As many of you know, I’ve been living in Kigali, Rwanda now for just over a year. I chime in every once and awhile singing its praises and pimping my Kigali life website… even though I know the city isn’t exactly a prime travel destination and most people will never visit.

The main reason I keep bringing the site up is because I’m really proud of the thing. It’s my favourite site and, despite it not really being of interest to most people who read my blog, I think it’s a great example of how to set up a good city information site. My problem is that this sort of site is nothing like anything I’ve built before and I’m not really sure how to go about making money off of it.

My usual tricks won’t work…

• Google Adsense – I feel like Adsense won’t work for two reasons. The first is that, while many of my readers come from Google (which is a key, in my opinion, for having Adsense work for you), I feel like my site will answer a lot of their questions (answers that aren’t really available elsewhere on the net) and so they won’t feel the need to click on… or they won’t have anywhere to click to. Which is my second reason… businesses in Rwanda aren’t really on the Adsense bandwagon so the ads that are being displayed (I’m conducting a bit of a test right now) aren’t really all that relevant to this city. So people won’t be likely to click. I’m going to whack up an ad unit in the sidebar to see if my hunch is right or not but even if it gets some clicks, I doubt it’s be a big monthly earner.

• Affiliate Sales – If safari companies in Rwanda and Uganda one day decide to start affiliate programs then I’ll be laughing but, until that happens, I’m kind of short of options. Again, this isn’t something that businesses in Rwanda have really explored, so my choices of affiliates are very limited. I might be able to make a bit by recommending travel insurance to people who are on their way here, but at the moment, that’s about my only option. I could do ok if I emphasis the insurance for working and volunteering as those are the sorts of people who tend to move to places and not all insurance covers that stuff.

• Advertising Link Sales – I know of a few savvy tour company owners who know the importance of climbing Google’s rankings and the need for in-bound links… but there don’t seem to be any Kigali-based people doing it. I doubt very much that I’ll find myself getting emails out of the blue for this kind of advertising like I do now.

So in order to make money from this site, I’m going to have to veer away from what I know and come up with some new plans of attack. I have a few ideas but no experience implementing them…

• Approaching Businesses to Advertise - As I mentioned, most of my ad deals come from people who get in touch with me. I’ve never approached an advertiser and it’s not something I’m comfortable doing, really, even if I know that it makes sense for them to put ads on my site. I’m just not much of a salesperson and I hate it. But my partner (who is tall, blond and persuasive…) is happy to knock on doors with a sales pitch and is eager to start. Plus we also have a well-connected, savvy and outgoing Rwandan friend who would be willing to do the same. These ads could be anything from a banner at the top of the site to links/banners in the sidebar to offering space for bars to tell people about daily events to allowing tour companies to sponsor certain posts etc. I feel like tour companies, more than any other business, will get the most out of ads on my site given that people look to us for recommendations. There are plenty of businesses here who advertise online so we’ll make a list by looking at other sites and those will be the first ones we approach.

• Offer Coupons & Deals - I’m not really familiar with this sort of thing but I feel like allowing businesses to use my site to promote deals might be a good way to earn. I have no idea how it would work. Maybe have a restaurant with a 5% off coupon accessed through my site and I get a certain amount for each person who comes in and presents the coupon? Anyone know much about this sort of thing? Again, it’s kind of an honour system thing although I could always send spies!

• Newsletter Ads - For once I paid attention to advice and started a mailing list when I started the site. It has about 120 subscribers and growing and I see this as an additional place for businesses to advertise and a way to send out coupons and deals, too.

• Affiliate Sales - There won’t be a way to automate and track this, but I feel like there could be some scope for partnering up with one or more tour companies as an affiliate. They get a booking through our site and we take a cut. I guess it’d be on an honour system and we’d have to be in constant touch with them (rather than having it all automated which is the best thing about affiliate programs) but if I can partner with an honest company I can see this being a way to make some good cash.

• Sell a Product - I’m sure I could whip up some sort of ebook about moving to Kigali, although it doesn’t make much sense given our site is pretty packed with information already. Another idea is maps. At the moment no tourist-oriented maps of this city exist. There are some wall-sized maps that you can buy from dudes in the street, but they’re terrible and they’re not exactly good for taking with you as you walk around town. I had this idea when I first arrived but shelved it… what about making a tourist-oriented map that points out local businesses and then approaching the businesses who want to be listed to advertise. I could either sell the map or give it away for free. Or even have the dudes in the street sell it as it’s something people might actually want to buy. I’ve seen a good example of this in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. They’re cartoon maps that come with an accompanying booklet with more info on the businesses. I think I’ll pick one up when I’m in Thailand and think about the idea some more. I could draw the map myself which is a bonus. Any thoughts on this idea?

I think this site has a lot of potential mostly because the market, while small, is a lucrative one (expats in Kigali) and there are a lot of businesses who want to sell their goods and services to them. Plus, our site owns Google at the moment. Anyone coming to Kigali who searches for a few things will undoubtedly stumble onto it. Lastly… the site is really, really good. It’s well organised, the writing is entertaining and informative, and there are some good tools like the map and forum and I’m working on adding a reviews plugin.

It’s getting to be pretty well known too and every time I’ve gone out (which is a lot of times) over the past three weeks, someone has said ‘that’s your site?? I love that site!” and they even mention details in the articles that they liked. That’s pretty cool. Stats keep climbing as more and more people find out about it and this is without much of a push by my friend or I to promote it here in Kigali. It’s mostly from Google. We’ve got some business cards now and will start pimping it a bit more but it’s up over 150 people a day and 700+ page views without any actual promotion by us.

The main thing that we need to do though is kill off a terrible Yahoo Group that acts as the main forum here in town. Yahoo Groups are awful and I’ve hated this one since I stumbled into the city. You have to register a Yahoo email address to be able to participate, there are no categories, the moderators sometimes disappear which means your posts don’t get posted for awhile, and it’s hard to find the original posts if you want to read a conversation. Not to sound all cocky but our site’s forum is a bazillion (at least) times better and I need to lure people over from the Yahoo Group to my forum if I really want to make advertising on the site a no-brainer. It’s not happening as quickly as I’d like, but we’re getting there.

So I guess I’m looking for feedback from you guys. This is new territory for me and I’d love to hear what you think about any of my ideas. I’m also on the lookout for good city info sites out there so I can see how they do things. Ones that are aimed at expats moving to a new city would be perfect but any site that’s dedicated to giving readers info about a particular city or town is great… especially if its been monetised.

I think this site has a lot of potential and I’m hoping to tap into it within the coming months. Fingers crossed my hunch is right!