Recently I managed to acquire a couple of domains perfect for a city guide website. I spent a couple of days getting some basic content up on them, and now have kinda hit a brick wall. Does anyone have any advice on how to get one of these started up? I am wondering what I should do now...whether I should call up a few businesses and offer free listings as a startup base...or maybe even still charge like I intended to do. (My idea was to offer one of several types of templates for businesses to use for their listing, each one cost a different amount) One of my friends even suggested just going into the Yellow Pages and adding in a couple of businesses flat out, and just taking them down later when I got some actual customers. But anyways, just wondering if anyone has any good suggestions on what I should do with it. I am going to be pretty much completely out of the workforce entirely in two weeks, and I was really banking on making these a successful venture so I can stay at home and still bring in some sort of an income.
You could offer the free service to a very limited number of people just to get started. That will get other people following them. But you should charge others(small at the beginning) I would suggest.
Do what my old boss did when he started a local directory. Hang signs up on telephone poles, sides of newspaper and soda machines, basically, anywhere you can stick something. Also, Business Cards are very important. Another thing I envied about my old boss, is that he went to every car dealership and talked about buying a car, and did the business card dance. Within a day he had all the dealerships signed up, and a couple actually promoting his site. Talking to Business Owners is also important. Make visits to local stripmalls and talk to each business owner. Tell them what you can offer them and youll get some customers fairly quickly.
Thanks for the input. I am actually going to offer the first few pages free to a few businesses that I personally know the owners...figure that'll make it easier on me. Lightning - that's a great idea...just wished I still lived in that area, LOL! But...I may try that tack with some of the businesses where I live now once I'm fully mobile again! (9 months pregnant here...I can't really do much of anything. )