[Journey] Testing Random Stuff out in 2024

• I tested out a bunch of random AI articles for keywords in Bushwick, Brooklyn and found some decent data in terms of competition, impressions/clicks
• Aim:
  • Drive traffic
  • Build local topical authority
  • Build out into directory, lead gen, paid ads, sponsored posts/business highlights, job boards, hotels etc.
    • Can I outcompete local businesses (plumbers, roofers, landscapers etc.) in SERPs with high local topical authority?
    • Could I even find a gap in the market for home service business and offer it myself or use subs. to fulfill the work?
• Marketing
  • Sponsoring local events (links, exposure etc.), sports teams, schools etc.

• Local sites I'd imagine will have greater demand/volume (already confirmed somewhat running ads for a niche and local keyword) but niche boards I'd imagine will be easier to market and far more valuable. I have 3 niche domains, 1 seasonal one (centered around a particular time of year/event). The latter has the potential to be massive in my opinion with heaps of long tails and probably cheap CPC. I think I can do tens of thousands of traffic during peak time.
  • Can I get paid listings?
  • Can I approach and get recruiters and national companies to use?
  • Can these work well even in really small towns
    • I actually have employment figures here in the UK for places and did some rough estimates to figure out the potential number of annual job listings per area which I'll share if anyone is interested.
      • Very easy to market, cheap CPC, basically only fish in the pond, sponsoring local events, going to local schools, leaflet drops, newspaper ads etc. would be very easy to become household name in markets.
• Testing demand running Google Ads for 1 week
  • Have tested two already

• Used a... CITY
• Second hand a... CITY

• I own two great EMD for furnished rentals in USA. Setup a booking site for furnished rentals?
• Rooms for rent CITY
  • Spareroom is a big player here in the UK, wonder if it's possible to improve, offer something slightly different (vetted rooms in person idk), drive some cheap traffic. focus on a particular city or neighborhood.
• Niche listing site
  • Think historic buildings, certain style etc.
  • SERPs look great here in England
    • Will agents be willing to pay?
    • How do I get them onboard
    • What can I offer them/upsell?
      • Marketing
      • Professional photos
      • 3D Tours
      • Video Tours
  • London as an example ticks boxes including having expensive homes for sale. Means higher commission for estate agents.
  • Not sure there's a licensing requirment in England to become an estate agent so there's some possibilities here with listing properties myself or acting as a buyers agent working in a particular niche like old homes.
• Serviced apartment listing/review site
  • Basically the same thing as furnished rentals in USA but here in UK.
  • There's an incredibly basic website that dominates SERP for serviced apartment CITY etc. which basically just lists properties from OTA site.

• 2 Job boards, have tested demand by running Google Ads

Holzr said:

I've been absent from BHW last year and didn't do a heap of IM but this year I'm back, full of ideas and ready to hit the ground running. I really enjoy testing random stuff out and managed to run a few test last year. I'm here to expand on those and aim to test 1 new niche/idea out per week. I have older projects (lead gen. mostly) that I'll be continuing.

No fancy websites, literally just one page Carrd sites to validate before I build out or scrap, this way I can scale and test cheaply and efficiently. I can build these out quickly and I can literally just clone sites in the same niche with Carrd which is what I did for job boards, copy, change some text, change image, publish.

The general rundown for stuff I want to test out this year:

Local neighborhood/town/city sites

• I tested out a bunch of random AI articles for keywords in Bushwick, Brooklyn and found some decent data in terms of competition, impressions/clicks
• Aim:
  • Drive traffic
  • Build local topical authority
  • Build out into directory, lead gen, paid ads, sponsored posts/business highlights, job boards, hotels etc.
    • Can I outcompete local businesses (plumbers, roofers, landscapers etc.) in SERPs with high local topical authority?
    • Could I even find a gap in the market for home service business and offer it myself or use subs. to fulfill the work?
• Marketing
  • Sponsoring local events (links, exposure etc.), sports teams, schools etc.

Job Boards

Saw some decent results with one I did during COVID, testing out local and niche, have ~10 domains, many here in the UK. Great Twitter to follow in this niche.

• Local sites I'd imagine will have greater demand/volume (already confirmed somewhat running ads for a niche and local keyword) but niche boards I'd imagine will be easier to market and far more valuable. I have 3 niche domains, 1 seasonal one (centered around a particular time of year/event). The latter has the potential to be massive in my opinion with heaps of long tails and probably cheap CPC. I think I can do tens of thousands of traffic during peak time.
  • Can I get paid listings?
  • Can I approach and get recruiters and national companies to use?
  • Can these work well even in really small towns
    • I actually have employment figures here in the UK for places and did some rough estimates to figure out the potential number of annual job listings per area which I'll share if anyone is interested.
      • Very easy to market, cheap CPC, basically only fish in the pond, sponsoring local events, going to local schools, leaflet drops, newspaper ads etc. would be very easy to become household name in markets.
• Testing demand running Google Ads for 1 week
  • Have tested two already

Area Wedding Guides

Another idea from linked Twitter above, can I create area wedding guides/directories and drive enough traffic to monetize? Wedding statistics by area in USA, great starting point to estimate demand, I'm marrying up with areas that tend to be tourism focused to try and get those more niche/destination wedding areas, likely to need more wedding planning and higher budgets for special days vs perhaps more people looking at generic weddings in large urban areas.

Again, simple validation of a one page website, drive some traffic and see.

Flipping Stuff Locally

Can I flip stuff? Buying offline or on marketplaces and re-list? Or even create my own website/marketplace and drive traffic (likely cheap traffic and could work well to create marketplace perhaps). There's clearly some big demand for various items so potential to focus on one niche, build out a website/fulfillment etc. Some cool ideas here and here.

I picked a major UK city and just went through the alphabet on Google to find autosuggest keywords:

• Used a... CITY
• Second hand a... CITY

E.g. second hand garden furniture CITY

Real Estate/Property Website

• I own two great EMD for furnished rentals in USA. Setup a booking site for furnished rentals?
• Rooms for rent CITY
  • Spareroom is a big player here in the UK, wonder if it's possible to improve, offer something slightly different (vetted rooms in person idk), drive some cheap traffic. focus on a particular city or neighborhood.
• Niche listing site
  • Think historic buildings, certain style etc.
  • SERPs look great here in England
    • Will agents be willing to pay?
    • How do I get them onboard
    • What can I offer them/upsell?
      • Marketing
      • Professional photos
      • 3D Tours
      • Video Tours
  • London as an example ticks boxes including having expensive homes for sale. Means higher commission for estate agents.
  • Not sure there's a licensing requirment in England to become an estate agent so there's some possibilities here with listing properties myself or acting as a buyers agent working in a particular niche like old homes.
• Serviced apartment listing/review site
  • Basically the same thing as furnished rentals in USA but here in UK.
  • There's an incredibly basic website that dominates SERP for serviced apartment CITY etc. which basically just lists properties from OTA site.

If anyone is in any of these spaces and wants to talk/share I'd love this to be an open discussion.

I love testing and getting data so excited for this year, I'll likely be updating weekly.

Week 1

• 2 Job boards, have tested demand by running Google Ads

I'll be focusing on getting the niche job boards up next, followed by the furnished rental sites then run Ads to them to test demand. That's the schedule for the next few weeks.

Wishing everyone a great 2024!

Click to expand...

Ahmed Al Banna said:

Congrats on your journey. I am not discouraging you at all but I wanted to point out to you that Bushwick is just one of many neighborhoods in Brooklyn. You should concentrate on larger area, not micro neighborhoods that only have 121,000 population.

Being not from of Brooklyn you also don't understand that Brooklyn residents would not be using any directory websites. People know a guy that knows a guy that gets things done if you're looking for a plumber. Ironically only out of state hipsters that move into Bushwick because they can't afford Williamsburg or other more hipster areas. If I were to visit Bushwick and go to new places I've never been to I would use Google Maps and find something that is near subway and read Google Reviews, view their website if I wanted to check new restaurant. I would not searching for "Bushwick restaurant" and bypass GMB listings for Google recommended restaurants and scroll down until I find Bushwick business directory from which I can select restaurant to visit. Bushwick is full of hipsters and hipsters know how to use internet

Click to expand...

Holzr said:

Appreciate the response, this test site was purely just curiosity mainly around hyper local content and virtually zero competition keywords (could I build local authority by targeting a micro neighborhood vs Brooklyn as a whole which is huge and competitive), is there any value in driving traffic for ads as an example. Turns out you can rank page 1 for many keywords due to low competition.

So an insight I found with this one site, despite using generic AI content with no editing is that X to X style keywords rank well and have a lot of searches. Clearly there's a lot of programmatic SEO style sites that do this at scale but there's room in this niche by the looks of it, so that's something I could explore.

But yeah, that's some great insight, thank you! Perhaps then the play is just display ads and driving enough traffic for obscure zero competition keywords etc. or actually putting time and effort into building a local content/news/community website that would be used by locals.

Screenshot from site GSC below. So your point about locals already knowing people is one that had crossed my mind and is a really good point. I had actually built out a moving site using neighborhood + movers for keywords to see if people are searching hyper local but I'd imagine your point stands that people already know, or they're asking on local FB groups, Nextdoor etc. to get those recommendations.

View attachment 312981

Click to expand...

Ahmed Al Banna said:

Yes you can choose to follow your idea of targeting low competition micro neighborhood keywords but make sure to build it for entire Brooklyn (just using it as an example) and not small neighborhood. You can still target individual neighborhood keywords but from 1 larger site.

Google "Die Hipster" Brooklyn blog It used to be local community website that I used to look at. It describes newcomers in neigbhorhoods like Williamsburg, Bushwick, Crown Heights, Greenpoint, etc. 20+ years ago you could get car jacked in Bushwick but about 10 years ago hipsters started moving into those neighborhoods causing gentrification. Die Hipster was a good example of how locals felt about newcomers.

Brooklyn is wrong area for outsiders to target because you need to understand your demographics. Most tourists try to stay in Manhattan which is a lot more expensive and those that can't afford stay in other boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens or even across the river in Jersey City. Locals know all good places to visit from their own experiences and recommendations of others. If there is a new restaurant to check out in Bushwick or any other neighborhood all the locals would hear it from someone and typically not rely on SERP below GMB.

To give you an easy example - if someone would tell me to go to Bushwick to check out new pizzeria I would have zero interest because there are dozens of old school places in my own neighborhood or nearby that are 100 times better. Locals know where to go and where not to go. Do you think NYC locals go to eat in Times Square?

You have great plan with technical aspect of SEO but miss my point of clearly understanding your target audience and available demographics. For example I'll give you a small city that has more potential - Rochester, MN

It's small city of about 200k with many restaurants, breweries but what most don't know that its home to IBM & Mayo Clinic. It is one of the most famous clinics in the world where rich patients from around the world go to and doctors / nurses from around the world try to work at. Here you have white collar individuals that are planning to move there for work + rich patients. Many of them would be researching about what to do in Rochester.

Click to expand...

Holzr said:

I've been absent from BHW last year and didn't do a heap of IM but this year I'm back, full of ideas and ready to hit the ground running. I really enjoy testing random stuff out and managed to run a few test last year. I'm here to expand on those and aim to test 1 new niche/idea out per week. I have older projects (lead gen. mostly) that I'll be continuing.

No fancy websites, literally just one page Carrd sites to validate before I build out or scrap, this way I can scale and test cheaply and efficiently. I can build these out quickly and I can literally just clone sites in the same niche with Carrd which is what I did for job boards, copy, change some text, change image, publish.

The general rundown for stuff I want to test out this year:

Local neighborhood/town/city sites

• I tested out a bunch of random AI articles for keywords in Bushwick, Brooklyn and found some decent data in terms of competition, impressions/clicks
• Aim:
  • Drive traffic
  • Build local topical authority
  • Build out into directory, lead gen, paid ads, sponsored posts/business highlights, job boards, hotels etc.
    • Can I outcompete local businesses (plumbers, roofers, landscapers etc.) in SERPs with high local topical authority?
    • Could I even find a gap in the market for home service business and offer it myself or use subs. to fulfill the work?
• Marketing
  • Sponsoring local events (links, exposure etc.), sports teams, schools etc.

Job Boards

Saw some decent results with one I did during COVID, testing out local and niche, have ~10 domains, many here in the UK. Great Twitter to follow in this niche.

• Local sites I'd imagine will have greater demand/volume (already confirmed somewhat running ads for a niche and local keyword) but niche boards I'd imagine will be easier to market and far more valuable. I have 3 niche domains, 1 seasonal one (centered around a particular time of year/event). The latter has the potential to be massive in my opinion with heaps of long tails and probably cheap CPC. I think I can do tens of thousands of traffic during peak time.
  • Can I get paid listings?
  • Can I approach and get recruiters and national companies to use?
  • Can these work well even in really small towns
    • I actually have employment figures here in the UK for places and did some rough estimates to figure out the potential number of annual job listings per area which I'll share if anyone is interested.
      • Very easy to market, cheap CPC, basically only fish in the pond, sponsoring local events, going to local schools, leaflet drops, newspaper ads etc. would be very easy to become household name in markets.
• Testing demand running Google Ads for 1 week
  • Have tested two already

Area Wedding Guides

Another idea from linked Twitter above, can I create area wedding guides/directories and drive enough traffic to monetize? Wedding statistics by area in USA, great starting point to estimate demand, I'm marrying up with areas that tend to be tourism focused to try and get those more niche/destination wedding areas, likely to need more wedding planning and higher budgets for special days vs perhaps more people looking at generic weddings in large urban areas.

Again, simple validation of a one page website, drive some traffic and see.

Flipping Stuff Locally

Can I flip stuff? Buying offline or on marketplaces and re-list? Or even create my own website/marketplace and drive traffic (likely cheap traffic and could work well to create marketplace perhaps). There's clearly some big demand for various items so potential to focus on one niche, build out a website/fulfillment etc. Some cool ideas here and here.

I picked a major UK city and just went through the alphabet on Google to find autosuggest keywords:

• Used a... CITY
• Second hand a... CITY

E.g. second hand garden furniture CITY

Real Estate/Property Website

• I own two great EMD for furnished rentals in USA. Setup a booking site for furnished rentals?
• Rooms for rent CITY
  • Spareroom is a big player here in the UK, wonder if it's possible to improve, offer something slightly different (vetted rooms in person idk), drive some cheap traffic. focus on a particular city or neighborhood.
• Niche listing site
  • Think historic buildings, certain style etc.
  • SERPs look great here in England
    • Will agents be willing to pay?
    • How do I get them onboard
    • What can I offer them/upsell?
      • Marketing
      • Professional photos
      • 3D Tours
      • Video Tours
  • London as an example ticks boxes including having expensive homes for sale. Means higher commission for estate agents.
  • Not sure there's a licensing requirment in England to become an estate agent so there's some possibilities here with listing properties myself or acting as a buyers agent working in a particular niche like old homes.
• Serviced apartment listing/review site
  • Basically the same thing as furnished rentals in USA but here in UK.
  • There's an incredibly basic website that dominates SERP for serviced apartment CITY etc. which basically just lists properties from OTA site.

If anyone is in any of these spaces and wants to talk/share I'd love this to be an open discussion.

I love testing and getting data so excited for this year, I'll likely be updating weekly.

Week 1

• 2 Job boards, have tested demand by running Google Ads

I'll be focusing on getting the niche job boards up next, followed by the furnished rental sites then run Ads to them to test demand. That's the schedule for the next few weeks.

Wishing everyone a great 2024!

Click to expand...

Ahmed Al Banna said:

Do you think NYC locals go to eat in Times Square?

Click to expand...

Holzr said:

I've been absent from BHW last year and didn't do a heap of IM but this year I'm back, full of ideas and ready to hit the ground running. I really enjoy testing random stuff out and managed to run a few test last year. I'm here to expand on those and aim to test 1 new niche/idea out per week. I have older projects (lead gen. mostly) that I'll be continuing.

No fancy websites, literally just one page Carrd sites to validate before I build out or scrap, this way I can scale and test cheaply and efficiently. I can build these out quickly and I can literally just clone sites in the same niche with Carrd which is what I did for job boards, copy, change some text, change image, publish.

The general rundown for stuff I want to test out this year:

Local neighborhood/town/city sites

• I tested out a bunch of random AI articles for keywords in Bushwick, Brooklyn and found some decent data in terms of competition, impressions/clicks
• Aim:
  • Drive traffic
  • Build local topical authority
  • Build out into directory, lead gen, paid ads, sponsored posts/business highlights, job boards, hotels etc.
    • Can I outcompete local businesses (plumbers, roofers, landscapers etc.) in SERPs with high local topical authority?
    • Could I even find a gap in the market for home service business and offer it myself or use subs. to fulfill the work?
• Marketing
  • Sponsoring local events (links, exposure etc.), sports teams, schools etc.

Job Boards

Saw some decent results with one I did during COVID, testing out local and niche, have ~10 domains, many here in the UK. Great Twitter to follow in this niche.

• Local sites I'd imagine will have greater demand/volume (already confirmed somewhat running ads for a niche and local keyword) but niche boards I'd imagine will be easier to market and far more valuable. I have 3 niche domains, 1 seasonal one (centered around a particular time of year/event). The latter has the potential to be massive in my opinion with heaps of long tails and probably cheap CPC. I think I can do tens of thousands of traffic during peak time.
  • Can I get paid listings?
  • Can I approach and get recruiters and national companies to use?
  • Can these work well even in really small towns
    • I actually have employment figures here in the UK for places and did some rough estimates to figure out the potential number of annual job listings per area which I'll share if anyone is interested.
      • Very easy to market, cheap CPC, basically only fish in the pond, sponsoring local events, going to local schools, leaflet drops, newspaper ads etc. would be very easy to become household name in markets.
• Testing demand running Google Ads for 1 week
  • Have tested two already

Area Wedding Guides

Another idea from linked Twitter above, can I create area wedding guides/directories and drive enough traffic to monetize? Wedding statistics by area in USA, great starting point to estimate demand, I'm marrying up with areas that tend to be tourism focused to try and get those more niche/destination wedding areas, likely to need more wedding planning and higher budgets for special days vs perhaps more people looking at generic weddings in large urban areas.

Again, simple validation of a one page website, drive some traffic and see.

Flipping Stuff Locally

Can I flip stuff? Buying offline or on marketplaces and re-list? Or even create my own website/marketplace and drive traffic (likely cheap traffic and could work well to create marketplace perhaps). There's clearly some big demand for various items so potential to focus on one niche, build out a website/fulfillment etc. Some cool ideas here and here.

I picked a major UK city and just went through the alphabet on Google to find autosuggest keywords:

• Used a... CITY
• Second hand a... CITY

E.g. second hand garden furniture CITY

Real Estate/Property Website

• I own two great EMD for furnished rentals in USA. Setup a booking site for furnished rentals?
• Rooms for rent CITY
  • Spareroom is a big player here in the UK, wonder if it's possible to improve, offer something slightly different (vetted rooms in person idk), drive some cheap traffic. focus on a particular city or neighborhood.
• Niche listing site
  • Think historic buildings, certain style etc.
  • SERPs look great here in England
    • Will agents be willing to pay?
    • How do I get them onboard
    • What can I offer them/upsell?
      • Marketing
      • Professional photos
      • 3D Tours
      • Video Tours
  • London as an example ticks boxes including having expensive homes for sale. Means higher commission for estate agents.
  • Not sure there's a licensing requirment in England to become an estate agent so there's some possibilities here with listing properties myself or acting as a buyers agent working in a particular niche like old homes.
• Serviced apartment listing/review site
  • Basically the same thing as furnished rentals in USA but here in UK.
  • There's an incredibly basic website that dominates SERP for serviced apartment CITY etc. which basically just lists properties from OTA site.

If anyone is in any of these spaces and wants to talk/share I'd love this to be an open discussion.

I love testing and getting data so excited for this year, I'll likely be updating weekly.

Week 1

• 2 Job boards, have tested demand by running Google Ads

I'll be focusing on getting the niche job boards up next, followed by the furnished rental sites then run Ads to them to test demand. That's the schedule for the next few weeks.

Wishing everyone a great 2024!

Click to expand...