I have about 50 domains coming up for renewal this month for various cities that I had planned to add to my ‘Stuck in …’ network of sites. I have since decided to scale back my ambitious plan to about 20 cities. I used Google’s keyword tool to find out which cities had the most searches for my target keyword terms and I was able to weed out some poor choices. I decided to focus my efforts on a handful of cities that I think will work best.
These are the ones I’m left with:
- Dubai
- Singapore
- Los Angeles
- Hong Kong
- Toronto
- Vancouver
- Melbourne
- Perth
- Amsterdam
- Montreal
- Brisbane
- Shanghai
- Buenos Aires
- Seoul
- Cape Town
- Rio de Janiero
That’s not including my already existing or work-in-progress sites for:
- London
- Beijing
- Sydney
- New York
I’m not sure if having four cities in Australia and three in Canada is a good idea or not but they’re registered for another year, just in case. I’m also not sure Cape Town and Rio have enough searches to warrent a site, it’s just that I plan on living in both at one point or another so I might as well write a site whenever I get to them.
A friend of mine is interested in putting a Los Angeles site together and here’s what I have in mind. She writes everything, I add everything to the site and do all the behind-the-scenes stuff including pay for hosting (which is essentially free as I have an unlimited account) and the yearly domain name registration (only $10). My friend gets 100% of the Adsense revenue and we split 50/50 on any advertising and affiliate revenue the site generates. We will both work at building links and getting the word out on the site, but I imagine she would be more motivated to do this than me since it’s her only site and the more she does this, the better chance she has of earning money sooner.
She came to mind as a good person to work with because she’s a really good writer, lives in LA and she has also expressed an interest in what I do quite a few times and seems to have made a few steps in the right direction. I think working with her on this will benefit both of us hopefully through some good earnings down the road, it will grow my ‘Stuck in’ network by one city, and she will learn a lot about this industry by doing, rather than reading about doing.
I’m really curious to hear what people think about this idea. Is it something that might be of interest to someone looking to start out in the internet marketing game? Do you think I should be giving away 100% of Adsense or is that too much? Can you think of any problems I might come up against with this strategy? Are partnerships more of a headache than they’re worth? I’m really up in the air about this and would love some advice and thoughts.
Congratulations Kirsty! I find this idea very good. Its a very good idea not trying to manage all sites by yourself. Its also a very good idea trying to expand the network. If you have someone “adopt” each site, people will have more incentative to run each site more successfully. With more people and more site more bight ideas will emerge – adding value to the sites. You should have a good “behind the scenes” systems to ease management of the sites. With many sites the management will need a lot of time.Maybe one day in the future you could even outsource the running of the sites as well and have it all as a passive income?
I think the idea is so good that I would actually be interested in participating. If you would be interested in having a stuckinstockholm.com I would love to write it together with my fiancee (she is studying tourism here in Stockholm here and she’s from brazil – so shes really got the right perspective for the site)!
Hey Kirsty,
I too have been trying to expand some of my websites, similar to how you are going abouts doing it. I agree with the majority of website owners, that quantity truly plays a big part in the overall plan of treating blogging as a business.
Just recently I talked an old friend of mine into becoming a regular author on one of my websites. I think in theory it sounds like a great idea, and I’m really hoping it works on my behalf. However, seeing as I see so little of her, living 5 hours apart, it’s hard to tell whether she’s as motivated as I am.
I wouldn’t say it’s been a headache as of yet, just another thing I’m worried could potentially blow up in my face. Hopefully that’s not the case. As exploded faces rarely pick up girls at the local watering holes. Time will tell. I think the key to partnering is having regular contact, setting goals, perhaps collaborating on articles (Google documents works great for this, there are also some great WP plugins for multi author sites) and just making sure you get along.
I dove in with two feet on this idea, hasn’t failed me yet. Hopefully it goes well for you too!
I remember reading a couple of weeks ago the prospect cities for the 2012 olympics, and Rio de Janiero was one of them, as well as chicago and a few others.
I dont know the likely hood of Rio being selected as the city, but if you secure whichever the olympic city is, i am sure the traffic would be amazing
I agree with mek, but somehow I think Chicago is going to win. I would LOVE it if Tokyo won, but somehow I think a US city is going to win again.
I think your idea is good with the city guides. Since you make them all static html, you don’t need to spend much time with them after they have all been written.
Kirsty,
If you consider she’s doing all the heavy lifting, then what’s the problem of giving up the entire AdSense income? If you think it didn’t work out the way you thought it should, you can always try a different arrangement for the next partnership.
As for the Olympics, I think it’s 2016, right?
I’m a Brazilian from Sao Paulo, although I live in Japan now. Buenos Aires is a cool, cool place — lived there for six months in 2005, looking forward to my next visit. Let me know if you need a hand with the Rio or the BsAs site.
Cheers,
Diogo
Sounds like a very successful business plan to me! “Stuck in” does have very negative connotations to me, unless there’s some ironic meaning I’m missing out on, but I guess that doesn’t matter in the long-run if you’re not trying to develop a brand but rather are just going for search engine traffic.
Interesting stuff, this sort of model is really taking off now whereby one person starts a website or network of sites and essentially adopts a franchise model to build content.
There are a lot already about, I wonder if we have missed the boat on this one?
Also it’s a shame you didn’t have stuckin.com then you could subdomain 1000s of cites and have control of the top level of a huge site.
Still having networks of sites is not a bad idea either for other reasons. Good luck.
Sorry to continue….missed a couple of points
I agree also ‘stuck in’ has a slightly negative connotations, it almost sounds like it should be a guide for business people who are on business in a strange city and essentially stuck there for a few days? That would certainly be a potential niche travel guide.
As far as adsense is concerned couldn’t you share the adspace on a rotation basis with the content publishes so you both get a share?
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I wasn’t sure about the idea so it’s good to see a positive reaction.
@niklas I would love for you to take on Stockholm if you want to. I have also had someone contact me about doing Shanghai so I will work on putting some sort of ducument together explaining what I have in mind a bit better and we can go from there. Can you email me your contact details?
@corbin Thanks for the tips! Here’s to neither of our flaces blowing up! haha
@mek I am rooting for Rio big time. The US has had the Olympics way too often and Chicago just doesn’t really excite the way Rio does.
@mike Tokyo would be good too although after an expensive games in London I’m not sure another super expensive city would be good for my bank account. It would be great for your sites though! I’m curious to see if my Stuck in London site sees a big jump in visitors over the Olympics. I might have to write more atricles geared towards it.
@diogo I have no problem giving up all of the Adsense at all, I just wanted to get other people’s opinions on it. Thanks for the offer, I will get in touch! I was supposed to move to BA at the beginning of this year but decided to stay in Haiti longer. I still really want to go there.
@workingnomad Giving 100% of the Adsense is fine with me and makes things easier overall. I want things to be as uncomplicated as possible. I think Adsense revenue will be pretty small when compared to the potential of ad sales and affiliates. I think splitting that 50/50 will encourage us both to be on the look out for business opportunities.
As for the ‘Stuck in’ thing, I had someone make that point to me ages ago and I agree. It could also mean ‘get stuck in’ as in get into it (but that’s more of an Aussie phrase I think) or an ‘I am stuck, can you help’ sort of thing. But the original name came to me because I had been living in London for ages and I felt like I was stuck there… although not in a negative way even though it sounds like that. It’s kind of too late to change now though so I’m just going to have to go for it.
I’m going to write up some sort of agreement for how all of this will work. When I get it done I will post it and I look forward to seeing what you think.
I think the network idea is a great one. My friend has been recommending I build or help create a network of travel sites because I (and other participants, presumably) would be in a better position to monetize each individual site, or share revenue across the network we create. That whole strength in numbers approach.
I think it makes sense to do a trial with someone you already know. I’m sure other bloggers will be watching, and if you start reporting back good things, others will jump on board – the whole social proof rule.
Cape Town might not be a big search now, but as we get closer to the World Cup, that will definitely change. Even though the final match is held in Jo’burg, if I were going to see the WC in South Africa, I’d plant myself in the Western Cape and explore that whole region – so beautiful.
i agree about cape town being popular, could be good time to get in early as post world cup it could be a hot destination
Nice idea and also some really great comments you’re getting. I think this kind of arrangement may work out well for you and the partners you take on. They will be getting a big slice of the pie for their work, but that should keep them interested in really producing some great work.
I think it’s a good arrangement for people who have a lot of traveling experience and familiarity with a city, but lack the behind the scenes skills in getting a site up and knowing how to monetize and promote it. You bring those skills to the table, which makes for a powerful combination and really helps in reduce the workload.
I would imagine most of these people would have less experience than you in managing sites. You can probably tell them exactly what needs to be done to grow traffic and revenues.
I think all adsense revenue of ads located in one of best location on page according to Adsense Heatmap ( https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=17954 ) is fair pay for the writer.
It would complicates things greatly for you to share the other revenue streams as well, how would your partners monitor if they were getting fair share of affiliate revenues, would they have access to your affiliate accounts?
How would they monitor if they were getting a fair cut of linksales, banners etc.?
It would be especially complicated if you had to get an o.k. from your different partners before making arangements such as selling adspace or tesingt new affiliate products accross several sites written by different people.
Much simpler if each writer just sends you their own adsense code to insert, then they can monitor it themselfes.
Great idea on looking for partners for these websites. Unfortunately it is often tough to find people who you can trust and rely on to put forth a decent effort. Realistically this may be the only way to really get your city network expanded. Once you get the ball rolling on all these sites, I’m sure you will do quite well. Good luck.
Can’t wait to read a travelers perspective in a travel guide rather than just the LonelyPlanet perspective. Hope to see soon and comment soon thereafter
Dave
LifeExcursion
“I think the key to partnering is having regular contact, setting goals, perhaps collaborating on articles” (Google documents works great for this, there are also some great WP plugins for multi author sites) and just making sure you get along.”
Corbin, I think you are a genius, savant or at least one to watch regarding future of artistic expression on the world wide web!
Hey Kirsty,
Been following your blog for a little while, but never commented, but I do enjoy reading it. I’m not a fantastic writer, but I do live in Perth if you need any help with the Perth site, I’d be willing to try to help (if you have no one else – probably other people would do much better than I would!) Otherwise no worries, I’ll just continue to enjoy your blog
Cheers
Jill
@dave I agree that Cape Town would be a great choice but I’m not sure the World Cup crowd is the target market for the type of site I see it being. I’m thinking of heading to Cape Town in early 2010 but I doubt I could get things going quick enough to snag some World Cup traffic. I’m sure I will be picking your brain soon about South Africa! It looks like my games are all going to be based in Durban, though.
@languagedude I hope it will turn out to be a good deal! My fear is that Adsense revenues won’t be what the writers were expecting because the revenue for my Beijing and Sydney sites is pretty bad. But those sites are also pretty crappy and I think brining on someone who really knows their city and has an interest in earning online will mean that their sites will be of a good quality and they will see some good earnings. I hope. The money is really in the affiliates and advertising and if people can create some really good content, I think I should be able to sort out some advertising for us. I do plan to share what knowledge I have on SEO, writing articles for the web and stuff like that so this sort of partnership would be good for a total newbie who wants to learn more and eventually start their own sites.
@webjourneyman I’m toying with how to set up affiliates. Maybe creating new accounts where we both have the password? I’m not sure. For Adsense I’m having each person open an account of their own and I will add their code to the sites so they can monitor it themselves. As for ad revenue… I guess they’ll just have to trust me! I wouldn’t want to work with someone who didn’t so if it ever became an issue then that would be the end of that.
@aluminumcase I trust that people will be into it at the start, what will be tough is whether they stick with it without seeing any money for months at the start. I’ve tried to lay down what realistic expectations of earnings are based on what my other sites earn and the traffic numbers. Hopefully the people I get on board are able to think in the long term.
@jill Sounds good! It’s not something I will be working on anytime soon, but I will keep you in mind for when I do.
Personally, I don’t use online or paper guidebooks anymore. I prefer to ask to people and try to reach the very best points of everyplace. For guides, almost everyplace is Ok to visit and I don’t like that, I like people’s opinions.
Kirsty it sounds like you are well on your way to developing some strong partnerships to help manage your network of websites. I may have to follow your cue and try to do something like this too. I have a network of websites that I will never have time to take full advantage of. Things would be so much easier if I had some reliable partners.