Web Portals For Local Businesses...your thoughts?

Hi Jack

I can't see newspapers willingly handing you their advertising customers for free.

Even if yours was a complimentary service (and let's face it it's not really) most newspapers are stuck in the dark ages when it comes to things such as JV's.

I wouldn't dismiss a portal as "nothing overly complicated", especially for your first project. These things require pretty powerful software and the skills/resources to manage them.

There are a few guys on here in the portal game who can give you good advice, hopefully they'll chime in.

For me personally, I don't see a lot of value in it for the small business owner, so I prefer to offer customized 1-on-1 solutions to each client.

It's a different business model entirely but one I feel gives the business owner a better value for money.

Hope that helps
Kyle

Rough idea here but worth considering: instead of starting your own free standing web portal, find (or have someone develop) a simple advertisement page for local shops with hotspot style wifi.

When people connect to wifi at the local coffee shop, they are instantly shown a page saying something like, "Please thank our sponsors for bringing us all free Wifi" and those advertisers will have paid you to appear on X pages.

You can have spots that are premium spots for a premium flat fee. And you cna have spots where the banners rotate for companies on a budget. You can even have spots that rotate between multiple hotspots, or spots that rotate between TARGETED sites for a little more...

I'm not sure how to get into the door of the local biz for free but Im sure it would be worth it if you offered to pay their wifi bill... your first advertiser should cover that nicely.

Anyways, just some rough draft thoughts... hope this helps.

Eric

I also think LocalBizBuilders is the place to look.

Jack, there were several threads in just the last week or two from people who are doing offline marketing for local businesses, including restaurants. These projects start at a thousand bucks and go up from there. Would these kinds of projects be satisfying and lucrative enough for you? If so, I recommend you follow those already-proven examples. It will be easier for a Mom&Pop store to understand paying you to build them a web site or improve their web site, rather than learning about some new portal thingy that promotes both them and their competition. So I suspect the one on one service might be a more direct path to immediate cash.

Regards,
Allen

Video is a really big hot button for businesses right now,.. you could integrate the idea of a portal that has video's for each business you are representing.

That would be attractive to the business owner because they see a higher percieved value and you would also get a novelty factor benefit from the visitor.

If you were really smart you might even go charge the local business $500 to make and publish the video,.. running it through traffic geyser too...

Just a thought

Hi guys, thanks for all the great advice. Sounds like as a relative newcomer my best bet would be to approach independent stores and offer one on one solutions and least for now. Then once that provides a bread and butter income and more importantly the hands on experience of providing all these services for local businesses consider portals.

Cheers guys for recommending local biz builders as well, a great source of info.

And thanks for all the great ideas.

Jack

I am curious as to some details on your model, are you planning on starting a national directory that is broken down into geographical areas, or are you starting a directory targeting a single geographic area? My advice would vary greatly depending on the answer to that question. It sounds more like that latter, but I am not 100% sure.

Do you have a particular affinity for restaurants? If not, you might want to consider setting up a local portal for multiple businesses in your area. By doing this, you'd be able to sell your listings to more customers and your site would become a resource for your entire area, a go-to place for anyone looking to purchase anything in xyz city/county/whatever.

If you do decide to go with the portal model, it is a great way for you to get your foot in the door to local businesses. Offer them a free listing, then call to see when you can stop by to get their listing details. At that time, you can offer them your upsells - websites, premium listings, autoresponders, seo, videos, or whatever you're most comfortable providing for them. That's where you'll make your money - the upsells.

I know Willie Crawford uses this model very successfully, and even has local businesses promoting his portal to the public, as it's a great resource for everyone in the community. It's a win-win all the way . . .

Best of success to you!