I don’t care if you’re a blogger, affiliate marketer, or niche marketer – there are opportunities right in your own backyard to make money and you’re missing the boat big time!!

This post is part of the How to Build Income Online Series!

I’ve written a lot about writing about what you know, and blogging about your experiences for profit. What I didn’t tell you was there are things you know about that you haven’t even considered putting to use online quite yet – because you didn’t know it could make you money. That’s right – there are things right in your own backyard that could be passively making you money, right now! This is no BS or hype, I’m not trying to sell you the next ‘big thing’ – I just don’t want you to miss out on glaring opportunities (like I did for so long). Let me elaborate…

Wherever you live in the world, searches hit google each and every day based on keyword that relate to your region. Searches about travel, about tickets, about schools, about bars and restaraunts, about shopping, about festivals and fairs, about jobs and trades, and more each and every day. A lot of these searches come back with little or no quality results, and with just basic SEO you could literally DOMINATE search results each and every time in many of these areas. All you have to do is fill a need that isn’t already being met (well).

People now use google (and all search engines) like a phone book. The yellow pages are outdated, and nearly everyone I know just searches online for just about everything.

Here are some scenarios in which people search for something “local”:

  • Who has the best pizza in abc town?
  • Where can I find an poodle dog breeder in abc town?
  • Who boards animals locally?
  • Where can I rent a car in abc town?
  • What are the best bed and breakfasts in anytown USA?
  • Where can I watch a live band abc town?
  • Where can I sing karaoke in abc town?
  • Where can I get concert tickets for abc arena?
  • Where can I find school closing info for abc school?
  • Where can I rent a hall for a wedding in abc town?
  • Where can I rent a tuxedo in abcville?
  • Where can I get honest car repair in abc town?
  • Who repairs appliances in abc town?
  • Local classifieds or rummage sales for abc town?
  • Churches in abc town?
  • Phone number for abc dentist in abc town?
  • Tent rental for graduation open house in abc town?
  • Catering in abc town?
  • Photography in abc town?
  • Licensed contractors in abc town?
  • Apartment inspection in abc town?
  • Recycling in abc town?
  • Firewood in abc town?
  • Camping in abc town?
  • Private tutors in abc town?
  • Apartment or house rentals in abc town?
  • Mortgages in abc town?
  • Lawyer in abc town?
  • Doctor, Dentist, or specialist in abc town?

I could literally go on for days and days and days with this list. I don’t care where you live – people are searching daily for things online in your local area, town, city, state, and region, and if you are reading my blog you probably already have your own web sites. Odds are most (if not all) of them are based on topics or niches that a targeted at people across the world. Instead of “thinking big”, decidedly narrow your focus for once, and create a few very small, very focused, very local web sites.

The top 5 reasons for doing this are:

1. Diversification of Income: Have as many income streams coming in as you can to build monthly income consistently across the board. Would you rather have 2 web sites with 20,000 visitors per month or 20 web sites with 1,000 visitors per month? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

2. Increased profit based on relevancy: If you very small web site listing “weight loss surgeons” in your local area – odds are that the adsense ads will be much more targeted, and they will pay more per click. Also – it would be fairly easy to send out flyers (probably under $20) contacting all the doctors and offer them a detailed “bio” page with picture and their ad copy for $50 per year. If only 10 signup that’s $500 for a year – which is $41 per month for bio pages alone, not counting adsense revenue or any other kind of monetization at all.

3. Low Maintenance: Unlike a traditional blog, BANS site, or niche store – these little “mini sites” require little to no maintenance once initially setup. Small sites like this can be successful at just a few or up to a dozen pages. The content doesn’t change very often, so maintenance is very low.

4. Low amount of promotion and marketing required: Once your site is initially indexed in google, it can be very easy to rank high for search terms that nearly no one else is competing for. In most cases no one is competing for phrases like “math tutor boise idaho”, or “chair and tent rental paris texas”. Trust me, it’s much easier to rank for these than it is “blue ipod nano”! Most of these sites you can build a half dozen banklinks for and walk away.

5. Little to No Competition: As I’ve pointed out the concept of building a local web site is that instead of competing against the whole Internet you are narrowing it down to a small pond. You are the expert about the things in your local area, things that “yellowbook” or zip code spam sites online could ever know.

Findlaw.com may list every lawyer in the United States, but you are the only one that can list family lawyers in your town, interview each one and provide insight as to why you might need to choose one over another. You could add local flavor or history to items and events that no national web site or blog could ever do. If you lived in say, the Carolina’s – you could start a travelogue web site about your local area and add in history and stories about the places you’ve been that beats the living crap out of anything you could ever find on hotels.com or Expedia.

There is one last reason to create a “backyard” local web site, and that’s – GOOGLE LOVES ORIGINAL CONTENT. I see so many people trying to ‘beat the system’ by spinning content, rewriting articles, scraping, auto-blogging and what-not. All these methods provide very inconsistent income and daily run the risk of being banned, blacklisted, or even removed from google and other search engines altogether. People wonder why Adsense and eBay Parter Network cancel accounts – it’s because there are so many low quality thin (on content) spammy web sites out there it’s not funny.

If you make a good local web site that provides information not already out there, or present already available information in a better format – google will LOVE you and reward you by sending quality laser targeted traffic.

Contrary to what you may think – you don’t have to be a web designer, know how to code or write HTML, know how to blog, or even make graphics to quickly make quality local mini-web-sites. Next time I’ll show you how to create them easily, and quickly – using a free script that requires no database at all. Yes, WordPress is great, but sometimes you just don’t need a tractor to mow your tiny front yard!