All right, after getting spammed to death by Earl over at syndik8 for not posting in their forum I figured I'd break the ice with a post here instead. I think the brainstorming in threads like this will make me a more active member and I can finally dump the crusty ex over at dp.
I'm an opinionated kind of guy so here goes my 2c ... hopefully someone can convert it to Pecos for me so I can be rich.
Great idea although many have been down this road before, it's the amount of work that scares most off. I'm not afraid at dumping a few bucks into something like this so I love the PPC deal ... If I may suggest multiple Y! accounts + vouchers can turn that $300 advertising budget into a few thousand and XX,000 targeted visitors over the 1st 3 months (tapering off as real traffic arrives). I know you guys have probably maxed those Y! accounts out already so that part of the post goes out the window. Also the directory does not get any garbage traffic like bulk traffic Gg searches will yield. It will make you feel better about advertising it seeing it has true value.
Phone calls suck and I'm a non-phone kind of guy so I'd rather keep things as impersonal as possible. Spam email just doesn't convert at these low numbers, how many barber shops can there really be in a city. So here is where I point you to a USPS service that allows you to upload art and a csv and they print postcards and direct mail them to your target audience. 250 cards @ 0.84 each is a steal ... postage for 6 x 4 cards is only like 26c.
This is good for 2 reasons: 1> Conversion % - direct mail is a better converter than spam by far. Direct mailing in envelopes is about a 4% yield depending on where you get your stats. Postcards are much higher because you get your advertising in front of their eyes before the letter hits the trash can. 2> postcards are cheaper than mailing any other ad because of their size and weight. So say 1000 postcards at 5% return at $80/yr listing price = $4000 .. that will cover your costs and then some
Next twist ... I don't like the idea of scraping yellow pages because it lists every business with phone #s, address, etc. Someone will be much less likely to upgrade to featured ad if they are already included in the directory.
I just built a 300,000+ page girlie niche site off nothing but a city db & some categories I dreamed up (shit no I'm not leaking the link here). Each page scraped search results for listings, so basically each subpage gets a seed of about 10 listings with no direct contact except a link to the site. The same content concept can be used here and there is no work involved with creating or dumping the database with yp listings ... better yet, if you scale to another city the search feature remains in place so it's that much less work to do next time around. Results are basically scraped when the page is loaded (very fast). Cache the results if you want.
Someone mentioned a few pages back about a discount card, Here's a good one that spreads local branding also. These guys are doing a thing where you can upload art for a prepaid credit card ... it's like a $6/card charge + whatever you want to preload with. Brand it with your directory logo and send people off to advertisers to get a 10% discount if they present the card. Get people to pay $50 for a $40 funded card or $20 for an unloaded card and net a few bucks there too. Every time people use the card it 1> enforces that real people actually use your service & 2> All the soccer moms will run around saying "Do you accept this card for a 10% discount on *insert girlie product here*?". Free pub!
And about grandpa's shop that has no web site ... hook a wildcard sub-domain up to the a username that is associated with their account and give them a login secured Nichedirectory.com - niche directory Resources and Information. wiki webpage all of their own. Give it away or charge for it, whatever. Just don't forget to tell them the value of getting people to link to their site (which happens to link to your site). Reciprocal links avoided all together and those cavemen get to do the hard work for you. Long term natural traffic problem solved
Now that I've written my book, pound me with the noob comments. Bring it on, at lease I didn't whine about how much work this was.
I'm an opinionated kind of guy so here goes my 2c ... hopefully someone can convert it to Pecos for me so I can be rich.
Great idea although many have been down this road before, it's the amount of work that scares most off. I'm not afraid at dumping a few bucks into something like this so I love the PPC deal ... If I may suggest multiple Y! accounts + vouchers can turn that $300 advertising budget into a few thousand and XX,000 targeted visitors over the 1st 3 months (tapering off as real traffic arrives). I know you guys have probably maxed those Y! accounts out already so that part of the post goes out the window. Also the directory does not get any garbage traffic like bulk traffic Gg searches will yield. It will make you feel better about advertising it seeing it has true value.
Phone calls suck and I'm a non-phone kind of guy so I'd rather keep things as impersonal as possible. Spam email just doesn't convert at these low numbers, how many barber shops can there really be in a city. So here is where I point you to a USPS service that allows you to upload art and a csv and they print postcards and direct mail them to your target audience. 250 cards @ 0.84 each is a steal ... postage for 6 x 4 cards is only like 26c.
This is good for 2 reasons: 1> Conversion % - direct mail is a better converter than spam by far. Direct mailing in envelopes is about a 4% yield depending on where you get your stats. Postcards are much higher because you get your advertising in front of their eyes before the letter hits the trash can. 2> postcards are cheaper than mailing any other ad because of their size and weight. So say 1000 postcards at 5% return at $80/yr listing price = $4000 .. that will cover your costs and then some
Next twist ... I don't like the idea of scraping yellow pages because it lists every business with phone #s, address, etc. Someone will be much less likely to upgrade to featured ad if they are already included in the directory.
I just built a 300,000+ page girlie niche site off nothing but a city db & some categories I dreamed up (shit no I'm not leaking the link here). Each page scraped search results for listings, so basically each subpage gets a seed of about 10 listings with no direct contact except a link to the site. The same content concept can be used here and there is no work involved with creating or dumping the database with yp listings ... better yet, if you scale to another city the search feature remains in place so it's that much less work to do next time around. Results are basically scraped when the page is loaded (very fast). Cache the results if you want.
Someone mentioned a few pages back about a discount card, Here's a good one that spreads local branding also. These guys are doing a thing where you can upload art for a prepaid credit card ... it's like a $6/card charge + whatever you want to preload with. Brand it with your directory logo and send people off to advertisers to get a 10% discount if they present the card. Get people to pay $50 for a $40 funded card or $20 for an unloaded card and net a few bucks there too. Every time people use the card it 1> enforces that real people actually use your service & 2> All the soccer moms will run around saying "Do you accept this card for a 10% discount on *insert girlie product here*?". Free pub!
And about grandpa's shop that has no web site ... hook a wildcard sub-domain up to the a username that is associated with their account and give them a login secured Nichedirectory.com - niche directory Resources and Information. wiki webpage all of their own. Give it away or charge for it, whatever. Just don't forget to tell them the value of getting people to link to their site (which happens to link to your site). Reciprocal links avoided all together and those cavemen get to do the hard work for you. Long term natural traffic problem solved
Now that I've written my book, pound me with the noob comments. Bring it on, at lease I didn't whine about how much work this was.
