offer a selection of streets and then have the caller pick one, and/or we can accept input in the same manner that text messages or phonebook name entries are written on mobile telephones. If the phone is a model with a keyboard, that makes it even easier. We only need the street name or the beginning of it. The database will have a table of street names, and can do guessing in effect. How many streets start with a “Du” or “Dv” if it was done wrong? That they mean Duval would be pretty easy to figure out. They would be asked to confirm the guess. The database would handle wrong spellings. We are only going to worry about streets in Old Town that have something interesting on them.
Even if someone did not want a walking tour, we could offer specific location mini-tours for a small fee. For instance, a tourist is walking along and sees an interesting building. It could be in the middle of the night or anytime. The tourist would like to know about the building. They could call our tour system, put in the address and be told about that property. Using the KeysCashCard would be perfect for this application.
It is impossible to make any real estimates as to what income this might generate as it would be dependent upon advertising it and other promotion (but the idea of having a voice guide in every hotel room would be a perfect method of promotion). Nevertheless, I am confident it could be very substantial, amounting to many thousands of dollars per month. Once the databases were recorded and the tour recorded, it would be virtually total profit. The tour could initially be just narration which would be fairly easy to do, and that is all the trains and trolleys do. Later on, we can selectively make improvements to parts of the tour. We can provide a great deal more information than the trolley tour and also provide a summary and full info choice to the caller. Unlike the trains, our tours can go on 24 hours a day. We do not fancy production work when the system is already generating income. This would be one use of the audio production capability of the media center, and we already have the equipment for a professional sound studio.
It would not require any payments to the city. It would not require the use of vehicles and would eliminate all the objections that people have to the trains and trolley vehicles with their loudspeakers, thus offering many benefits all around. Sure, a lot of people will still prefer to sit on their butts and be driven around by Ed Swift, but there will be plenty of market for us and our operating costs are pennies in comparison.
Please check back for information about this new service.
2. The above in a variety of foreign languages.
3. Business advertising/sponsorships in the Guides.
4. Direct connect telephone service for guide listings and advertisers.
5. Listings and events for non-profit organizations.
6. Personal voice mail boxes, each with their own telephone number plus enhanced services.
7. Personal ads (dating/matchmaking) and live chat between lines.
8. Live chat in bars and clubs
9. A wakeup service.
10. A reminder service for individuals and businesses.
11. Group notifications and message delivery.
12. General Classified Advertising
13. Daily local news, opinions, columnists, etc which is advertiser supported.
14. Games, opinion polls, surveys.
15. Weather.
16. Key West City Bus schedules.
17. Probation and Parole Monitoring.
18. Hosting other voice mail systems, telephone information lines, emergency information.
19. Order taking, signups and other call center services.
20. Pay Telephone Operations/Services, WiFi Access Points, Web Cams.
21. Prepaid long distance telephone cards.
22. Voice Mail and related services for RV owners, boaters, vagabonds and others.
23. Virtual corporate offices with voice mail, mail and registered agent services.
24. Talking Self-Guided Tours of Key West.
14 Games, opinion polls, surveys.