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Rental site model for local businesses... couple of questions! Experience anyone?

by Menno Marketing
5 replies
Hi guys!

I'm getting started with the rental site model, in a nutshell: creating a website on a local niche, getting it ranked nicely and selling the ad space to a local company.

I ran into a couple of questions along the way:

- What do you think is better, just exclusive ad space to one client or more like a overview page with several clients?
- Of these two options, which one is easier or better to sell? One client for 200/month or 4 clients for 50/month each (just an example).
- Of these two, what would create higher conversions? What I mean: to a visitor of such a site, which one would be more reliable or have higher authority?

So looking at the three parties of this business model (the client, the visitors, and myself as business owner) I'm trying to work out the best options.

Anyone already experienced with any of this? Help would be appreciated!

Thanks :-)
#businesses #couple #experience #local #model #offline #questions #rental #site
  • Profile picture of the author Jason Dittberner
    I'm hardly an expert on this, as I only have three, but I rent mine for $200 a month, to one customer each. I didn't want to always be looking for the next renter. They get either a banner ad at the top of my Socrates WP themed sites or if I am using a different template, they get a "widget" ad in the upper right sidebar. I also give them one text link, in the body copy of the page. All my sites are one page (minus privacy page, contact, etc).

    Additionally, I also rank a video (generic industry video, with a phone number to a virtual number so I can change where it forwards to) and try and rank on the first page as well so they have TWO opportunities to be seen. Video is easy to rank, and having two different opportunities make these easier to sell.

    I rent out at 3,6, or 12 month "segments" and charge $50 (you can probably get more) for ads if they don't have one.

    The hardest part is finding a "niche" city somewhere to rent these. I have all three of mine in the same area (three different industries), simply because it was hard to find this hole-in-the-wall city, that had a lot of searches, for the businesses I was looking to work with. Master that, and the rest is easy.

    Good luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author Menno Marketing
      Originally Posted by Jason Dittberner View Post

      I'm hardly an expert on this, as I only have three, but I rent mine for $200 a month, to one customer each. I didn't want to always be looking for the next renter. They get either a banner ad at the top of my Socrates WP themed sites or if I am using a different template, they get a "widget" ad in the upper right sidebar. I also give them one text link, in the body copy of the page. All my sites are one page (minus privacy page, contact, etc).

      Additionally, I also rank a video (generic industry video, with a phone number to a virtual number so I can change where it forwards to) and try and rank on the first page as well so they have TWO opportunities to be seen. Video is easy to rank, and having two different opportunities make these easier to sell.

      I rent out at 3,6, or 12 month "segments" and charge $50 (you can probably get more) for ads if they don't have one.

      The hardest part is finding a "niche" city somewhere to rent these. I have all three of mine in the same area (three different industries), simply because it was hard to find this hole-in-the-wall city, that had a lot of searches, for the businesses I was looking to work with. Master that, and the rest is easy.

      Good luck.
      As for finding a "niche", I've made some local sites for 'house renting + city' or 'apartment for rent + city' etcetera and they ranked pretty well pretty fast.
      Keywords like this hardly show any google places, and they are also getting some proper search volume.

      Maybe a good niche for the long term to consider!
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      • Profile picture of the author hommi_16
        Originally Posted by Menno Marketing View Post

        As for finding a "niche", I've made some local sites for 'house renting + city' or 'apartment for rent + city' etcetera and they ranked pretty well pretty fast.
        Keywords like this hardly show any google places, and they are also getting some proper search volume.

        Maybe a good niche for the long term to consider!
        I personally rent my sites as a whole to one person. The site basically becomes theirs as long as they rent from me. I'm not so sure about renting it to several people as I don't think that local traffic would sustain more than one company (unless you're talking about a really high traffic website which is extremely targeted). Don't get me wrong, I think you may be able to rent as space on the site to more than one company but if they don't see results they may opt out later on. I would rather charge one person and have them satisfied.

        A question to Menno....

        May I ask you what you do with those rental apartment sites. I've been toying with this idea but can't seem to find how to market it.

        Any ideas would be great.

        Regards,

        Peter
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        • Profile picture of the author Menno Marketing
          Originally Posted by hommi_16 View Post

          I personally rent my sites as a whole to one person. The site basically becomes theirs as long as they rent from me. I'm not so sure about renting it to several people as I don't think that local traffic would sustain more than one company (unless you're talking about a really high traffic website which is extremely targeted). Don't get me wrong, I think you may be able to rent as space on the site to more than one company but if they don't see results they may opt out later on. I would rather charge one person and have them satisfied.

          A question to Menoo....

          May I ask you what you do with those rental apartment sites. I've been toying with this idea but can't seem to find how to market it.

          Any ideas would be great.

          Regards,

          Peter
          Peter, I just create these apartment niche sites just like the others. These niche sites are built on keywords like 'apartment for rent + city'.

          To market these site is actually not that hard. Just think of companies who have apartments for rent and looking for people who need them. Could be brokers, housing corporations etcetera. Of course, signing a contract for a new home is a big deal so the conversions are not that high.
          But still, you can send these targeted visitors to a client who is interested in helping these people further.

          Also, you can do this for several niches. Think of 'cars for sale + city'...

          Hope that helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author PPC-Coach
    I have 10 of these at the moment and I'll tell you that unless you're getting ranked for the right keywords, (ie the ones THEY search for and THEY find you), it's an uphill battle.

    Building the site is simple, getting it ranked is simple with local stuff BUT getting clients on there is not easy. You're now reduced to a cold caller unless you have enough traffic that they're calling you, but that doesn't happen often because most business owners are not googling themselves and don't even understand much about online marketing.

    For pricing, if you go too cheap, they don't think it's worth it. These aren't cheap people you're dealing with, they're willing to risk their own money to make more and value is big for them. If anything over price and offer discounts as specials if you have to. One client for the whole site is best imho, but if you want to take on my you just add to the headache/pain in the butt factor with each additional one.

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