Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I think most people here know me as a graphic designer, but in fact my real interest is and always has been publishing since I was 22 years old. I`ve been working on various plans the past few months to figure out a way to publish something I care about and still make money. Well, tomorrow (Monday) is the big day  --  our first attempt at publishing goes live!

http://www.sustainablelocal.net

The Sustainable • Local Centre County Shopper`s Guide is a business directory for green and independent businesses here where I live in central PA. But I modified the usual directory/advertising models a bit. Where most directories make users comb through listings, and most advertising is dependent on content to draw eyeballs, I`m bypassing both of those things by giving advertisers a full page that is meticulously optimized to rank in local searches. Visiting the site means looking through the listings, but the big goal is to eliminate the extra layer of either having to comb through the directory, or of depending on content, to give advertisers a real shot at having people find their Shopper`s Guide page directly through the search engines.

The title`s huge, but it`s already ranking #1, #2, and #4 in Google for the keywords it contains (at least it is here locally), and the domain`s only been active for a couple weeks.

The site launch is being supported by a 4-page, tab-sized advertising insert that will distribute 10,000 copies next week via an independent paper here in town. We sold the advertisers a combination print/web advertising package to get started, but from here on out its all web. We`re also going to be buying paid links in the 3 big SE`s to promote our advertisers even further. I anticipate this won`t be necessary after the site`s been indexed for a few months.

This is all really exciting to me... but the cherry on top is that the whole thing looks like it`s going to profit slightly even though it`s our first shot at anything like this. Gotta do the books for real still, but so far the math looks awesome.

I could not be happier! And it would not have happened without SuN — when I came here last fall I was totally beat down from a project gone bad, but you all helped me come to my senses and keep moving forward. Hugs all around!

—paula

Oh PS... I`m still tying up some loose ends that will be obvious to the other designers in the group. Please feel free to point out any problems you see, especially if you`re on a Linux box.

Me too...on the rainbow. I also really like the browse by category or by location. My only gripe is that when I went to "Miscellaneous," you have the "sorry" message, and nothing listed. I hate those....they make it look like the site is so small.

Why not just block out the category completely until you have at least 1 item. :-) Right?....Maybe?

Paula~ great to hear that you followed your passion and are having positive results.  No doubt your story will encourage many others here who feel `beat down` to get back up, brush themselves off and move ahead.  Congrats and good luck! 

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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

Hey all — thanks much for the feedback!

Kathy — Stitch Your Art Out is a great shop! They say their store is "as tempting as a candy shop" and they`re not kidding.

Craig — I did originally have it set up to just hide any categories/locations that were empty, but decided to go with the "sorry" message as the lesser of the two evils, reason being that when a location isn`t listed, it looks like we aren`t including that area...  given the urban vs. rural politics here, other sites would actually neglect some of the more rural areas and I wanted to make sure potential advertisers know we`re covering theirlocation AND their category.

Rich — on first read I thought your post said "wonkin` for the man." funny :)  Thanks again for your great encouragement and all the info here, I almost certainly would not have come this far without SuN & everyone in the community.

—paula

Paula,

I caught your post thanks to Rich`s newsletter. I like the overall appearance of the site. You did a good job with that. However, I would like to point out a few tips to improve your marketability and functionality.

On town/city pages, you should have a specific description, or at least change of main text (where the top paragraph is; the one with a lot of bold words). Make it relate to that specific category and or town. SEO wise, I would make sure your site talks about the state and town/county together. Coming from SuN I have no idea it is for PA, and neither will a search engine; or you are putting a lot of faith in Google. I realize the county is a big term to capitalize on, but you don`t want to miss searches for green businesses in PA (in general).

I would also tweak that top paragraph to say `green business`, as `sustainable` is not completely clear. At first read of the paragraph I was thinking `support small business` `let`s fight that super high failure rate of small business`.

Lastly, I agree with Craig. I don`t think you should leave the categories blank, but you shouldn`t hide them either. You need to actively fill them, and quickly, or the visitors you just bought with advertising in that paper won`t come back as easily. Make sure you`re tracking the upcoming traffic from that newspaper. I reccomend Google Analytics; you`ll be able to track the value of the physical campaign.



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Colin Winter
Small Business Website Management and Marketing

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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

Hey Colin, thanks for the feedback. Busy day so don`t mind the quick bullet points... if you have had different experiences with any of my reasoning below please let me know, I am always looking to improve my knowledge about this stuff.

• We`ll be changing the h1 statement for different pages depending upon what we find with the keywords. Currently the goal is just to get the site indexed in such a way that the SEs associate it with this local area, hence the emphasis on the county name, and the 3 main towns here.

• Search engines shouldn`t have a problem identifying our locale... every address is set up in hCard format and includes both area code and zip codes.

• I chose to go with the word "sustainable" in hopes of riding the coattails another local entity that has massive indexing with that word -- Penn State University`s "sustainable" offerings are endless, and they all share the same area code as our advertisers. I have NO idea if this will work but it`s worth a shot.

• Filling the categories is top priority! Right now I have about a half-dozen advertisers I`m waiting on for text & graphics, and my assistant poobah is out pounding the pavement this very moment.

• the design — I`m not too crazy about it personally. The layout seems sound but once we get a chance to breathe I want to do something less pipe-like with it.

Thanks again,
—paula

Paul,

• It`s great that you`re pursuing a standardized format such as hCard. I don`t know much about it so I can`t really comment, but you might be interested in getting your hCard site format reviewed (and its another link). I did check, and Google does support hCard, so you should be associated with PA automatically.
  
• As for choosing to ride with the popularity of another term, I urge you to research some more. Without personally analyzing the opportunity, I can only say that terms with existing competition is a bad decision to compete in. You should choose your terms based on keyword opportunity. This is a balance of multiple factors, two of which are competition, and existing traffic.
• Design wise, I would always remember simplicity wins. Until you become a national directory I wouldn`t waste people`s time with a `busy site` that offers more than it can handle. I think you understand what I mean.

Best of luck


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Colin Winter
Small Business Website Management and Marketing