Newbie launching local niche site & need your input on best way to make my venture profitable

3 replies
I'm preparing to launch a local review daily email/blog focused on families with children ages newborn - 5 years old. It's a market that really needs attention since no one locally is really giving honest reviews of the best places & activities for families. I wanted to pursue this for two reasons. First, I love writing and this would be a platform to strengthen and promote my writing. And second, it's near and dear to this mom of two girls ages 2 & 4.

I had been stumped for a bit on how to make this venture profitable, sooner than later considering my family's current financial situation. Then I was poking around WF & all these lightbulbs started going off.

I want to know how you would monetize such a site with these two goals in mind:

1. Profit at least $1000 dollars a month
2. Generate an increase in profit for the businesses I'm featuring/working with

Here's a list of ways I think might be good to monetize my local family review site (all gathered from my time poking around WF):

-local business discount cards focused on family friendly businesses/service providers
-offer consultations on how local businesses can use social media & the internet to increase profits (GP, FB, etc.)

Any other ways you think would be good to monetize?
And which methods would you recommend I start off with?

Thanks!
#input #launching #local #make #newbie #niche #profitable #site #venture
  • Profile picture of the author Warrior Ben
    Hi Carla,

    Congrats on getting ready to launch your new blog! It sounds like you have a subject that you are passionate about, so that is a great start.

    In terms of monetizing your blog, the first thing you need to focus on is how you are going to drive traffic to it. You can have the best looking/sounding blog in the world, but if nobody goes to it you will find it hard to make any money off it.

    One of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog is good old fashioned SEO. Since you are focusing on your local community that will actually make it easier to rank for a lot of keywords because there is less competition. It will also mean there are less searches than broad keywords, so you'll want to be specific in creating your blog posts around the most highly searched local keywords that relate to blog.

    To figure out which keywords are worth ranking for, go to Google's Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and start putting in different keywords to get ideas and see the search volumes. One important thing to remember is to change the "Match Type" on the left-hand side to [Exact]. This will ensure you are getting the search volumes for people searching for the specific keyword and not a broad search.

    As for what keywords to start with, I'd check out "newborn family activities [CITY NAME]" or young children activities [CITY NAME]" or "[CITY NAME] children's museum]. Really put yourself in the shoes of somebody who is searching for things that your blog would provide value to and find the keywords with the largest number of monthly searches.

    Once you have identified some keywords that people are actually searching for, start making blog posts around that keyword. Include the keyword in the title of your blog post and also make sure you use the keyword in the body of your blog posts. I'm not going to get into every on-page SEO technique right now, but it would be well worth your time to explore that topic.

    Once you have made the blog post that incorporates the keyword you will want to start working on off-page optimization. This entails getting other sites to link back to your site, also known as getting backlinks. You want to make sure that the backlink to your site doesn't just say "Click here" or is the URL of your page. You want the link to be the keyword. For example, if the keyword is "children's activities" then people will click on "children's activities" and be taken to your site, not just "click here". Like on-page optimization, off-page optimization and backlinking is something you will want to familiarize yourself with. I hope I explained all that well enough to set you off in the right direction. I also apologize if I explained it in too simple of terms if you already know this stuff.

    Anyway, the more backlinks you build the higher your blog post will rank in the search results for the specific keyword. You will want to get quite a few of your posts ranked so that you can start having good traffic to your site.

    Ok, so now let's assume you are getting traffic to your blog and hopefully building a following of people who are checking in and reading regularly. Probably the easiest way to monetize your site is to run ads for local businesses that cater to your demographic of mothers with young children.

    Approach the business owners and let them know you run a blog that fits their demographic and you have advertising space available. (I'm really simplifying the sales process here, but you can find plenty of advice and tips on how to land sales in other threads here on WF.) How much you charge for advertising is totally depending on your traffic, but I'd make it a goal to get 5 businesses paying you $200 a month so you can reach the $1,000 monthly you want.

    Once you have signed up businesses to advertise with you, develop the relationship with the business owner. Then you can go on to sell them other consulting services like you mentioned.

    Also, Discount cards like you mentioned are another great way to profit off your blog. You could create "Mommy Cards" (totally just made up the name) for $20 each to your blog readers and that would give them discounts at various businesses that make sense. This will obviously take some time to build up businesses who are interested, but it really isn't that hard because you are just asking the businesses to accept a discount if somebody shows them the "Mommy Card".

    Anyway, I've really simplified a lot of things here, but the main takeaway would be to first focus on driving traffic to your blog and building up a readership so that you will be able to charge advertising prices that are worth your while. Also, don't be shy about getting other perks besides just money for running your blog. Call up restaurants and ask for a free meal for your family in exchange for an honest review on your site. Ask for free admission to the Children's Museum (assuming you have one in town) in exchange for a review on your site. Not only can you use your blog to put extra money in your pocket, you can use it to cut down on some of your monthly expenses.

    I hope this helps set you in the right direction, but feel free to ask any more questions if you have them. And best of luck moving forward! I just recently started a blog myself (Shameless Promotion: Warrior Ben Confidential) so this stuff has been on my mind quite a bit lately!

    -Ben
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4880242].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author CarlaMM
    So much useful information here! Thank you. The point you bring up about traffic is an excellent one. I definitely need to focus more on driving traffic to the site. I'm still kind of new to SEO so I'd love to pick up a good ebook or take a course on learning the basics and then some. Do you have any programs you recommend or websites I can check out? I'll also definitely keep reading more here in the WF. My other question is about selling ad space. I'm also doing this on a daily email model (think Daily Candy or Very Short List) so I was thinking of selling ad space and sponsorship opportunities within each email. I've spoken to several local folks involved in businesses geared at families and have gotten the sense that ads on a blog aren't as easy to sell. So I'm thinking of creating integrated packages where a business will get my "cheerleading" services for a set amount of time, like a month and during that time they'll get boosted content beyond just a write up. They'll get additional mentions on emails/posts, banner advertising in emails/posts, video and photo content posted to YouTube & Flikr optimized for the search engines. It sounds like a lot but it's all things that can be done on one visit and just edited behind the scenes. Do you have any thoughts on these kinds of integrated campaigns?

    Thanks so much again for your feedback and definitely let me know if you have any great resources for learning more about SEO.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4880611].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Aaron Doud
    Carla you have to price the ads right to your local customers based on traffic. What is in it for them.

    For example let's say you review a great place. You might call up the owner and say I just did this great review of your place. I really would like to send more traffic your way while getting some traffic myself. Then offer him ads on your site for free in exchange for him putting up some in store signage about the great review they got on your site.

    Once you start getting a lot of traffic you could than sell the ad space or offer other similar deals but with money involved for you.

    Depending on the size of your market you may or may not be able to turn this into a 1,000 a month. But remember to talk to an accountant as you may be able to write off the money you spend to go to the places you review and that has value.

    And you could branch out from the blog into offering services to these companies. You gave them a great review and traffic for free so they will be more likely to want to pay you back(it's human nature).
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4880831].message }}

Trending Topics