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Granny basketball in Lansing, 14,400 pairs of salt-and-pepper shakers in Traer and Captain Kirk’s future birthplace in Riverside. These are all attractions Patricia Watson and her husband, Greg, have tried to capture on their tourism Web site, www.iowabeautiful.com, in addition to the state’s better-known art centers, museums and parks.

Since starting the online travel guide in 2005, the couple have found themselves veering off highways, reading newspapers and researching online to learn about new places. They now have around 650 entries on Iowa alone. This past Christmas, as they drove to Arizona to visit their children, they took photographs and made notes about attractions along the way for future projects of their company, Ten Publications Inc.

“Part of the fun of it,” Patricia said, “is to experience new things and even just to learn about the things that are available when you go through the site.”

The company now has 10 Midwestern states covered with travel Web sites using the state’s name followed by “beautiful” in the Web address. Its flagship, www.iowabeautiful.com, is currently the most visited travel Web site about Iowa, Greg said, according to Alexa Internet Inc. traffic data. It attracted 300,000 unique visitors in the past 12 months and had a 60 percent increase in traffic this January, compared with January 2007.

“It just reflects the trend in travelers doing their research online,” he said.

After achieving this status, the Watsons have ramped up efforts to sell advertising on their sites. They opened an office at 3623 Douglas Ave. in Des Moines last September, and have hired three salespeople to sell advertising to regional attractions, hotels, restaurants, convention and visitors bureaus and chambers of commerce. They expect to generate $1 million in revenues this year.

Greg also is in the process of rolling out a new Web site design for the 10 states now online and expects to have Web sites ready for all 50 states by the end of 2009. Ten Publications currently has rights to 45 states using the state name and “beautiful” domain and will use a variation of that for the remaining states.

The concept of www.iowabeautiful.com began when the Watsons researched travel destinations online and found that many sites were not easy to use or didn’t offer great information. They also started a Mount Pleasant travel Web site to drive traffic to the hotel they owned, and after seeing how much attention that drew to their business, decided to go statewide. The vision expanded from there to the point that they sold the second of two hotels last June (the first was sold after Sept. 11, 2001) and are in the process of selling their national historic home in Mount Pleasant to move to Des Moines, where they figured they would find more experienced salespeople to sell advertising.

“My husband is definitely an entrepreneur,” Patricia said with a laugh, “which is awesome. He’ll blame me for the hotels, but I’ll blame him for Iowa Beautiful.”

The goal for www.iowabeautiful.com is to enhance the $5.8 billion tourism industry in Iowa – and make some money from it, too. According to the 2007 Iowa Welcome Center Survey report, travel parties in Iowa (on average 2.5 people) spent $223.66 per day on lodging, entertainment, transportation, food and shopping, up 5.4 percent from 2006. Most travel Web sites promoting Iowa are operated by nonprofit or government organizations and look to promote tourism on a local or regional level.

While the three salespeople are out seeking advertising dollars, Patricia focuses on content. She has strived to provide detailed information on each attraction or event, including a short story, hours and contact information. She also is working on adding videos and encourages other people to submit articles. “We have file drawers full of information and it’s a matter of sitting down and inputting it all in the format that we use,” she said.

Meanwhile, Greg, who has a degree in computer science, creates all the Web sites and is experimenting with new technology, such as allowing users to leave audio and video comments. The Watsons imagine as they bring more states online, they may have to outsource some of the work.

For now the couple are in their two-room office four days a week, returning to Mount Pleasant on the weekends as they try to sell their home. This has led to new discoveries along the way, such as Tassel Ridge Winery in Leighton.

“I never would have guessed there’s this much to do in this state as there is and expanding to surrounding states,” Patricia said. “If you traveled every day, you couldn’t see it all.”