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Do city guide sites make money?

by Taylor Stewart G
5 replies
Do good city guide sites make money? Like, if you had a site on San Francisco, and you listed all the most popular and coolest concert venues, tattoo parlors, restaurants, etc. and also had city data and other articles, would those kind of sites make good money through AdSense? Would they be sticky? Could you build a brand around them...I am mostly curious about the AdSense income.
#city #guide #make #money #sites
  • Profile picture of the author Mastery1
    If you get enough visitors, yeah, you can earn some nice buck through AdSense that way.

    You can also further monetize it through selling all-in-one guide about the city or something like that.

    If your site gets a decent amount of visitors, you probably even get companies interested in paying you a commission for a higher ranking on the list.

    There are a lot of options to monetize with a bit of creativity
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    • Profile picture of the author BigFrank
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Mastery1 View Post

      There are a lot of options to monetize with a bit of creativity
      Forget creativity. It probably helps when the link to your site, actually functions.

      Frank

      EDIT: Glad to see you fixed that. You're very welcome! :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author jinmin
    There is a good earning potential but give it some time at the start to generate consistent traffic. Update new article or some write-ups on the best recommendation every few days to keep the site fresh and get more return visitors. As the words of mouth start spreading, the traffic will start growing.

    Start monetize the site with Adsense, and as the number of visitors grow, talk to local business for advertising opportunity such as ads space or a blog post to recommend their business.

    However, do your research beforehand how many of such websites already exist and how they are doing. It is a bit hard to be profitable if it is too competitive. In that case, consider niche specific site such as focus solely on restaurants, which can further break it down into different types and category of restaurants.
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  • Profile picture of the author onegoodman
    If you target city like San Francisco, sure there is, and there are multiple way to make hell of money out of it but it is not an easy ride. Unless you able to get a good portion of the traffic ( get ready to burn a lot of cash ).
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Your best bet isn't creating yet another general city guide, especially with major cities like SF. You'll be competing with local media, like newspapers and TV/radio stations, along with chambers of commerce and visitor/convention/tourist bureaus.

    Your best bet is in specialized guides - remember the old saying about going an inch wide and a mile deep.

    Instead of listing (or trying to list) all concert venues, create guides to the best blues venues, the best punk venues (is that still a thing?), and so on. Maybe something like a guide to gay bars with live music. Something niche, in other words.

    Once you have the model down, you can repeat it in other niches, like the best vegan tapas restaurants or something.

    If you end up with a stable of specialty guides, then you launch the umbrella site - a 'guide to the guides'.
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