How To Make Money From Local Search

October 20th, 2007 · No Comments

The big three search engines are so-called general search engines. They make money by selling mostly text advertising inventory. If you have a website that gets search engine traffic, you can profit from the traffic by using either PPC such as AdSense or affiliate program.

The local search is a less mature or saturated market but there is a lot of demand on local search. Even when people buys from local stores, they always tend to do online searches first. Therefore these local searches are harder for internet entrepreneurs to monetize. However, there are a couple of ways you can still profit from local search traffic.

The first is through affiliate programs. For example, if your site gets people who is searching for life insurance in your area, you could join an online insurance affiliate program that pays for leads. You can generally search engine optimize your site to get very targeted local search users who would be happy to fill out a simple lead form for discount auto insurance quote and/or life insurance quote. You could also provide auto insurance quote comparison information to your visitors to gain their trust by providing something valuable.

The second is to operate a niche directory listing website. You will charge members, usually local businesses, a monthly fee to list their website, product or promotions on your directory site. There are big sites that already do this in a very broad industry. Sites such as citysearch.com and craigslist.org have tens of thousands of listings in various industries. You want to target a very specific niche market so you can add value to your business members by providing better services and more targets leads. For example, you can set up a directory for local businesses that sell holiday gift baskets or corporate gift baskets in New York. These business will be happy to pay a nominal fee to get qualified leads.

There are more ways you can make money from local search traffic. The above are just two starters. Feel free to add your favorite ways to profit from local search engine traffic.