(Your City Name) on the Cheap
I want to do a local site so bad I can’t stand it. Two reasons:
- If the site is about where you live, it’s easy to be an expert in what you’re talking about.
- Making money from advertising is a cinch. If you have a compelling level of traffic, you know exactly who your potential advertisers are — just walk down Main Street.
That’s why I was especially intrigued by this site that I came across today: Atlanta on the Cheap. There are several things I love about this idea:
- It’s a sub-niche. We’ll be talking a lot about those. When you’re starting out, picking a sub-niche instead of a full niche is a great strategy because it helps you focus and get your feet under you.
- The design is fantastic. Simple, clean, attractive. It instantly conveys trust.
- It’s a blog. Nothing’s easier and more powerful for creating a site than something like WordPress. Money-making sites don’t have to be extraordinary technical endeavors.
- “Cheap” is huge. How many people do you know who would love a site that had great, practical ideas for saving money?
Don’t just go out and steal “cheap,” though. Do some thinking. There are plenty of local sub-niches:
- Great (Restaurant Type) Restaurants in (Your City Name) — where (Restaurant Type) can be the type of food, the price range, or some other category (theme restaurants, family restaurants, etc.).
- (Demographic) in (Your City Name) — where (Demographic) is some sort of demographic designation (single, ethnicity, age, etc.). Where are the interesting spots for that demographic (and what happens there)? What events or other information would be interesting to them?
- Best (Your City Name) Entertainment — For people looking for a night out, what are the best options?
- Who’s Who in (Your City Name) — Profile interesting people in your area. (Might work better in smaller areas where people are always checking to see if someone they know has made it onto the site.)
- (Your City Name) Politics — All politics is local, as they say. Get really local and start talking politics in-depth. What’s interesting about the candidates for coroner? How in the world does one go about deciding who to vote for for coroner? Nothing generates more traffic and conversation than politics.
Think about pairing it with a social network from Ning, too, to really make it a destination site.
Follow the blueprint, and I could easily see a site like this generating $100,000 a year in income within a year or two. Just as importantly, though, it will lead naturally to other opportunities — including, quite possibly, the one that becomes your big one.
This post in my Free Business Ideas series is only available in the RSS feed.
Israel
September 16, 2008
at 7:00 pm
Is this part of the $100 a day series?
Great Idea, i already have a good domain to start mine: http://www.belizeonline.com (My country is Belize) and am planning the development on it soon. I’m adding a social network too, while i’m not focusing on City Name, its country name, but the population here is so small (250,000), it could qualify for a city name in the U.S
anyways .. what do you tink? good name?
thanks for the idea.
Shane
September 16, 2008
at 7:18 pm
Yes, I love it. So many things you can do when it’s that generic, but it’s still very memorable and very brandable. I was going to say that it’s way too broad if this is one of your first sites, but at just 250,000 people I think you’re right
The problem I’ve seen many people make (none more than me) is to try to do too much too fast and/or to try to grow traffic and revenue too fast. Take your time, and keep the site focused. You’ll figure it out as you go along, and it won’t be long before you wake up and find yourself with quite a bit of both traffic and revenue.
Israel
September 16, 2008
at 8:07 pm
I first thought it was too broad, but i’ve thought i’m going to focus on reveiws of hotels, restaurants, destinations, landmarks (maya ruins), etc which will attract the people looking to vacation in belize and not so much the local traffic. Tourism is one of the bigger markets for Belize. would u consider this a good strategy?
I appreciate the tips and i wish i could ask you a ton more of questions as you obviously have more experience than me but i fear this isn’t the right place (public page) and that you may not have the time to answer, but thanks anyways.
Jenn
September 17, 2008
at 7:12 am
Thanks, Shane, for the great mention. I found your site on Analytics when I saw that it was driving traffic to mine (Atlanta on the Cheap). I’ll definitely be subscibing to your site–a lot of good advice here.
Jason
September 17, 2008
at 12:04 pm
AtlantaOnTheCheap.com shows a lot of dedication… and when you’ve got THAT a seemingly simple blog does the trick — providing value to a targeted audience.
Jen, I see you’ve got a lot of social buttons there, have you thought about using something like Twitter and allowing people to get local updates on the go on their mobile?
Shane
September 17, 2008
at 3:05 pm
@Israel: Yes, I’ll email you separately on those questions.
@Jenn: Thanks for the kinds words! I really appreciate it.
@Jason: Great comments! Those add a lot to the discussion, so I appreciate you taking the time to share them.
Lee
September 17, 2008
at 11:54 pm
You can always do hyphen and .net or .org as I’ve done with http://www.provo-utah.net. There are tons of domains avalable that use some sort of combination like the one you suggest and/or don’t use the .com. At the end of the day, these sites aren’t about type in traffic but are about doing all the appropriate SEO and SEM…
Shane
September 18, 2008
at 8:45 am
@Lee: Thanks for bringing up that point. These sites are actually significantly about branding and, thus, the ability for someone to remember the domain and type it in. The more difficult your domain name, the more you limit your potential traffic.
If I was building a site I really cared about, I would never use hyphens or anything but a .com. In the long run, it’s just not worth it.
Start a Newspaper? Really? » Ask Shane.org
March 31, 2009
at 5:57 pm
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