Your Local Niche Market
By Vic on Dec 30, 2007 in Niche Blogging
What do I mean with this? Simple let’s say you live in Boony Hill USA which has only 750 residents well you would think this market would be tough especially if you only have a small percentage of residents that are computer literate so you might need to expand to a county to gain more reader base, but let’s say even though Boony Hill USA on has 750 residents inside the town their is a bar named Jim Bob’s Ho Down! and this pub is quite famous in the area well now you might have one common theme between different towns but a place where they all go to, so it might be beneficial in your local blog to write about Jim Bob’s Ho Down! as you will get readers that will be easier to establish a bond since you share a common tactile interest.
Now let’s say that most of you will have a rich local market in other words it is a market where you will not have a problem with count, their will be enough people in your town to be able to establish that base 500 readership. The first thing you better do is make sure from the offset you have a branded blog. People I have no idea if you folks really understand how important perception is, I will actually cover this later in another post. My point people a wordpress theme can be as cheap as $49.99 buy a fucking theme! Now because this blog will be about your local town your best bet is to buy a news style theme. Make a nice proper header and learn how to use the Featured, feature this will give you that professional image.
I will tell you this and it will not matter because some of you will say fuck Vic you really do not need that. Do not use a blogger blog or a wordpress free blog, buy a domain, buy a theme and get the cheap Hosting account at Host Gator the first month will be a cent and you can get the unlimited domain pkg so it will not be only for this blog. People it does matter this will not be just a niche this will be your calling card and from here you will be able to launch your other serious projects, you only get one chance for a first impressions so your best bet is not to fuck it up. Now if you do not have money to buy the theme go to Blog Oh Blog they have one of the best free news theme and it is extremely easy to use, most news themes are not user friendly it takes a while to use but not theirs it is pretty and easy to use make sure you read all the instructions.
For the domain folks you really do not need a pre-owned domain because you will be working traffic here a bit different. So focus on a domain you can brand go with something that has the name of your local market and use gazette, post, news, magazine etc etc.
Now do searches for shit that is local in Google and find out who is talking about what. The less search results you see write it down this will be a topic you will write about. Things that are gold mine:
1. Local Schools Sports.
2. Local Restaurants and Entertainment
3. Local Civic Groups
4. Local Charity Events
5. Local Landmarks
Now I can keep going but by now you should see where I am going with this. Now to make this site work perfect their are a few things you will need to make sure you do. You can not be an asshole like me. You have to kiss ass. So when people make the dumb ass comments some people make about something you wrote try to be politically correct and address what ever stupid shit they wrote trying to understand their concern but and then express your point of view again. Remember you will need them to become your loyal readers and friends this will be the people you will be asking down the road to stumble your site. This folks is a must incorporate your readers inside your post. When you are writing a post about a local sport mention how you where talking to Paul and if Paul is the local bar owner you will say it. Now this is how I would do it.
Last night was the game between boonhill and flayway wow it was such a great game ti was so nice to see my good friends Bill and Jane watching their son Mark play. I sat with Bill for a while and we where talking about the upcoming charity event Hearts and Flowers and blah blah blah so folks remember to support this event and btw folks Bill is the owner of Bills Trout and Steak, if you have not had a Trout and Steak at the same time you need to go and get one Bill just makes the best Steak & Trout now tell Bill I sent you and please tell him I said Hi and to remember we are meeting next week for the even coordination.
Now in this post I mentioned specific events so when people go online searching for “boonhill and flayway” , “Hearts and Flowers” and “Bills Trout and Steak” they will be finding me I also tied names, people like to be mentioned so guess what other people will be telling Bill when they see him, Hey Bill Vic wrote on his blog about you guys talking about the Charity event and you know I was thinking I would like to help, I also placed urgency when I wrote to tell Bill about next weeks meeting I implanted in their subconscious that they should go and get the steak and fish and to tell Bill my message. Now when they go to the Restaurant and they give Bill my message I just setup myself for advertising down the line.
Traffic is worked for this niche a bit different. Now I have taught you guys that even in sandbox you will be given top positions for searches that are not common also because you are making a blog that talks about local things you will be given Geo authority so when you local data center feeds results you will be also ranking top placement on some searches but you will also be able to promote your blog the same way we promote our local BBQ place. You will give business cards to everybody you meet and know you can get FREE business cards from Vista Print . Now when you give your cards you will not fucking give people a sales pitch do not make them feel like committing suicide when you start telling them how uplifting blogging is, just give them the card and tell them when they get a chance to look you up if they ask what it is you will tell them that is is your little corner in the internet where you talk about current evens in your town. Folks it is amazing what curiosity does and sure enough they will be going home and looking up your domain. Now folks do I really have to mention that the focal point of the business card should be your domain name and not your name?
For online promotion you will work as always try to work keywords in but not like your straight up money niche sites this site will be more about content and making friends even so if you have not read Court’s Introduction To Keyword Sniping and Introduction To Double Keyword Sniping go do it now so you get the best explanation out their on how to proper work this. You will still be using BookmarkingDemon to get anchored links and you will still do your D-list link run.
I hope I covered most of the information you will need but please if you have any questions just ask them.
Popularity: 7% [?]
I’ll have to catch the video later when I’m at...
Ok that was really an eye opener. Never really thought about data centres and local’s searches..
You just gave me a spark of an idea!
Thanx vic!
I think some folks really do not get how much data centers and GEO can affect their websites I will go deeper into that later down the road.
Damn why did my coment not show up =.=
Anyway, this really opened my mind up to the datacentres and geo searches. Great idea mate!
You just sparked my mind!
Thx vic
First comment has to be approved after that you are in the circle of peace
wow! This is a great idea!
A friend has been after me to start a local site for news in our area, I am going to forward this to him and see what he thinks!
The best part is he is one of the marketing managers for our regional newspaper!
Right ON Vic!
Elliot dude that sounds like a sweet deal jump on it like their is no tomorrow. We will also talk next year bout the other niches
Vic,
I enjoy your blog and you try to give good advice but it seems like you are a real small time player.
You might (or might not) know about a 19 year old kid at uberaffiliate dot com who claims to now be making mid six figures a month. Mid six figures = $300,000.00 to $600,000.00 per month I assume. And he started in February of 2007.
His goal is to have 2 million dollars in the bank by the end of 2008 and $15 million by the time he is 25 years old.
He did fake his RSS subscriber feed but that is just a very minor problem because John Chow has backed him up several times on his site. His readers can’t get enough of this guy and most are fawning all over him. If John Chow backs him he must be legit!
Vic, as I have found a much better blog than yours, I must leave you now to make my fortune over at the 19 year old guys blog. He obviously knows tons more than you do and I would be a fool to stick around here when I can go there and find out how to be rich.
By the way, I am sarcastically joking about all this (just in case you can’t tell for sure) but this guy is not joking. I would love to see your take and hopefully you will rip him apart in your usual style.
DayJobNuker (Bruce)
Well, that guy is talking about PPC affiliate marketing which is a whole different ballgame. That system reminds me a lot of day trading. You can make a lot of money quickly but you can also flush away all your profits in a sour deal.
Bruce LMAO you did not have to clarify I already know you are a sarcastic bitch just like me
Yeah this guy is another joke down the line I will tackle it but for the next few post I want to give out info on making money get you guys started right for 08.
Interesting… there’s quite a big English speaking contingent living here on the Costa Del Sol - ok most of ‘em are either retired or drunk most of the time, but there should be enough around with a few brains cells intact to work something with… hehehe…
Terry just try to get 500 base and it would work. Terry you will need to submit the domain for re-inclusion Court and me kind of think that de PR6 was faked with a redirect so G has you in their bad bot list. Make sure you tell them you bought the domain and had nothing to do with the past of the domain.
Hi Vic,
I actually experienced exactly what you’re talking about (but on a relatively small scale, and kind of by accident) a few weeks ago …
We had a wind storm here in Hawaii, that blew down some trees, and knocked out power on the Island for a day or so. I happened to be out and about, so I took a few pictures and make a quick post titled “A few Pictures after the Hawaii Storm”. It didn’t get picked up by national news or anything, but I did get linked to by the accuweather blog. And also got search engine traffic for about a week.
Really made me wish that I would have taken better pictures, and written a better story. My intention when I wrote it, was for that to just be a “filler” post.
Lesson learned.
Todd
Todd it is crazy all the material that local media does not cover and sometimes a story goes national and your local media has just snippets. National media does exactly like us they search Google so if you come up on the radar you might get picked up on a National scale and when this happens buddy you just hit Pay Day.
You mean something like this:
One Minute?
Sweet
Yeah, it’s a community newspaper concept that covers the goings-on in your local community. Been there and done that before, and what a dumb ass I am to wait for you to hit the nail on me head! The sparks are flying now, lol. 2008 is gonna be a busy year.
Markk the important thing is to lock down a base reader ship that is local like I mentioned before my friend is making 5k from his local niche and his niche is a street so sometimes we do not have to go as broad as a city just make sure it is local enough where you can meet your reader base.
For this usage is a dot com domain a must or is it Ok to use a .info, .net, .us, .biz suffix?
Long term .com names have a higher resale value, but is this a keeper/revenue/authority site?
Vic, love the idea! Here’s my start, put it together over the last two days. Spending time today meeting some folks and writing content. Gonna be great in ‘08!
-Thom
http://www.EastOfHuntsville.com
I love I just plain love it. This is what I am talking about. One of the really cool thing you will start to see is your own readers will start pointing you to news that have not being picked up and you will have the scoop. Thom it is crucial to bond with your core base and try to meet them so they know that behind the blog is a real person just like you. Congrats on getting this going.
BTW Genius!
The more involved you get your readers the more loyal they become, again I hope that something I wrote here produced this great Blog, I would really love to think that my crazy sometimes un-legible garble sparkled this.
Looking good Thom. I’ll be watching what you do. Nice clean look. Lots of luck.
Wow Vic! This is the BEST most informative post I have ever read on ANY blog! No shit! Anyways…quick question.
Not that I am lazy (because I am definitely not), this seems like the makings of a time-consuming, authority site. Am I correct?
This is nothing like Court’s “keyword sniping” type site right?
I have a strong “local” I’d like to run by you in private to see if I should dive in. I already bought the domain, but would really like to get your opinion.
Also, I found a cool “news” theme if anyone wants to get it. It’s not cheap. It’s a hundred bucks, but I’m going to get it for sure.
Look forward to hearing back from you Vic!
Happy New Year to you and everyone in here!!!
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Sorry for the rookie question but how is a site like this monetized? I can’t see adsense being approriate and affliates are more geared to products. Is it a matter of selling advertising space to local groups/business?
Hey Vic,
If I start a local blog do you think I will have to be politically correct (and not swear)? Just wondering if everything would have to be roses and fluffy kittens or if being myself (no matter how gruff) would be the best way to go.
I’m really not sure how long I could maintain a blog without ranting about local politics (et al) and like you I tend to go way off when triggered. Maybe that would actually help the blog because everyone would be curious about my opinions.
What are your thoughts?
Rhonda
Fuck that be yourself and people love politics especially if they are local hey look the more controversial you are the more people are willing to listen look at me
The thing is on post you swear you will never be able to use Adsense but that will not be a big issue for local advertising if your site grown popuplar enough the swearing will not be a problem either look at Howard Stearn 