Making money from a city map and blog

[Brett877]

I have pondered this idea for awhile and I have started to move forward with it to test the waters. I would like your input on the feasibility and profitability of the idea.

I come from town of 70k, one of the big problems in the town is there is no good communication on what is going on in the city at any given time (events, sales, etc). You have to surf through a dozen websites and then you only get half of the events or business promotions. I have lived here my whole life and I still find places i have never heard of.

The idea is to create a website that writes articles about the cities history, the events, politics and news. As well as using web scrappers to get events from different websites to pool in our database to be presented to everyone. The articles are mainly for traffic and ranking purposes. To monetize the site i was going to focus on people hosting events and business wanting to advertise sales and charge them a monthly fee for impressions or direct in your face ads.

Here is a template layout of the map section I was thinking about, but it will have map markers and filtering system that allows you to select events, restaurants, stores (sub-categorized by type), historic areas etch...

What are your thoughts?

Another snag im finding i need to overcome is my programming skills are good but I lack the ability on some of the items to program. Any Idea on a way to work past that ( I am teaching myself on some as i go) but would like to have some other ideas as well.

 

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[Darius]

How will you make money?

 

[Brett877]

Through the selling of ad space for businesses to promote themselves and special events and premium event listings to promote the events better. Potentially selling special offers online


I am open to other suggestions and thoughts as well

 

[Deleted2BB3x9]

How big is your city?

 

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[Brett877]

Population is roughly 70k...but i was thinking of using this as a testing tool and then moving to set up sites for other cities as well...

 

[TheHawk]

Hi Brett,

I like the idea, how do these other websites compare to what you have in mind?

You could angle this at a type of Business Directory - I think that's what you're aiming for? Have a little look at something called PremiumPress, quite a cheap theme for Wordpress which can provide the foundation instead of starting from scratch.

 

[tafy]

Another monetization strat is to white label your map for hotels to use on their own website for a small fee, this could be scaled nationwide.

 

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[Brett877]

@TheHawk Premium press looks nice!!

@tafy what do you mean white label

 

[Andy Black]

I have a similar idea for the county I live in here in Ireland. 200k population. I am thinking of monetising by generating leads for people looking for local services, and then getting those leads to locals. The service I would be providing is getting more work for people who have the skills but aren't currently getting found.

I am not actively working on this at the moment, but I think it's a good idea to start local because you already know people where you live (or soon will!).

Maybe it will be my Xmas project. I always have some fun project over the Xmas holidays...