How about a site called BetterBizByBlogs.com?

Here's how it works. As a BBBB blogger, you go to Earl's Oil & Lube in West Podunk, VA. You have a coupon that Earl refuses to honor. Even though you only requested an oil change, Earl says that your breaks are low on blinker fluid and charges you $200 more. When you finally get home (and discover your oil leaking all over the place) you make a blog post regarding your experience. BetterBizByBlogs.com is notified of your post (via trackback or some other automated method, stick with me here, this is conceptual!), reads the post and compiles the information into a database.

Later that week, Fred (who lives 3 houses down from you) needs an oil change. He logs onto BBBB.com and defines his search by West Podunk and Oil Change. He pulls up 30 posts from various bloggers who relate their experiences. He sees that 10 out of the 30 posts talk about Earl's. All 10 talk about how awful their experience is. Fred drills in further to read the posts, realizes he doesn't want to go to Earl's, and finds that Spiffy Lube has a much better appearance.

I would think that you could search by area, distance, type of business, name of business and practically any key word. I would think that you'd want to avoid a numerical rating system because those can be easily 'hijacked', plus the goal is to explain your experience and let the reader decide for himself.

I thought of this today because I am having my engine rebuilt by Engine Lab of Tampa and so far, I am having such a good experience that I'd like to share it. The problem is that my 2 occasional readers (Hi Mom!) isn't a big audience and this would be a system that would allow people to search a large sampling of data that isn't easy to find by yourself.

As for revenue, I would assume keyword specific advertising would be a good start. Of course, there's the chance of appearing biased due to ads (could you imagine Earl getting an ad on the page that lambastes him?). I don't think subscriptions would work as too many people want everything for free, but one never knows.

Please, let me know what you think of this idea. Shoot holes in it. Let me know what the weak points are, the strong points, and any place where you can see this as a money maker. And if someone wants to run with it, I'd be more than happy to help. A child and two jobs makes it hard for me to apply myself full time.

{UPDATE}

Someone pointed out www.epinions.com as a similar idea. My idea doesn't require you to log into another site (only once to sign up) but to use your blog to do the same thing. Plus, epinions still has the 'overall' ratings which can be very misleading.