Website for your local area

Was just thinking about maybe at some stage setting up a website for my local area, maybe covering tourism or something.
The idea would be to get enough viewers and then sell advertising on the site to local business, looked at a few websites for
my area some news sites, some tourism sites, and a website and fb page that was set up very recently that takes the piss out of one of
the local online papers, its very funny and gets alot of views, although the guys writing the content are decent writers.

Any of you ever go down this route? looking for some ideas?

thanks

I had a site like that which did pretty well... it was in the area in which I lived and it had a few different aspects to it.

I had one section that was related to restaurants and would feature one kind of cuisine on each page and would sell advertising to an owner of a restaurant that featured that cuisine.

One section was related to recreational things to do... golfing, boating, fishing, sporting events etc and I did the same... each page would laud and applaud the golfing in that area and I would sell advertising to one course... same with boat rentals, fishing charters etc.

Did the same with hotels, rental homes, home purchases... you can really expand a site like that.

I was making in the neighborhood of 2K a month with the site but moved it when I left that area as you do need to keep in touch with your clients as there will be too much attrition otherwise and replacing clients from afar can be hard to do.

I had the same experience selling space on a local tourism site. There's a lot of content that must be put in place, and it can be a struggle to keep the content updated. We used printable coupons for the area businesses so that they'd at least have some idea that their advertising $$ was being put to good use. The business relationships you'll gain will be helpful.