Scottsdale.com’s “City in The Box” Platform Part of Major Development/Marketing Deal

Elliot Silver
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I’ve known about these plans for several weeks, and I am happy to share the press release from Fred Mercaldo and his team at Scottsdale.com, who have been working hard to make this a reality. This puts Fred and his company at the forefront of the geodomain industry, as they will have more pure city .com domain names under their management than just about any other company.

My company’s Burbank.com will be one of the first websites released under this marketing and development deal, and I am excited to be a part of it. I am confident Fred and his team will be able to drive considerably more revenue with Burbank.com.

Fred will be speaking at the Geodomain Expo in New Orleans at the end of the month, and he will be available to answer any questions city .com domain owners may have.

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GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC announces development of over 40 Pure City.com Sites in Major Development/Marketing Deal

Scottsdale.com’s “City In The Box” Software to power sites; CitiesPlanet.com formed to Manage Advertising and Marketing Duties.

Scottsdale, AZ — April 21, 2010 — Fred Mercaldo, Managing Partner of Scottsdale.com, LLC and newly formed GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC announced today a major software development and marketing deal that includes over 40 City.com sites.   “Our proven software platform (www.CityInTheBox.com) will power the sites; once they are launched, CitiesPlanet will perform all marketing and advertising functions, and will procure local partnerships and contracts that will monetize the sites.   We look forward to a successful launch, and our goal is to grow to 150 pure City.com properties under management within 24 months”

Based in Scottsdale, CitiesPlanet (www.CitiesPlanet.com) has worked with numerous creative technology and digital marketing specialists to develop a marketing platform that will successfully reach out to local business in each City.com area.   Combined with a robust CRM system, each business will receive a custom media kit with their specific company featured, giving business owners numerous advertising and partnering options with their local, official City.com branded site.   “Our success rate so far has been 15% to 30% response rate, depending on which Directory category is being marketed, which is incredible”, says Mercaldo.   “In addition, our system features a “nurture” campaign in the event a business has not responded to our first offer, and will automatically continue to send the opportunity to the business owner 3 additional times”.

The majority of the initial City.com sites are owned by State Ventures, LLC.   “Fred Mercaldo has the vision to foresee the future of local Internet advertising and the marketing talent to accelerate the shift of local advertising to city portals,” says Nat Cohen, President of State Ventures, LLC. “Fred is one of the stand-up guys in the Geo Domain industry.   We are very pleased to be partnering with Fred in helping him realize this vision for the industry.”

The City.com properties included in the initial launch feature a very diverse group of demographics and economies.   “Everything from Kalamazoo.com to Burbank.com to Sausalito.com to GreatFalls.com; each City will have its own distinct characteristics and opportunities.   We look forward to the challenge to make each City.com property a household name in each community” says Mercaldo.

CitiesPlanet will also handle all of the marketing and advertising responsibilities for Scottsdale.com, Chandler.com, Mesa.com, FountainHills.com, Tempe.com, and ApacheJunction.com, all of which have been launched and are connected within the Arizona market.   Mercaldo recruited former Travelocity and RazorGator executive Mark Wilson to head CitiesPlanet.   “Mark brings a successful track record of accomplishment to the table, combining both marketing expertise and technology capabilities, which is exactly what this project requires”, says Mercaldo.   The remaining City.com’s will begin launching the first week of May, and will continue to roll out through July until all 40 are established and successfully monetized.   Mercaldo states, “Our entire staff, led by Becky Kelley, has worked tirelessly this past 5 months to get all of these sites ready to go.   We are very pleased to be able to finally announce these partnerships, as it has been on the drawing board for quite some time.   We are ready to go!”

For more information on GeoDomain Development Ventures, LLC, contact:

Fred Mercaldo, 602-859-3786, fred@scottsdale.com

For more information on Scottsdale.com, LLC and “City In The Box” software, contact:

Becky Kelley, 480-343-3654, Becky@scottsdale.com

For more information on CitiesPlanet, contact:

Mark Wilson, 602-363-3345, Mark@CitiesPlanet.com

State Ventures LLC owns and develops many geographic domain names and web properties, including Maryland.com, OceanCity.com, Annapolis.com, Pennsylvania.com, Virginia.com, NorthCarolina.com, Missouri.com, and Minnesota.com.

Some Sunday Updates

Elliot Silver
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Hope you’re having a nice Sunday. I am off for a long bike ride today… just a couple weeks until my 5 Boro Bike Tour, and my wife and I are just a few hundred dollars away from our goal for the Ronald McDonald House.

Lowell.com was finally relaunched a few days ago, and a number of bugs have been fixed and/or are being fixed. One thing I did to find errors was put out a request on Twitter and Facebook. I got quite a lot of feedback from people who are interested in the site (including the information that my current logo was liked and another logo wasn’t favored). In addition, a number of people have signed up to post articles.

Here is some information about the new Lowell.com website so you can be inspired or be helped with your own development projects:

  • People can sign up and post articles, events, and/or comments. This will add content to the site and hopefully increase traffic and pageviews. It’s also helpful to people in the community who are now more easily able to promote their news and events to an audience of over 10,000 visitors per month.
  • My developer used a plugin called “The Events Calendar” which is fantastic! The only issue I am having now is that events seem to fall off the home page before they start. I’ve checked the server clock and WordPress clock on site, and all are working fine. This is something I need to fix.
  • I also need to fix the Yet Another Related Post Plugin, as it’s not showing up on Pages.
  • Advertisers will be able to sign up for business listings in the same way dog walkers can on DogWalker.com. Listings will automatically renew in a year, and their Paypal account will auto-pay in a year. This is so I don’t need a representative in the area.
  • Banners, hotel listings, and restaurant listings will all be manually managed by me. The Lowell Courtyard by Marriott. has agreed to continue with a monthly banner, and the Radisson Hotel signed up last week, so things are off to a pretty good start (no, I didn’t offer them a discount rate or freebie to get them on site).
  • I am using Adsense in the top banner spot and one of the side banners, although these can easily be replaced by local advertisers if/when they are interested. The Adsense banners are earning somewhere around $5/day right now despite the fact that traffic has gone done in the last few weeks.
  • This is obvious, but make sure you test your newly developed websites with all commonly used Internet browsers. Make sure you test all parts of the site, especially if you use different plugins.
  • One of the nicest thing about this site is that I can now basically replicate the platform on Newburyport.com for relatively little expense since I paid for the foundation with Lowell.com’s development. Since Newburyport is about 45 minutes from Lowell and is a tourist locale in the summer, I think these two sites will work well together. The only issue is the time commitment required to run another site like this… I might finally have to relent and hire someone full time to work with me.
  • I ran into some major issues with hosting, the htaccess file, and assorted other related bugs. Ultimately, things worked out after quite a bit of time troubleshooting with Liquid Web and my developer, but it was still a challenge none the less. I think this is probably the biggest hurdle I faced since I am not really knowledgeable about these technical issues.
  • As with most of my other development projects, I used Six One Five Design for the development work. Mike is still working on a few things, but I think it’s nearly finished.

Who The Hell Are You?

Elliot Silver
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When you’re getting ready to launch a website, it’s important to keep in mind that your site’s visitors and readers are going to want to know who you are and what your background is, especially if you own the category defining brand. When I first launched my geodomain websites, my About Us pages lacked detail, and a few people emailed me telling me they wouldn’t discuss advertising until they knew exactly who I am and what my objectives are/were.

People crave knowledge and information, and they want to know from where the information is coming. When Frank Schilling started his Seven Mile Blog, he was giving great domain and business advice, and he was also dissecting the news that impacted domain investors. The primary reason Frank Schilling’s blog became very popular so quickly was because of who Frank is and what Frank has done for the industry.

Whether you are developing a site about real estate, cars, the stock market, or even domain names, it’s only fair that you tell the readers exactly who you are and why you are an expert they should trust. Not only does this provide a level of comfort to your readers, but it helps provide a connection between you and your readers, encouraging them to become more engaged with your website.

The more engaged your readers are with you, the more likely it is that advertisers will pay top dollar for your available advertising space.

GeoDomain Development Idea

Elliot Silver
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I know a lot of people who own city keyword .com domain names, and I own several of them as well. I want to share a development idea I have, as I have found most of the longer tail geodomain names I own (most are attorney or lawyer names) don’t get much type in traffic and make very little revenue as a result. I haven’t put this idea into practice yet but want to share it with those who might wish to do so.

Using a modified classifieds theme or a directory package, create empty directories that cost anywhere from $9 – 99/year to sign up. The advertiser will receive a full page within the website to promote his business, and the company will be listed on the primary page. It will be very similar to Frank Schilling’s MontrealRestaurants.com. Payment will need to be made via Paypal and should be an annual subscription for easy re-billing.

The idea is that once you create and customize your platform for a few hundred dollars (unless you are able to do the work on your own), you can then version it out to your other similar domain names to lower your development cost per domain name. Contrary to what some people might say, I do happen to think a site like this should look good so potential advertisers are more interested in advertising. I received many more comments about DogWalker.com’s look and style rather than its searchability and functionality.

By doing this, it will help generate revenue, once you’ve done enough SEO work to get it ranked in Google. As a comparison, DogWalker.com ranked #1 in Google for the term “dog walker” within 2 months of launching it, and it had been a Godaddy landing page for a while, so the SEO aspect isn’t as difficult as it might seem.

Like I said before, I haven’t done this yet so I can’t give any feedback about the likelihood for success. I tried to sell HattiesburgAttorney.com, LynnAttorney.com, BozemanAttorney.com, and a few others similar names without much luck, so I will probably try this model out on these names before the end of the year. If it fails to yield any signups, I imagine getting these names ranking in Google for their keywords will at the very least increase their saleability and value.

Feel free to share your experiences with this.

Finding Affiliate Partners for Websites

Elliot Silver
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One of the primary reasons I chose to re-design Lowell.com was to change my approach to advertising sales. At the moment, the sales process is manual, and advertisers cannot sign up without contacting me. Big mistake. I am not a great sales person when it comes to advertising, and I don’t like making cold calls or sending emails. As a result, I only have a few advertisers on the site.

With the new site (which I hope to launch within 2 weeks), advertisers will be able to create and pay for directory listings manually in the Yellow Pages, although the more expensive banners will still be generated by me. I’ve had considerable interest in Yellow Pages listings, and I expect the revenue from listings to pay for the re-design within just a few months.

Although I have a few local advertisers (including the Courtyard by Marriott), I want to add some affiliate banners as well (including a new prominent 728×90 spot and 250×250 spot). Finding appropriate affiliate programs is a bit of a challenge because of the broad nature of Lowell.com, but I want to share a few things that I am doing, hopefully starting a bit of a discussion.

Here are a few things I am considering when selecting affiliates from Linkshare:

  • Does the affiliate compete with current local advertisers (like hotels or photography)?
  • What companies are running advertisements on competing websites?
  • What is the commission rate and length of time for cookies?
  • Is there local brand recognition?
  • Will the banners look good on the site?

I think the biggest thing for me will be testing. Since Lowell.com gets between 15,000 – 20,000 unique visitors a month now (despite not being updated in 2 months), there is enough traffic to test different banners. I plan to rotate affiliate banners, testing CTR/Revenue with different banner offers, as well as Adsense.

I know Adsense generates revenue as I have it in select spots on the current site, but I also know it leaves money on the table. I want to see if I can find compelling offers that will blow Adsense out of the water. I don’t know if it will be possible, but I am going to test it.

One thing I do know is that direct ad sales will be the most profitable banner advertising. I hope to be able to fully replace affiliate banners and Adsense banners within a few months. However, I am not counting on that since I don’t have a sales representative yet. In the meantime, I will be doing a lot of testing.

Have you run affiliate banners on a general interest website (like Lowell.com), and if so, what has your experience been?

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

Help Choose a New Logo for Lowell.com

Elliot Silver
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0

As you may or may not be aware, my designer and I are in the middle of re-designing Lowell.com. The new website will be on a much better content management system, and that will allow visitors to submit news and calendar events, create advertisements manually, and post comments on articles. The new site will be much more user friendly.

Well… what’s a new website without a new logo?   Please have a look at the 5 logo typefaces below and let me know which you like best. The site is nearly ready to be re-launched, and this is one of the final elements I saved for last. The color will change (of course), but this is just the base font choices.


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