ComTech News

So I am on to topic 4 of my Blogging Without The Internet experiment.  In case this is the first time you have read one of my posts in this series I am on vacation and writing from my get away place in the mountains just north of Hot Spring Arkansas.  It is beautiful 5 acre place sitting about 1000 feet above the surrounding valley.  The road that leads to it is gravel and probably will not see blacktop for a decade or more.  As you might imagine there is no hope of DSL, no Cable TV and I don’t keep a phone line up here as I only stay here on occasion.

Hence much to the delight of my wife we have no internet access from this location.  However, I have noticed that in town there are a ton of nice hotels all of which have free wireless internet access.  In addition I would guess 50% or more of the town and surrounding economy’s income is based on tourist dollars.  You name the activity and there are people here offering it.  From bike rentals, to boat rentals, guided fishing and even stuff like town tours and craft markets if you want to do it Hot Springs, Arkansas has it.

Now this is not unique to Hot Springs, there are hundreds of small towns in rural America with similar situations.  As for Hot Springs, I have looked at the Chamber of Commerce site and some sites that feature the area.  They are ok but no better then just ok.  Nothing substantial, nothing really meaty that a potential visitor can really dig into and really know what to expect from local vendors, etc.

Moving onto restaurants, good luck getting that info online, especially about the really cool unique local establishments.  We have been to good ones, we have been to bad ones and the problem is without a guide you don’t know which is which until you eat at them.  Some are really pretty good, but over priced for the food and service level.  Either way on a vacation your time is precious and choosing a bad restaurant or fishing guide really sucks, trust me because I have been there and done that.

Oh and if you are vacationing here and like to have a few adult beverages you need to know a two things.  First that many of the surrounding counties are dry (no beer, no wine, no nothing) so if you are staying, let’s say, on the west side of Lake Ouachita for instance you better stock up in advance of crossing the county line.  Second and perhaps more important, if you want beer or wine for a Sunday cook out or camp fire you had better buy it on Saturday or bring it with you.  Thanks to some remaining archaic (and stupid) blue laws kept in place I imagine by the “Jesus People” you can’t buy beer anywhere in the state of Arkansas on Sundays.  (Didn’t Jesus drink wine?)

Now that is just a smattering of the things a potential visitor would want to know about Hot Springs before showing up.  This has me rethinking the concept of a local search marketing campaign.  A good SEO who actually lived here (I will some day) could dominate this market and I do mean totally own it.  You would have to start the project with out selling space at first; you would need to build it (gasp) on content.  However, you could build far more then a site, you could build a network of sites.  Topics including

• Dining
• Outdoors
• Shopping
• Betting (yep no beer on Sunday but you can bet on the ponies)
• Relocation (the Chambers site blows, you could dominate it)
• Banking and Loans (redundant? Nope be creative)
• Business Set Up (permits, tax issues, etc)
• Services and Utilities

Now what I am describing is not the scatter shot 500 cities sub-domain technique that I have actually used myself.  No I am talking a massive and consistent campaign around every facet of a local small town for visitors, residents and potential new residents.  A large network of interlinked sites worked on daily as a primary business to the point were anyone putting anything in from of Hot Springs, Arkansas would find you.

Again this can be done in hundreds if not a thousand small towns and even mid sized cites across the US.  Sure you could do this for Philadelphia, Dallas or Atlanta but the competition is a lot tougher and the community a lot less accessible.  See such a project would do best by really digging into the community and forging relationships off line with the local businesses.  Selling leads, advertising and cutting joint venture deals. 

So if you are off to build a network of sites on Hot Springs, Arkansas as soon as you finish this let me say WAKE UP!  Unless you live here, you have missed the point!  Look around for the closest community that fits this model of low competition high return to you.  Find one you actually love the way I love this place, one you know better then most and a place where you have a genuine love for the people that live there. Yes, despite the blue laws I love this area and its people.

Dig into such a community and put in say 4 hours a day for 6 months and if you know what you are doing I guarantee you can own the market.  You will have to front end a lot of effort before you start selling ad space and cutting deals.  You will need to do some generic lead generation, new letters, etc.  In the beginning your income will be mostly adsense or something like that.  Yet in time with a real domination of the market you can swing all the deals you want. 

This is a the type of project that will require a ton of work at first and some investment as well.  Yet I believe if you really know such a market and you know even the basic fundamentals of SEO you can quickly dominate such a market with this approach and in time really make a lot of money as well.

~ Jack

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