Best way to monetize a geo website?

[dashu1]

Hello,
I was hoping that someone here who has experience with geo websites (e.g. the name of a holiday destination like windemere or bridlington, etc) could help me by advising on what has and hasn't worked in terms of monetizing the site.

I'm planning on making a "proper" site, that is I'll have someone adding real news articles, etc every day, but how do you convert that into earnings?

I don't want to smother it in adsense, or have laterooms booking stuff or affiliate schemes all over it, so what else works?

I was thinking of letting people pay for a listing or an article/story about their business/hotel/etc but is this hard work actually getting them to know about it and of course to want to pay?

I was thinking of maybe having sections on places to eat, things to do, places to visit, etc, probably aimed at families - what do people think is the best format or angle for a geo site?

Thanks!

 

[dashu1]

Hi Seemly thanks, yes I too was imagining a period of time without much if any income from it and a lot of hard work to boot.

I would imagine though that if you do put in the time and effort and create a genuinely good and useful site that there would be rewards from that, plus the site would be worth something too.

The place I'm thinking of doing this for doesn't have a decent site of this ilk at present, which might help a bit.

 

[boxfish]

I think you should realistically expect almost no return within this initial 12 month period.

Completely agree with Seemly.

You may find this article/site useful too to get an idea of geo sites/directories from the other side of the fence.

http://www.thebandber.com/2013/03/what-do-bb-owners-want-from-directory-sites/

Specifically the bit about the hotel owner having 40 sites to keep up to date. (I know this is an exageration but the point still stands)

My personal tip would be to monetise as late as possible as it's much, much easier to get links to a website from a local business when you aren't promoting any other local businesses.

 

[ratboy]

Unless you live in the town for which you are creating the site, i'd forget it. Very hard work indeed.

 

[boxfish]

Here are some interesting posts by ScottJ from this forum on Geo development. They are a few years old and I'm not sure how he is doing with them now but certainly interesting reading if you are thinking of getting into it:

http://selfmademinds.com/200907/my-jaunt-into-geos/
http://selfmademinds.com/200908/the-case-for-geographical-development/
http://selfmademinds.com/200908/advertisers-coming-to-me/
http://selfmademinds.com/201003/geos-update/

 

[Murray]

Just out of interest, realistically what sort of money would you hope to make per month from doing this?.

What you're proposing sounds like a lot of work and something more suited to a hobby because you have a passion about the area, rather than monetary gain.

 

[dashu1]

Thanks for your replies, some interesting comments.

Murray - how much do I expect it to earn - simply, I don't know.

The missus is currently putting in c.25 hours per week as a pseudo journalist for a local sunday paper (one of the free ones) and being paid a pittance for it.

I think her time would be better spent putting in c.25 hours per week on a website and building it up into something special compared to the typical low quality, low effort sites that seem to be out there.

I would think that if she did that then she could earn more within 6 to 12 months from it than she earns now, and she'd be her own boss.

I want to make sure I'm right in my thinking first though, hence why anyone with some knowledge and experience in this field and their thoughts is worth it's weight in gold.

Cheers.

 

[crabfoot]

When you want to source revenue streams, it can be useful to look at what competing sites are using.

Look for successful sites in the same field, rather than sites for the same geo location, and use a slow connection (eg. a dial-up) so you can watch the address references go by in the bottom bar of the browser after you click on their ads. You can often tie the ads down to a particular merchant/aff scheme this way.

Of course, that is all a bit academic until you get traffic to the site.


Prompted by your mention of Bridlington and Windermere - both those places are very popular destinations for one-day coach trips.

One thing that might be useful would be an on-line booking system for coaches. You can get that sort of thing quite easily and the locals could use it as well, if they want to travel out of the place.

You could hopefully then provide information about day trips into the resort, and have provision for making bookings on-site. I'm not sure how easy or practical getting that day trip info would be, but it is an idea.

 

[Edwin]

This is one instance where 1+1>2, if all goes well.

In other words, if you want to stand out from the crowd, then combine:
A) The best possible domain for the location (town.co.uk)
B) Solid, good quality up-to-date content on a "professional" looking site (i.e. start with a decent template and logo)

With both A) and B) in place, you should start to edge out a lot of the bigger players that have built "clone" geo sites for hundreds of towns across the UK, but whose individual offerings aren't particularly exciting. Your domain name shouts that you're "more local" than anyone else, and therefore over time you become THE place for local advertisers who are hoarding their advertising pennies. You will come across as more credible when approaching businesses for ads.

Probably not worth putting all the effort into B) if you don't have A) though.

 

[dashu1]

This is one instance where 1+1>2, if all goes well.

In other words, if you want to stand out from the crowd, then combine:
A) The best possible domain for the location (town.co.uk)
B) Solid, good quality up-to-date content on a "professional" looking site (i.e. start with a decent template and logo)

With both A) and B) in place, you should start to edge out a lot of the bigger players that have built "clone" geo sites for hundreds of towns across the UK, but whose individual offerings aren't particularly exciting. Your domain name shouts that you're "more local" than anyone else, and therefore over time you become THE place for local advertisers who are hoarding their advertising pennies. You will come across as more credible when approaching businesses for ads.

Probably not worth putting all the effort into B) if you don't have A) though.

Thanks Edwin,
sadly the .co.uk is owned by a small caravan park which advertises itself only. I have the .org.uk, which so long as I can get it ranking I think isn't much of a problem since the .com is for sale for crazy money.

I don't see the .co.uk going anywhere for some considerable time to come so I think I have the best available name.

I don't think advertisers are that bothered so long as they get visibility, or I hope they're not.

 

[Edwin]

The problem is that you will have local (probably, if it's a touristy place), regional and national players all fighting with yellow pages/yell and other guides for ad money. As a new player, you need to come in looking like the incumbent (i.e. on the .co.uk or .com) so that everyone else is playing catch-up.

Unless there's tons of potential traffic and you can get a wide range of pages ranking REALLY well, I don't see any other way to get advertisers interested in advertising with you rather than any of the competing options.

As others have already pointed out, this is a major project if your intent is to do it well, so you want to start by building on firm foundations.

 

[dashu1]

The problem is that you will have local (probably, if it's a touristy place), regional and national players all fighting with yellow pages/yell and other guides for ad money. As a new player, you need to come in looking like the incumbent (i.e. on the .co.uk or .com) so that everyone else is playing catch-up.

Unless there's tons of potential traffic and you can get a wide range of pages ranking REALLY well, I don't see any other way to get advertisers interested in advertising with you rather than any of the competing options.

As others have already pointed out, this is a major project if your intent is to do it well, so you want to start by building on firm foundations.

This is the chicken and egg scenario that I'm trying to evaluate - is there enough possible revenue and monetizing options to make it worthwhile putting in the effort, and if I (well the wife) put(s) in the effort will the revenue follow.

It's actually an area rather than a town, and it covers a relatively good sized area.

 

[Murray]

As a new player, you need to come in looking like the incumbent (i.e. on the .co.uk or .com) so that everyone else is playing catch-up.

Also if you have the .co.uk or .com people will tend to think you're the official site for the area and link to you naturally.

 

[boxfish]

This is the chicken and egg scenario that I'm trying to evaluate - is there enough possible revenue and monetizing options to make it worthwhile putting in the effort, and if I (well the wife) put(s) in the effort will the revenue follow.

It's actually an area rather than a town, and it covers a relatively good sized area.

It's hard to say without knowing the area - in my opinion:

Yorkshire Dales - Yes (they also use a .org.uk), Yorkshire Wolds - No

 

[optiweb]

I'm glad you posted this topic. Last week I bought a local town org.uk (co.uk owned by a business and .com holder asking 20k!).

I thought it would make a nice summer project for me and my partner who is a budding amateur photographer.

My plan is to build it out and then just sit on it for 12 months or so to see if it gets a decent rank. If so then I will look into monetizing it. Most probably from business listings or write ups.

I personally am treating it more as a hobby project and if something comes of it down the line then thats all good

 

[retired_member34]

The missus is currently putting in c.25 hours per week as a pseudo journalist for a local sunday paper (one of the free ones) and being paid a pittance for it.

I think her time would be better spent putting in c.25 hours per week on a website and building it up into something special compared to the typical low quality, low effort sites that seem to be out there.

There are many hyperlocal sites around the country being run on just such a journalistic basis, but most fail to monetise well. Have a look at Openly Local for a large list. Then there are many directory sites that struggle to get sufficient traffic to generate much advertising revenue.

The best do both, some good examples are On The Wight and Alderley Edge (run by an Acorn member), and put in a lot of effort to attract local revenue.

This is one instance where 1+1>2, if all goes well.

In other words, if you want to stand out from the crowd, then combine:
A) The best possible domain for the location (town.co.uk)
B) Solid, good quality up-to-date content on a "professional" looking site (i.e. start with a decent template and logo)

Probably not worth putting all the effort into B) if you don't have A) though.

For the domain, I've developed geos using both exact match and brand domains. The exact match does mean most people will assume you are "official" but other than this I've seen very little benefit, particularly now that Google has dialed down the emd boost. This is one market where you don't need to rely on Google for traffic. Does it help having the exact match? Probably. Is it neccessary? No. If you offer good, accurate local content then it will be discovered locally, the demise of local papers has created a vacuum you can fill. The only thing I would say is you really need to live in the town.

If you can, go to the Talk About Local Unconference, you'll meet many others running these sites, and they are all very open with advice.

 

[dashu1]

That's fantastic help GeoMal, thanks very much.

So definitely need to live in the area to make it work?

 

[retired_member34]

So definitely need to live in the area to make it work?

It's hard to be an expert on the area unless you are there every day.

 

[retired_member34]

So definitely need to live in the area to make it work?

It's also important to be a known part of the community, particularly the business community, in order to build relationships with advertisers.

On my last site I partnered with a local shop owner, who is in the town all the time (though we are still not generating news which I think would help enormously). We populated a business directory with business name, category, address, photograph, contact details and accurate geolocation on a map for 90% of the town's businesses (it's a small town, we did this for around 200 businesses). We then launched by delivering a free window cling sticker for every business that stated "Find us on websitename" with a QR code that when scanned went straight to the individual business listing, not to the home page. About 75% went up within the first month, but we're close to 100% now.

Even with all this and the support of the local chamber of trade it still only generates £xxx per month. If you generate news however I think you can increase this substantially, and a critical thing we haven't done is generate an email newsletter. From email lists you can generate significant income.

I think you stated looking at a wider area though, so not so much a town site. There is one succesful site that does this by concentrating on events, with self written content by journalists and it has built up a large email list. It turns over £250Kpa, and employs 4. Have a look at So Glos.

 

[dashu1]

Thank you for all of the help, advice and comments, there's some really useful stuff from some very knowledgeable people here.

I'm going to have a good long think about it in light of this.