Webwork - 7:31 am on Nov 29, 2005 (gmt 0)

Okay, here's a little hintette. (I like coining silly little wordettes, forgive me. It's a small venting, in this case, of my frustration over the fact that so many are sleeping as an opportunity drifts by.)

Here's a bit of history.

I used to pay the local yellowpages ~$25,000/year for leads for my law firm. I bought based upon following the herd. I bought based upon statistics. I bought because ads in the local newspaper were comparatively expensive. I bought because a yp ad was a "once done, keeps on working" thing, and so on.

Of course, I wasn't the only one buying yp ads and that was a fact that kept getting shoved up my nose: "Hey, Webwork, law firm X is now buying "double truck" (2 page) ads. That means their firm will be listed first in the yp. So, if you want to keep up . . " I knew people with 6 figure yp budgets.

Interesting thing: In my last year of yp advertising I paid ~$25K for leads that were worth about $30K, so at some point I was mostly working to pay for the ads.

Then I discovered the www and gave thought to geotargeting by domain name . . and search engines.

Cost of 25 domains: $250/year. Allocated share of a colo server: $1350/year. Value of leads in the first year? $$$,$$$. Very nice. 1/10 the cost for 5 times the value of the leads. (Ssshhhh, don't tell anyone.)

So, I was doing local search before local search became widely known as local search: By geotargeted domains (nice, localized type-ins), by assisting search engines to help them help distant people finding a local lawyer, and by employing those lovely geoprofession descriptive domains in tiny inexpensive ads - since anyone with a pc could easily remember the website name and find out more online.

Okay, now that's old news.

Now, I'm into a new mode of local search, still geotargeting by domain, but casting a bit of a wider net.

Final bit of advice: What's the guidance that you read in this forum, over and over again, usually posted up by the old bulls (and dare I say old cows?) :) Runs and hides

Diversify. Think of local as one more revenue stream in the building of your cash flow river, feeding into your cash flow reservoir.