competing with my city's site ??

L

lose lose win

gnothi seauton
Aug 3, 2011
999
15
0
so i live in a small tourist town which thrives on it's downtown scene...

my genius newbie idea was that i could offer a review site targeting that specific group of merchants. charge shop owners a small monthly fee to be featured on the site. advertise the site in the hotels in that area, get a site ranking for the city keyword...should be pretty easy. a little door to door sales to the shops...i live in the area and walk past these shops daily.

i realize this isn't a revolutionary idea, but i dont think it has been capitalized on in my area, and it seems like a good way to get some small ($500-$1000/monthly) recurring revenue coming in. the only competition is the official city website, and it is a good resource, it just isn't targeted on the downtown/tourist scene.

the domain "citynamedowntownreview.com" is available

btw...this would be my first site so i'm basically retarded at this point

opinions/experience/advice/dickrolls???
 


I did something very similar about a two years ago. Before I could get real advertisers (I was promoting business for free, but pretending they were paid ads to entice new advertisers), the city's legal dept sent me a C&D. They later bought me out.

Protip: Feel free to contact good backlink sites which are linking to the official site to inform them of the new "updated" url.
 
Perma said:
I did something very similar about a two years ago. Before I could get real advertisers (I was promoting business for free, but pretending they were paid ads to entice new advertisers), the city's legal dept sent me a C&D. They later bought me out.

Protip: Feel free to contact good backlink sites which are linking to the official site to inform them of the new "updated" url.
Click to expand...

thanks for the reply.

good idea to promote for free to get things rolling

can i ask a few questions?
-city population?
-fee you charged merchants?
-did you promote the site locally or just through SEO?
-was it worth your time and effort?
 
The city's population is 500k, but I wasn't targeting "cityName" as my main keyword. I was targeting 2-3 word terms, with the city name as one of the words. I was solely promoting the site through SEO.

As mentioned, before I could get advertisers, I was bought out by the city. In that regard, it was worth it. I sold the site to them quite quickly, without being haggled.
 
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