How to Monetize a Local Niche Blog.

What is a local niche blog?

A local niche blog is a blog with a specific regional city. This can be a larger city, like Melbourne, or a smaller regional center.

There are three main ways a local niche blog differs from a normal blog. These can be used to your advantage:

• It has a concentrated regional focus. This can appeal to both advertisers and the readership.
• The audience has a very specific need and is likely to devour large amounts of content.
• Many parts of the audience are looking to spend.

Often, you'll find you'll be lacking direct competition. This is especially so if your towns population is less that 150'000. They may be existing websites catering to specific audiences.

What Content can be used in a local niche blog?

There are multiple topics you can cover in a local niche blog

• Specific events pertaining to your region
• Fun activities that families may wish to do during weekends and holidays
• Shopping and bargain tips

There is also multiple mediums.

• Video content
• Photographic content
• Audio content

Your content is very much dependent on the audience. There are key audience groups for your blog:

Tourists.

Tourists are an attractive audience because they are hungry for information on the local area. As they are visiting, they are looking to spend money. This is such a large audience that can be split into further demographics:

• Those looking for a specific type of getaway. In my city, its often beach trips.
• Those looking for a budget holiday
• Those seeking family friendly holidays

Once the audience is defined, its easy to create content focused around their needs. Here are some content ideas:

• They need information on accommodation. As a local, your in a good position to recommend certain places according to specific audience needs.
• Budget holiday goers may want information on how accessible a place is by public transport. Providing a photographic guide of bus stops  could be really helpful.
• They may want information on how disability or child friendly certain attractions are.
• If they are visiting a garden, they may want to know seasonal information about the plants.
• Some websites from attractions are lacking in information. If you feel like there is not enough information, you could do a comprehensive review.

I check out the local tourist advertisements and websites to get an idea of what is being promoted as the regions highlights.

I try to provide a local slant on posts targeting tourists. You can mention other attractions or businesses that are closeby. I've creating seperate pages compiling the posts I've created reviewing restaurants and fast food establishments. I place a link to this page on my tourist orientated posts. It often drives readers deeper into my blog.

Local Bargain Hunters.

I had major budget blowouts when moving to a different suburb. I had little idea about the local precinct, let alone the tips and hacks of where to get the best produce.

Again, your audience is hungry for information. You have multiple options:

• Reviews of the regions local opportunity shops. You can report on the range of items offered, the pricing and how often the shop is updated with new stock.
• Specific discount stores.
• Mention of advance sales. These can be sponsored.

The content can be organized by type of product or region. This can be expanded into lengthy articles that are very search engine friendly such as "A Guide To The Local Op Shops in My Area."

Additional ideas for content:

• Do profiles of local business people. After some time, they may be willing to pay for an advertorial.
• Reviews of local performances. I always review any live performance event I attend. You can take advantage of flexible rules at clubs to get footage of the bands and even a quick interview.
• Coverage of local events. You can take advantage of journalist interest and even link to your flickr profile for additional photos.
• Break news or provide commentary on breaking news.

Structuring your content.

I use magazine themes on my local blogs. I edit it so I have 4-8 posts that permanently remain on the front page. I call these 'Core Posts.'

What is a Core Post?

A Core Post is very similar to a Pillar Article. It is created with the intention of being constantly referred to and used as a source of authority. I structure the article so it collects all of my best content and presents it in an easy to read manner. I link out liberally so people can find the exact content they need.

Examples of post ideas include:

• A Guide to an areas shopping precincts
• 1001 fun things to do when visiting an area.

These core posts link out prolifically to other posts within your blog. This is really effective at driving traffic into the pages you really want to monetize.

Useful themes:

The following magazine themes are ones that I have used for my various niche blogs. It is best to analyze each one against your blogs needs.

• Revolution City Theme
• OpenBook
• Options
• Arthemia
• Linoluna
• Guzel
• Woo Themes

Making your blog journalist friendly.

If your blog is successful, you could soon attract attention of local journalists. This can be really effective if you have a collection of sites and want to position yourself as a savvy entrepreneur. You can make this easier by having a section for various press and providing 'hooks' that emphasis why they would be interested in you. You can talk about:

• How the blog has improved your life in your local area. Examples including saving money because of all the new stores you have discovered, making new friends or tourist attractions that may be of interest to local residents
• How the blog has improved your life financially. This could be attractive if you've launched other blogs based on the success of your original one.

Journalists are always looking for stories on how to save money without sacrificing quality of life. If you could somehow emphasis this aspect, you potentially could get attention for local finance stories.

How to monetize a local niche blog

Affiliate Programs

You can benefit with the niche audience. People outside of the local area will be looking for accommodation, interesting attractions and transport. Many large businesses have affiliate programs for these areas,

These affiliate networks may be really useful.:

• Commission Junction
• Commission Monster
• Clixgalore
  

The larger affiliate networks, both international and Australia, have programs with the leading Australian companies offering those services. There are three ways of offering affiliate advertising:

• Giving the advertiser an advertising spot in your header or sidebar. This can be an image or banner link
• Have a page dedicated to recommended accommodation and other tourist services in the area.
• Do individual reviews. These posts can also include adsense units to maximize potential income.

Advertising

Advertising can be quite lucrative if you position your site correctly. You need to make your site appealing to maximize your revenue potential.

Here are some tips to make your site attractive to advertisers:

• Automate the process of buying and selling advertising on your blog. This can be difficult as you are often not dealing with a tech savvy audience. You may need to outsource the creation of graphics.
• Your target audience might not be technologically savvy. Thus you need to focus on creating processes to ensure contact and advertising is as simple and automated as possible.
• Realize that the local businesses may not necessarily have a web presence. You could help with this with a strategic partnership with a local company.
• Approach it with a regional focus. Decide on your key audience and then provide every single thing that audience may want.

There are multiple options for advertising you can offer:

• A text link in the sidebar
• A banner in a prominent position
• Specifying that specific posts were sponsored by this company.

By being a local niche blog, you could specify different payment terms such as accepting cash.

Sponsered Reviews and Editorials

This is a concept that I have been exploring and has a reputation of being quite effective. Quite simply, it is a paid review of a service or business in the local area.

Bloggers can set up a process that is relatively automated, to ensure ease of use for the purchaser. On the advertising page I include:

• The cost per 200 words. This way, you can increase the length of the article if deemed necessary.
• What the review will entail and whether it will include other media.
• How to pay for the review
• When the review will be conducted
• When the review can be uploaded onto your blog.

Two sub niches where this can be really useful is if your covering clothing stores, or restaurants, in your local area. Mention that it isn't feasible to visit all of them within a short timeframe and that ordering a paid review will get attention quicker.

Selling Products or Services

I don't have personal experience with this but fellow Blog Mastermind students have been experimenting with selling services in this niche. Their ideas include:

• Selling photo books based on their region-specific photo blogs.
• Selling e-books about the region
• Offering tours of the region targeted at niche audiences.

In conclusion

A local niche blog can be a really effective way of experimenting with blogging and monetization, without the constant critical eye of the blogosphere. It can be particularly useful when experimenting with indirect monetization. If your local area isn't serviced by a niche blog, consider starting one.