Local Business Sites: Opportunity in this Recession?
Image by websuccessdiva via Flickr
Congras to Paul Myers… 12 year anniversary of his online newsletter.
Paul is one of the old-pros of online marketing. He’s a practical, insightful voice, and is ahead of the business trends.
Here’s where Paul sees the opportunity for local business online:(Check out his Local Web Profits)
Starting about two years ago, and continuing on for the
foreseeable future, I see significant growth in locally
focused online businesses. There will be a lot of “portals” for
people to find businesses in their areas, but the real growth
is going to be in local niches.Hence “Local Web Profits” - http://www.localwebprofits.com
There are a number of reasons I believe that local sites will
explode in popularity. It’s easier to get a group together to
run them, they get a higher return per visitor, they tend to
create offline contacts and opportunities, they have more
credibility, they take less horsepower (and thus, less
expensive hosting) to run, they create more personal celebrity
power, targeted advertising is cheaper, linking campaigns are
easier, search engine positioning is simple…The biggest reasons are the sum of those and the economy: It’s
easier to get started successfully online with a local project.I could go on for pages, but those are enough to make the
point.Even if all it is is a blog, or a directory of local interest sites, I recommend starting a project that gets you hooked into your local online community.
Here’s where I’m “hooked into the local online community”. Check out the Berks Lancaster Business Directory. Right now, as 2008 comes to a close, big plans are in the works for Berks Lancaster Business Directory in 2009.
As a local business owner, what are your plans to tap into and build your local online business community in 2009?
Source: small business online marketing

![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x- id= ef6e1700-ff29-409d-905c-d926eaecde6e)
