Another geodomain owner has made the transition from a travel and tourism guide to a full-blown journalistic publication. Shaun Pilfold and his team have transitioned their website about Kelowna, British Columbia into the website about Kelowna. The Kelowna.com executive team hired some of Kelowna’s top journalists and photographers, as well as some of the best-known local personalities, which is going to drive continued growth at the company.
In addition to advertising online, Kelowna.com is also advertising the new website on the local radio, including a great line about how newspapers and television stations can’t do what they are going to do online. With a great domain name, they are able to grab the attention of radio listeners who will certainly remember how to find them online.
Sure, they didn’t need to have the Kelowna.com domain name, but it certainly gives them much more instant credibility within the community who will see the website and feel as if they’ve known about the site forever. I know the team is working hard to make the site better, and they will succeed.
As I’ve learned, there are always minor glitches that can happen right at launch. If you happen to see something funky on the site, please make a comment here, and I will let Shaun know about it. Congrats to the Kelowna.com team – and here’s to much more success.
Their success is our success.
Always good to see success stories involving domainers, especially with development.
The SEO could be a lot better, but I am sure they will get to it… Eventually. I hope! 😉
Cheers,
Mike
Thanks for the feedback Mike. To be honest, while SEO has a place for us, the real point is winning the minds and more importantly the mouses of the local population. This is a “homepage” play. We want to be where locals come from when they wake up, until they go to bed. The advertisers will follow the eyeballs.
Great effort Shaun – looks the business!
Not far from you vancouverbc.com have also attempted to take on the role of ‘more than just a travel site’ – I’m sure you’ve seen it. I imagine this is the start of things to come with great geo domains. With the journalists on staff and up to date news, video etc it obviously costs you a lot more to run than the typical online city guide, so you must expect much better revenue from advertising to locals rather than tourists?
I wish you the best of luck with it!
BTW, kelownahotels.com now produces an error page – let me know if you no longer need it and I’ll suggest a good home for it 😉
Very impressive Shaun and smart move to pick up the local talent that mainstream is kicking to the curb. Congratulations and good luck.
great post elliot and to the owner of the site, i love the layout and design of things..
the traffic and seo will build up over time, things dont happen over night..
great to see a real business!
WOW what a great job they have done! Very impressive. Makes me want to own more geos.
I think towns that are not too big – no bigger than a few hundred thousand population, and also genially cool places to live and genially cool places to visit on vacation are the best GEOs to develop. It would not surprise me if these types of GEOs end up being more profitable than much bigger cities.
@Shaun
Congrats on the new look of your site. Please update us on how the radio advertising goes. Are you doing any billboard ads?
Hey that’s a wordpress site isn’t it?
If you need any tips on making it SE friendly and how to get the SEO all tuned up, let me know. You’ve got my contact info.
– Richard
The Kelowna.com homepage looks fantastic. Great balance, great color. Not cluttered. Perfect layout.
Well done! You definitely set the bar high with the frequency of reporting.
Shaun or anyone, can you let me know where you get access to real time weather?
Shaun and business partner Rob Montgomery own some truly great .ca domains, any one of which you could build an empire on. Jobs.ca and Resumes.ca come to mind. They’re also two extremely affable gents I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know through phone conversations. With the revamp of Kelowna.com they’re again living up to their slogan at Ogopogo Media, “Success is developing.”
Sincere congrats, guys. I wish you much continued success.
@Johnny
You are exactly right, that’s the sweet spot. We developed http://www.Oakville.com this year and it’s been a great success. And Elliot has developed several geo’s for mid sized towns as well!
@JS
yahoo, google, weather.com all have API’s that you can use for weather. You just code it to pull their weather, pics, etc.
– Richard
Thanks for all the kind words guys. We just started the radio ads yesterday so we’ll se how they go. The otther two commercials are here, if anyone wants a listen.
We are in talks with a Billboard company. The problem with Kelowna is that you are not allowed billboards in the city limits, so you need to get them on the roads leading in.. and they are clutted with them.
An idea we are toying with is to give our reporters Smart cars, skinned with our stuff on it. It would be like a bunch of billboards running around town. The costs are not that much more than what we have to cover in mileage fees for using their own cars.
Shaun
PS. great job on Oakville.com Richard
This model works great for cities to build community.
Do you see the same potential for country-level domains?
-Wood
I absolutely love it when so-called ‘little guys’ make a major dent in formerly corporate media using the geodomain space.
Perchboy
@Richard – Thanks a bunch!
Shaun…..very impressive and congratulations! We will be watching for the revenue success to come…which I am sure will be there. I agree totally with you….the advertisers DO follow the eyeballs….Fred.