Local Community Site Advertising

What is the best way?

[BwanaZulia]

One of my more popular sites, is a local community site that gets over 3,000 visitors (unique) a month to over 180,000 page views.

I have Amazon and Adsense running on it but would like to break into local advertising and a paid/free directory service.

Has anyone done this? What types of challenges, rates, etc should I expect?

BZ

[Travel]

I did this in a previous life- and would suggest choosing a target market first and then expanding once you have set up some good clients in that market.

We saw success with car dealers early, real estate agents are another great target.

Another market is mom and pop shops- they are easy sales, but low price targets. We set up "business cards" for them- quickie one page sites with a template- $25 a month for the page and link in our directory (this was over 5 years ago)