Launching Beer Website -- Could use some audience participation!

[Northernlion]

Hey guys,

I'm sorry if this comes across as spam or whatever but I figured it doesn't hurt to give a quick plug about something if you guys are probably gonna be interested in it

Me and my buddy have been designing and working on our new site http://rateyourbrew.com for the last few weeks and have finally launched it today. The premise of the site is that beer drinkers can visit it and leave really quick comments and ratings of their favorite (or least favorite) beers which will help to keep people buying the good stuff and stop people from wasting their money!

There are other sites that do this (http://ratebeer.com is the biggest) but honestly most of them are geared towards 'beer snobs' -- people who don't mind shelling out $10 a bottle for a great brew. Our focus with this site is more on the EVERYMAN. Me and the other guys involved are all students and we realized that the internet is really lacking a resource like this that caters towards people on a budget or who simply don't want to spend a ton of money on beer. Oftentimes cheap beer is bad, but not always.

So what I would love for you guys to do is simply to check it out. If you feel like it, it would be awesome if you left some comments and ratings for beers you've consumed in the past (or are consuming presently!). I'm offering no compensation except the fame and fortune that comes along with being one of the first supporters :p

Thanks guys,
Ryan

EDIT: Also, if your favourite beer isn't up yet, let me know which one it is and I'll add it for you. I'm still busy adding the hundreds and hundreds of available brands!

EDIT2: Also the website is canadian-based but I'm in the process of adding more American and European beers.

[J Digory]

You should get Red Hook and Red Stripe up there.

[Northernlion]

Will do. Thanks for the reviews, also!

red stripe has been added
red hook isn't available at the beer store apparently so I'm gonna leave it off for now

[Tyler]

Hey Ryan, is there a way for users to register and add their own post, or are you the only one that can do a write up on a beer?

[Northernlion]

As of right now we don't have that no but we're definitely considering adding it in the future, especially now that I realize how many damn brands there are! We talked about it at the start but decided that it should be just us for now to make sure all the posts were standardized. I don't write up the description, I use the one from http://thebeerstore.ca

[MagmaBabe]

Oh my gosh!! how much fun did you guys have sitting and taste-testing beer! 

[Northernlion]

Not enough! We're gonna do it again shortly with a whole new batch, then we're gonna do some blind taste tests and rankings of the top-ten selling beers and hopefully throw a sponsored BEER EXCHANGE party sometime in september (you bring some beer, you get the same # of tickets as # of beers you brought, then you can exchange those tickets for stuff other people brought).

[GASlick]

Sounds like fun.
You can get Red Hook here in GA.  Bought some at the Piggly Wiggly yesterday.
(Piggly Wiggly is a grocery store, BTW)

[J Digory]

Red Hook ESB is a great beer...too bad you can't get it in Canada. Or at least your area of Canada.

[Tyler]

Hey Ryan, some advice for you.

1. Keep trying to improve the site everyday.
2. Be careful using content from other sites to fill up your reviews.  This will cause you to get penalized by Google.
3. Find a way to have people submit writeups of beer as soon as you can.  It will be very tough to do it all on your own.
4. Find other people that are doing something similar and become partners with them, not competitors. 
5. Content is king!

[Northernlion]

Thanks Ty, I didn't know that about google actually but that makes sense.

I heard #5 a lot when I was making my first website earlier this year (and still do)

[Mikekoz13]

Hey Lion-

         I checked it out and book marked it. It would be nice if individuals could add their own ratings for beers and then have all the ratings add up to an 'average" rating.

[Northernlion]

Hey Lion-

         I checked it out and book marked it. It would be nice if individuals could add their own ratings for beers and then have all the ratings add up to an 'average" rating.

You can! All you have to do is find the beer (we're working out a better system for this, but for now you could either click "Reviews" at the top to scroll through a list of beers, or enter a specific beer into the Search box) and then leave a comment with your ratings. These are averaged over all the users and displayed on the main post.

[dog20]

I will be the official taste tester 

[Northernlion]

Hahaha, you wish man. I'm actually off to the liquor store tonight to buy a ton of beers I've never had so I can review them!