Location Based Websites

This weekend I will be filling in the content of a location based website that I’ve basically finished the Wordpress “skeleton” for.  It is essentially a “city” guide with a business directory and articles about things to do, places to see, places to stay and all that great stuff.

It’ll be a ton of “secretarial” work because much of the task is filling in the meat of the Business Directory which can already be found on other, similar sites.  While other sites do exist, I believe I’ve got an edge with the domain name, look of the site and functionality.  I’m using wordpress.

A few reasons this weekend should be so productive are:

• A lot of the work is already done for me on other sites.
• I can cherry pick advertisers from these other sites
• I will have a working model for a location based website which I can apply to two other location based domains I own.

Once the site is ready to be launched, I plan on e-mailing nearly every business featured in the business directory letting them know they have been included on the site.  I will have a standard template e-mail that let’s them know they can increase their exposure on the site through several methods.

They can:

• Buy an in depth profile.  Adds short paragraph (which they write), picture and hyperlink in the direcory.
• Buy a featured listing.  Automatically “stickies” their listing to the top of their business category.
• Site-wide banner advertising.  Pretty self explanatory.

I haven’t decided what the prices will be but, hopefully it will bring in some income for work I’ve already done.  Just copy and paste the stuff they want and I make some extra bucks.  I’ll probably make an “in-depth profile” a one time purchase that will last for a lifetime.  Featured listings will be purchased quarterly or annually.  Site-wide banner advertising will be… well… who the heck knows.

I’m probably getting ahead of myself as these advertisers may want to see traffic statistics.  Traffic numbers at the moment are minimal but I expect that to change drastically when I launch the site, make my sitemap, ping it out and get some backlinks.  I’ll also be advertising via adwords which I will let them know.  The domain name itself… for all 3 location based domains… should perk up some ears and get me in the door to begin with.  I’m quite fond of the names.

One problem I can anticipate is - what if there IS tremendous feedback for this website?  Even if there is mediocre feedback - will I be stuck monitoring each advertisers campaign while staying on top of the dates/times they are supposed to expire?  That’s one reason I’m making the in-depth profile a one-time investment.  I do a minimal amount of work and get paid for adding quality content to the site that will be good for both the user experience and search engine results.  Do it once and I’m done with it.  And, I’ll have made a contact that I can get in touch with for future advertising opportunities.

I’m currently having some trouble finalizing the structure of categories… it would be logical to have sub categories of restaurants… for example… Italian, Chinese, Fast Food, Bar & Grille, Seafood.. whatever.  Not only does this make my job more difficult but it complicates the navigation and how I can keep the website clean while still displaying the pertinent information in a logical layout.

No matter how you look at it I’m extremely excited.  I’m hoping this works out well so I can move onto the next couple of location based sites and perhaps seek out additional location domains for future  use.  More importantly, I’m hoping this will generate some much needed “Quick Cash” with in-depth profiles.

What would you suggest for “pricing” these advertising packages?  I think a $100 fee for a lifetime entry isn’t too shabby.  If I’m able to somehow get 100 businesses to do this, I will make myself $10,000.  And, I could manually enter these in 1 or 2 days.  Piece of cake.  Or maybe I should go the sales trickery route of charging a limited time offer of $99.99.  AND, if you buy it within the next 10 MINUTES you will receive this FREE SET OF KNIVES valued at over $50!  But wait… there’s more!  If you call right now… Haha just kidding okay I’m clearly tired and need to sleep.

Goodnight people.  I can’t wait until it is officially the weekend.  About 16 hours and counting…

3 Responses to “Location Based Websites”

1. dr00t on March 24th, 2007 9:52 am

   Intersting. What is the domain?

2. dr00t on March 24th, 2007 9:52 am

   Oops. **Interesting

3. dr00t on March 27th, 2007 9:29 am

   Great read!

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