Local Niches and Flagship Blogs
By Vic on Mar 19, 2008 in Niche Blogging
This is my first vlog post on local niches and flagship blogs. Now for the local niches many to come but I want to start giving you a small view of where we will be going and hopefully also get some info from all of you local niche bloggers to better help you.
As you folks know I am a huge local niche supporter and I hope that all of you make the sweet cash before the end to 2008 so lets start.
I know you folks may have tons of questions so please start asking away and hopefully we will have enough questions to make a full vlog post on all your doubts.
Tools and Resources:
BANS
Bookmarking Demon
Domains Into Dollars
BloggerGenerator
Keyword Elite
SEO Elite
Squidoo Queen
Popularity: 56% [?]
Vic,
I’m not seeing any link to your Vlog’s am I missing something here. The other day I saw a play button on one of your posts but wasnt able to take time to view it. Now I’m not seeing any play button or link to the videos. Am I nuts or are they located somewhere else?
Thanks,
Gotafish
Was it on the same computer? Most people that have had problems it has been browser related. Make sure you update to the latest Firefox or IE and also some one commented they clicked on F11 and it showed and mmm do not ask my why it showed LMAO I have no idea.
Let me know if it worked.
F11 worked. Heck I’ve been in IT for 10yrs never seen that before very interesting
Now I can get caught up.
Thanks
LMAO yeah I still have not figured that one out
Wow now I can even see your forum correctly. thought this whole time it was your site that was fouled up and its been the idoit between the chair and keyboard. Good thing im starting to try and make money blogging my IT skills are definately slipping, lol
LMAO well let’s hope now also the DNS is fixed and you folks do not have issues trying to see the post.
Thanks for the Big Honkin’ Ads mention. Of course, they are also a pattern interrupt from the typical nice and neat (and forgetable) 125×125 Chow-ish button ad.
My strategy with them has been to test out different ads with the thinking that if they get clicks from a jaded Internet Marketing crowd they may work even better on niche sites. Secondly, I do get search traffic on several posts related to news and entertainment items and having silly things like ringtone and dating ads in rotation have resulted in a few sales.
On local niche blog, I’ve put that on the backburner, at least as a semi-flagship blog. I’ve got a few Blogger blogs that ‘review’ certain local services that are showing promise but they’re weak on content as you might expect.
Vic its taking me almost 10 minutes to get an article indexed on my baseball site, lmao, I m having a ball with it, and dont even have the whole site up yet
As for local niches I eat salads and pizza at a local restaurant and sold an ad just talking to the owner and he agreed to promote my site, I have nothing of value on the site as time wont allow me to get to it, but its that easy to sell an ad
Don that is great because that means that your site is getting authority. Please make sure you ad the following pages. Archives, Sitemap and Contact
I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope the best for you and your family.
I started my local niche the last week of January, and my organic traffic has been low. I get around 35-60 uniques a day, but I get a bigger spike when I post about popular upcoming local events such as concerts.
I have been neglecting my local niche blog these past couple of weeks, but am starting to add fresh content again.
As far as monetization goes, when there’s upcoming concerts, I add adsense to that specific post and keep them up until the craze goes down. My CTR for those posts averages around 8%. That seems to work well, but I think I may be guilty of going about other monetization methods the wrong way and am rethinking my ads…augh! I’ll go over this vlog at another time so that I can get a better idea for a more focused and planned strategy. If you, or anyone else have any suggestions, I would appreciate it (the link is in my sig). I’ll check back to see the progress on everyone else’s blog.
Thanks for the informative post
I know it is hard to keep posting in the beginning I will actually address this in an upcoming vlog. Please make sure you add the related post plugin and a sitemap plugin
Thanks for this Vic, I hope your daughter will get better soon. I wish her all the best and plenty of health.
My niche blog did quite well in terms of traffic when I was posting regularely. I got between 50-60 uniques/day and thought this was cool. However, I have slacked off this month and now I got no traffic.
I know…stupid, it’s just that I’m struggling to balance all my work and making money right now has a priority as it pays the bills which is ironic, since if I don’t build the niches now they won’t grow. Duh…
I will have to try harder. I loved your travel affiliates program idea. I’ve been advertising London entry tickets for visitors through CJ, but to be honest I don’t think that they report correctly since it didn’t indicate one single click, even though I clicked on the ad myself to check it.
I’ve seen some possible aff.programs I will apply for. One is travel and the other insurance for travel.
However, I’ve received already two inquiries from people, one being in Sydney having found my site and looking for info about the community and the other from South Africa wanting to move here. Go figure.
This just shows and proves that it does work and with a bit of discipline on my behalf it will be groovy.
It has been hard dealing with my daughters health because we are still waiting on medical test so that time where you do not know what is wrong is just horrible but with the faith all will work out.
I know you have time issues because of your freelancing and we do have to pay the bills but just keep pushing yourself the rewards in time will out weight the hardship.
Thank you Vic, I will do that. Thanks to you I have woken up to all the bull that is happening in the meta blogging industry and I’m thankful for being able to stand back and look at things with new eyes. Plus with the help of my “secret” niche guru I will get there, I’m 100% certain of that.
Keep the faith for your daughter my friend. To have and love family (and be loved back) is priceless.
I was just checking on A-Links a couple weeks back and to my memory (:-() I believe it was updated.
I will be checking my uniques a day later. I get around 15 if it is a big event Like the “outhouse 500″ or “The Ride” a local fund raiser for a local hospital. I get steady hits on a new sports complex being built in our area.
I just started promoting our local real estate more and upcoming summer events.
Vic, I keep felling that the videos are cutting off where they shouldn’t. For me it stopped about 30 minutes and I didn’t hear you talk about travel affiliates or your daughter.
April
Wow, found out that by viewing the vids here I’m missing the last 1/4. I found the full vids on Revver so will need to go back and watch them all again.
My niche blog isn’t being updated much but it’s getting 90 visits per day from Google Images but only about 3 per day for Google.
April
April I really hope with todays changes all has been fixed it has been tough trying to nail down what exactly was wrong with the DNS.
Im currently getting 30 - 50 uniques a day. Stopped working on the site for a couple of weeks now. My highest was 190+ uniques for like a couple of days.
The figures are maybe partly because the internet population in my country is low i dont know. Anyway, 90% of my traffic is organic and the strange part is I have never done anything SEO wise to this blog. -_-
Anyway, nice to see you back with your videos
and take care of your daughter first please
Please do not stop posting I looked at some adsense and you have some profitable words you could work and also any travel and accommodation affiliate you can kill it with people looking to travel to Singapore.
Please make sure you add the following plugins. Related Post, Archives, Sitemap and Contact it will help you with Google and also provide an easier way for your readers to find stuff.
Hey Vic,
East of Huntsville is my local niche site. Over the last 30 days I’m averaging 25.86 unique per day with 16.76 coming from organic sources. I attribute the difference there to links I’m dropping all over other local blogs and forums. They are a pretty steady source of visits for me on this site.
Like Monika, my traffic is much better when I post more regularly…so, I’ll get back to doing that. There are a couple of hot topics here locally that always seem to drive hits.
I have three ads above the fold that I’ve sold to local businesses. I’ve tried intermingling them with Project Wonderful slots with the intention of using PW to manage my direct sales ads. Love to hear other opinions / experiences with managing direct sales ads.
I’m also going to be taking some lessons from your last couple of posts about banner blindness etc. I have very little adsense right now and need to improve that.
Thanks for all you do for us, hope your daughter gets better soon! Now, I’m ready…tell me what you think.
-Thom
Thom just the fact that you already have some local ad sales shit you are ahead of the curve. Now remember when it comes to sold ads you have to show them on the sidebar or somewhere ghat is side wide so when I talk about tons of ads I refer more to affiliates as a fact lets do this tomorrow I will make a vlog about local ads so we are clear on the difference.
About the A-links plugin, is the one by headzoo the right one?
Amazon (in their aff area) has a piece of code you install and they go through your site and look for stuff to turn into links. Would that be better than the plugin?
http://headzoo.com/alinks
Yes this is it I will download today and make sure it works.
You can use the Amazon code but I like Alinks because you can also add your own affiliate links better targeted monetization.
Hey Vic, all the best wishes for your daughter. Thanks for the good advice as always!
Terry
Thanks Terry we are waiting on all the medical results to find out what is wrong so it is kind of hard right now.
Trucking, A-links by Headzoo is correct. They have a forum to help understand this plug-in. They will be releasing a newer version soon but the latest works with WP 2.3 and higher.
Thanks and yes it is I am so glad it was not a dead project.
A little off topic but a follow-up to your post about how entrecard s#cks. I thought you might enjoy what I did - http://natespost.com/index.php.....o-credits/
p.s. keep up the good work!
Thanks Nate
Great videos, Vic. Lots of information there. I’ve been trying to take notes. I usually have to go to Revver, it’s real hit and miss to get either here or BZ. Sorry, everyone, can’t zoom your submissions cause for some reason my ISP can’t find either one of these sites 95% of the time.
My local blog is doing pretty good I think. I get mainly search traffic. The one restaurant review for the ranch house restaurant gets some search traffic almost every day. It’s amazing to me, never thought 2 or 3 people a day would search for just that one place out of almost a hundred in Red Deer.
The other reviews all get a search here and there. The Red Deer Swap Meet got 22+ a day before the event.
Between 20 and 100 searches a day, about 4 BZ referrals per day.
Last time I checked, I was #8 for “Red Deer events”,#4 and #5 for “Red Deer Restaurant”, #5 for “Red Deer Movie”,and #4 for “Red Deer News”.
I’m pretty pumped about this. I just wish I didn’t have to work 13 hours a day at my oilfield construction job. My goal is to be able to quit and work indoors before next winter. You probably have no idea what it’s like to work outside in Canada in January, but believe me, I am motivated. Anything you can tell me to speed this up Vic I will do my best to get done.
Tim would it be cool with you if I could make a specific VLog about your site there is so much I like that I would like to break it down and also make some suggestions.
Sure, I’m up for that. Just take it easy on me
Hope everything is ok buddy. Thanks for the vid again.
Rough 2 days JC it has not been easy with my big girl but with faith all will come around.
Hey Vic,
I’m also in the 50 - 80 range (new domain) but I haven’t been posting much lately. Busy running my Bookstore/Internet-Cafe and Bookshop Blog, now setting up Bans and working the local niche.
I think I’ll be heading to a couple restaurants next week!! Think they’ll throw me a bottle of wine?? maybe at me!
A local guy came and asked me about setting up a forum. Can you mention a word or two on whether or not including forums helps/hurts SEO. I’m thinking all the free content would be nice.
Bruce I will include you in a Vlog for tomorrow if it is ok with you so we can talk about how best work the site.
That would be terrific - thanks.
Hey Vic I hope your daughter will get better soon - thanks for taking the time to share with us stuff even when you’ve an important thing like that to deal with.
Thanks buddy
I started my local niche first week of Feb I’m only getting avg 15 unique per day but havnt spent enought time working the blog. It took me a while to get used to wordpress. not ran any ads on it yet just working on getting traffic and content.
Really learning quite a bit from your videos
Thanks for the advice.
gotafish
I hope to keep making vlogs to help you folks out a heads up the myblog catalog breaks the theme I am on Firefox and 1024 x 768
Thanks, I’ll get that fixed
I’m trying to come up with a local niche. I’m thinking my local is where I live. But if I live in a big city, the restaurant guides, reviews and directories are pretty crowded already.
I’m thinking of getting something local somewhere else. A mid-sized / smaller city. I wouldn’t really have to be there would I? Read the local paper online, google map the restaurants and businesses.
Or maybe I don’t quite understand how to get something local in a large city that doesn’t have as much competition.
No you do not have to live in the niche but indeed it would help because remember one of the advantages is that you can promote the local blog by talking to the guy at the bus or at the pub.
My local niche site has been up since end of January, but I did create some backdated posts to get some ‘archives’. This is my first blog and am exploring and learning as I go. Currently the site gets about 18 visits per day. The first attempt at ads was in a hidden post personal injury that gets organic traffic but almost no ad clicks. I’ll test different placement and style next.
A month ago I installed OpenAds and took several days to configure zone placement in the theme and add ad inventory. The ads are experimental examples but I see the potential. One extra step is getting advertisers’ creatives.
I’m learning a lot here and appreciate all the others’ niche sites for comments and links.
Finally a website that tells the truth about blogging. This video has made me a big fan and I have been watching 1 to 2 videos a day learning that I am doing everything wrong, but I will fix it, and make some serious money.
Thanks,
Chad
I sure hope that at least oe tip gives you a better chance at making some cash. And welcome to my crazy world LMAO
I found a couple interesting review plug-ins for people who plan to do restaurant or other business reviews. One in particular I think would help get more visitors commenting, which is fresh content for you.
This one allows commenters to rate the business you are reviewing themselves:
http://www.sourcebench.com/too.....iew-plugin
This plug-in is what the previous one was based on:
http://www.dangrossman.info/wp-dg-review-site/
This one allows the author to add ratings of his own right in the post:
http://www.channel-ai.com/blog.....ar-rating/
I hope you guys find these helpful. I’ve found that letting my readers post their own reviews of the business I’m blogging about benefits me in many ways. One in particular being that I can then show those positive reviews to potential advertisers. Seems to work better than traffic stats in proving to them that people are looking at my site and using it.
Thanks no doubt for a local niche I think they are gold.
This was a great video Vic. I think that an great strategy for adsense blogs is to create a flagship blog and post build it up for a solid three months. Get the pagerank up and write MFA posts inter mixed with your regular posts. This worked very well for me with http://MMOExplorer.com.
Is there a way for you to write MFA articles and not have them show up on your front page? I would love to be able to write MFA posts but not torture my regular readers with them.
As always thank you,
Fred
Fred I answered on the new comment vlog
Vic,
your video is an eye-opener. I looked at things from a different perspective and learned so much in such a short time, even got a few ideas.
Thank you.
I am so happy it provide it to you some good info that may help i your quest.
Hi Vic,
This is great. I am about to set up a Local Niche. I bought a domain, and then a few days later came up with a better name that I bought.
What do I do with the first one? Do I set it up for Adsense to try and get travel clicks, while the one with the name I like is more of a flagship site for me?
Or….uh…I dunno.
Your experience appreciated.
That is an awesome idea just be really specific on the keywords please make sure you read Grizz site he just gives tons of amazing info on Adsense he is actually better then me
http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/
Cool! I’m on it.