Five Tested Local Content Ideas For Revenue Generating Blogs

CondensCity.com
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL
Five Tested Local Content Ideas
For Revenue Generating Blogs
by
Umesh Ponnusamy
Copywriter, Web Content Ideator-Creator
The futureIs local...“Online to OfflineCommerce is aTrillion dollarIndustry...”- CEO, TrialPay.com
as quoted in TechCrunch.com
The tipping point is fast
approaching!
Facebook Places
and Facebook Deals
will catalyse local
online commerce
- (my prediction:-)
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Table of Contents
1) Introduction
2) CONTENT IDEA #1 – Online Creative/Hobby Club with the
free printed newsletter offer
3) CONTENT IDEA #2 – Information blogs with Content from
your local newspaper or magazine
4) CONTENT IDEA #3 – Local Directory Blogs
5) CONTENT IDEA #4 - Social network blog for your local
community
6) CONTENT IDEA #5 - Photo Gallery website or photo/video
blog covering your area
7) In Conclusion
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Before we begin, let's clear a few things...
● The following pages carry my experiments with content that I created for
local consumption. They were purely my ideas that I tested out by creating
free blogs on blogger.com or wordpress.com and later transferring them
to my own shared web hosting account on self hosted wordpress
installations.
● I couldn't commit myself to updating these blogs on a regular basis
(blame the restless creative spirit constantly seeking out the new ).
Maybe I could have earned more by constantly updating but that was not
the need of the hour. I just have to be happy with the experiments and
share it with you in the hope that you might be able to execute some of
the ideas successfully.
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continued
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Before we begin, let's clear a few things clear...
● What I'm sharing are purely my experiences. It might work for you or it
may not. But these experiments are still generating tiny trickles of Google
AdSense revenue even though I had stopped updating these blogs for
more than 3 years. So this speaks for the potential of the content.
● I'm assuming that you are comfortable with blogging and can use
Wordpress. If you are a beginner, for a good intro into the world of
blogging, domain name booking, wordpress hosting, you can learn from
simplified free videos on BecomeABlogger.com, run by Yaro Starak and
Gideon Shalwick - great guys to learn from.
● Do share your experiences on how the content ideas presented in this
ebook worked for you. Email your feedback to condenscity@gmail.com.
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Introduction
My experiments and experiences with localized content:
With this small postcard sized booklet, I hope to share my experiences
with content that I had created for my area of residence - Dubai in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) - a thriving metropolis in the Arabian Gulf.
These were the projects I had started focused on Dubai and the UAE:
●2004 - OrbUae.blogspot.com – A creative hobbyists club
●2006 - UaeCreatives.com – A blog discussing print advertisements
●2007 - UseUae.com – USE, an acronym for Useful Stuff Exchange
●2007 - KaramaStuff.com – A blog about the locality in Dubai where I live.
●2008 - DubaiPw.com – Dubai Price Watch
●2008 - DubaiSnaps.com – Dubai Photos
Though I had stopped updating the above blogs since 2008/2009, it still
draws traffic because of the good content. I'll elaborate on each of the
above project in separate chapters. You too can model similar business
blogs targeting your local community or town or city using my ideas.
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

LOCAL CONTENT IDEA #1 –
Online Creative/Hobby Club with the free printed newsletter offer
THE IDEA: I had started this in 2004 with an online acquaintance friend
from Dubai who was interested in running a newsletter. She still runs the
online creative group which is now more active on Ryze.They also do
meet offline for treks and to network.
Our aim was to create a Dubai based creative community of artists, poets
and hobbyists or anybody interested in creativity. We planned a print
newsletter also for the group so that it could be monetized through
sponsors and advertisements.
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continued
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Online Creative/Hobby Club with the free printed newsletter offer
THE NEWSLETTER (screen shot in next page): I designed the newsletter in
Adobe Illustrator 9. But you can use the open source Scribus or
OpenOffice or use any ready made template available in MS Office. The
idea is a budget newsletter. I designed mine as A3 sized. It just consisted
of four pages (front and back). I just had to take it to the local digital
printing shop and they easily printed it on one A3 sheet, front and back.
Since we had a hundred mail addresses, I just printed hundred
copies...came to around AED 40 (1 AED = $ 3.67). The mailing part was
taken care of by my partner. That too didn't exceed AED 50. Will people
like reading such a home-made newsletter. As long as you provide
interesting content and value, yes!
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continued
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

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The Newsletter (the front and back pages shown here).
Email me (condenscity@gmail.com) for samples if you are interested.
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

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The Newsletter (inside pages)
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

(continued)
NEWSLETTER CONTENT IDEAS: If you are starting a hobby group, HOW
TO articles related to the hobby...you can reproduce interesting articles
from the internet. You can interview local hobbyists, run a quiz and get a
local hobby shop or a book shop to sponsor small prizes.
How we got people to join: In 2004, I started with a yahoo group
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orb-uae. Maybe you can start with a
Facebook Group (keeping up with the times :-).
I created the Yahoo group and then made a list of UAE based yahoo
groups, online forum websites, including free classifieds websites.
I posted the “Free printed newsletter by post to those who join the Orb
Creative Club Yahoo group” offer in these websites, . We had at least 100
people join initially. The numbers swelled up to 350 within a couple of
months.
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL
Do subscribe to our newsletter for lots of freshly generated content ideas.

Your local newspaper or magazine is a valuable source for online
content if used properly:
THE IDEAS: 1) UAECreatives.com – 2006-2007 was a boom time in
Dubai and the local newspapers at one point of time, in a month were
running around 50 advertising campaigns. Being an advertising
copywriter, I was interested in these advertisements and decided to
document the good ones in a blog.
I took photos of these ads with my Sony 7MP digital camera (quicker this
way) and recorded them in the blog with some original analysis and
comments. This still generates a lot of Google AdSense clicks even though
I stopped regular updates by 2007.
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Information blogs with Content from your local newspapers, magazines,
flyers, brochures, leaflets, restaurant menus etc.
continued
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

2) UseUae.com – 2007-2008 – UseUae is an acronym for Useful Stuff
Exchange United Arab Emirates. When capturing content for
UaeCreatives.com from the newspaper, I used to come across lots of
useful information like phone numbers, services, government
announcements that people would find useful. This gave me an idea to
start a separate blog for this type of content. I even featured scans of local
restaurant menus. This along with UaeCreatives.com generates a lot of
AdSense clicks.
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continued
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

THE IDEAS: 3) DubaiPw.com – 2008 – I created Dubai Price Watch
(DubaiPW.com) with the idea that by simply publishing photos of price
tags of products that we purchase everyday, I'll have a blog with a rich
amount of tags / keywords related to any topic and might attract good
traffic. I also included scans of supermarket flyers and advertisements with
product prices. I updated this blog for a few months then stopped. It's still
there and does generate some clicks and Google AdSense revenue .
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Local Directory Blogs
Local Directory blogs provide good content to search engines and help
improve your rankings.
THE IDEA: 1) UaeWebOfLife.com – 2006-2008 – I got this idea about
documenting all the websites related to the UAE and run a ezine
updating subscribers on the newly websites, blogs, forums and services
other related news. You can see the results on UaeWebOfLife.com. I ran
around 6 or 7 issues of the ezine and gave up when time became scarce.
I also gave a free download of a 1-page printable PDF listing all the
websites, blogs, forums etc. serving the United Arab Emirates. This got a
lot of people downloading it.
It's easy to monetize these printable downloads if you are able to find
advertisers or you have contacts who can get you sponsors. Lots of
potential here.
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Social network blog for your local community
A local community social network is a genuine business opportunity
THE IDEA: 1) KaramaStuff.com (still not a social network blog) – Karama
is the area in Dubai where I stay. It's quite popular for its restaurants. It's
not a very upscale area but a thriving one nonetheless.
I got the idea of documenting the services and other interesting
happenings in Karama through a blog. I couldn't find time to implement
the Karama directory feature (refer the website right column). This could
be a good revenue generating idea, since you can list special offers from
shops and restaurants and build a mailing list of local residents. You can
interview local residents, entrepreneurs too and feature them.
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continued
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Social network blog for your local community
To promote the blog in the local community, you can print simple flyers
and distribute in the area. You could also print simple A4 or A3 posters
promoting your blog and get the local shops to display them in
exchange for a writeup or free listing on your blog.
If you are hosting your blog on the wordpress platform, you could use
Buddypress and convert it into a social network. Joomla is a good option
too. For newbies, explaining Buddypress and Joomla is beyond the scope
of this booklet. Lots of free video tutorials are available on YouTube.
Small businesses can't always afford to advertise in large print
publications like newspapers and magazines. Your community blog or
directory, which if well known in the community, will provide these
entrepreneurs a good advertising medium. So your community portal also
becomes a a stimulant for the local economy.
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LOCAL CONTENT IDEA #5
Photo Gallery website or photo/video blog covering your area
A photo / video blog is a good attention grabber and traffic generator
THE IDEA: 1) DubaiSnaps.com – 2008 – Got the idea for this website
when I got comfortable installing photo gallery applications for some of
my blogs. But as with the other projects, still am unable to find time to
update.
DubaiSnaps.com is organised according to the different areas in Dubai.
The idea was to put up photos from these areas - of street views,
landmarks, malls, maybe businesses who'd like to be featured there
etc....the opportunities are endless.
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THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

In Conclusion
Locality based web services is the future. Don't take my word for it.
It's happening as we speak – Facebook Places, Google Places, the rising
popularity of FourSquare, the stupendous growth of Groupon.
In a recent guest article on TechCrunch, the CEO of Trial Pay calls this as
Online to Offline Commerce and bills it as a trillion-dollar opportunity.
This is one article I read and reread everyday (short url to the article -
http://tcrn.ch/9612eX). You should too if you are interested in opening an
online business servicing your local community.
Hope you find my local content ideas easy to implement in your community
and are profitable to you as well.
If you got questions on the ideas presented in this ebook, please feel free to
email me on condenscity@gmail.com
© All Rights Reserved CondensCity.com
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Do subscribe to our newsletter for lots of freshly generated content ideas.
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

CondensCity.com
Tested Content Ideas for building an Online Business
that serves your Local Community, Town or City.
Why Locality based services?
● Cheaper costs
● Stimulation of local economy and creation of jobs
● Reduction in environmental impact caused by transportation of
goods across continents
Check out my experiments and experiences with localized content:
●UaeCreatives.com
●UseUae.com
●UaeWebOfLife.com
●KaramaStuff.com
●DubaiPw.com
●DubaiSnaps.com
THE FUTURE IS LOCAL

Five Tested Local Content Ideas For Revenue Generating Blogs

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