Forum Moderators: skibum
I am starting to really consider beginning to build a travel based website for the region that I live in. Most of the websites that come up in Google searches are corporate and government sites, so I think I could do reasonably well with it.
I know alot of you guys do travel sites and make quite a bit from them, so I am here looking for some direction.
How should I go about getting the ball rolling? What sort of things do you include in such a site, and is there a certain order I should be adding certain things in?
The area includes 3-4 seperate provinces, should I focus on one province per site? Should I focus on hotel affiliate sales, adsense, or both? How important is my choice of URL?
I plan to begin by compiling a list of events that will be happening here over the fall and winter, then moving on to building a collection of hotels, resorts, etc., golf courses, beaches, and that sort of thing. Am I on the right track? Anythign else I should be thinking about?
Thanks for any pointers you may have!
As you live in the region, that makes you somewhat of a local expert. Write about all the insider places/things that only the locals know. Interview interesting locals, especially those who have roots going back generations in the community- you won't find their stories on corporate sites.
Why do people come to your region? Build upon that. Or maybe way out of towners come for different reasons than regional visitors- bring out both aspects.
Obviously a domain name is important, unless you're going to completely rely on search engine or paid traffic. Much, much better to have a memorable URL.
You'll probably need to build the site up quite a bit before you start generating any hotel affiliate sales. AdSense will probably give you some incremental income in the meantime.
Separating each province into a different site really depends on how fast you can develop content. I would probably say keep everythign on one site for now.
