A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Rob Grant who has been following the development of Lowell.com on my blog. Having read about Rob and his accomplishments, I was excited to speak with him. After a brief email exchange, Rob and I spoke via telephone and had a great discussion about geodomain strategy. One strategic initiative I learned about was using targeted keyword domain names to build a Lowell.com network, all of which would support the main Lowell.com site.

An example of this can be seen in Rob’s network of websites. In addition to Adirondacks.com, Rob and his team have built a huge network of supporting sites such as AdirondackHotels.com and AdirondackSkiing.com. This network of sites helps expand the reach of the main brand and can also help the search engine optimization of the main site, since each site has its own unique content. Needless to say, I purchased many Lowell-related keyword domain names, and am in the process of slowly building each. An example of a mini-site I just started can be found at LowellPharmacies.com. It’s going to take me a while to build each site, but Rome wasn’t built over night!

During my conversation with Rob, I mentioned that a well-known Lowell resident contacted me via the Lowell.com contact form asking me if I needed a sales representative on the ground in Lowell. While I declined this offer at first, after speaking with Rob, I will get back in touch with him later this week. Not only does he have many business contacts in the city of Lowell, he will also be able to give me invaluable information about the city. While I wanted to do all of the sales myself, it doesn’t necessarily make sense since I am in New York, and I don’t have a ton of local contacts yet (although I am a member of the Chamber of Commerce!)

As I learned in my 2 years as a Direct Marketing Manager at AIG, when you might not have the ability to do something as professionally as it needs to be done (or should spend the time focusing on other things), you should hire the best of breed to do it for you. In this case, it would make sense to work with someone who is known in the city and can close deals. I can worry about the development of the site (and my other business interests), and he can worry about generating revenue. Even though it will cost me a % of each sale, I would rather pay a percentage of a large number than no percentage of a smaller number. The sales rep will also be able to give me feedback about what improvements are needed on the site to make it more beneficial for the advertisers.

This post was going to be entirely about building the Lowell.com network of sites, and as I was writing it and thinking it out, the post began to change shape, and there is a double meaning to “building a network.” Having a support network is advantageous in both the literal and figurative senses. Just as the main website can benefit from well-built supporting websites, I have been building a network of friends and colleagues in all areas of development.

I have been lucky enough to receive great advice from people like Rob Grant, David and Michael Castello, Jessica Bookstaff, Brad Epstein, Richard Douglas, Dan Pulcrano, Owen Frager, Gordon Brott, and many others who have been down the path of development, marketing, hosting, and search engine optimization, and they know how difficult it is. There are literally thousands of ways to build a successful business on a website, and I have been lucky enough to receive advice from many people who have already been down the path I am traveling.

While Lowell.com is taking a while to build, I am not in any rush to generate revenue. I am fortunate to have done well enough in the domain industry over the past few years to slowly build Lowell.com and it’s supporting network without having to worry about the small revenue it is currently generating in its infancy. When I start selling the Lowell.com product to potential advertisers, I want to make sure everything works as I vision it to work. Lowell.com and it’s supporting network of websites are going to be as strong as possible.  Along the way to developing Lowell.com, I have been building an even stronger network of friends and colleagues, all of whom are supporting me.

I thought I would give an update on the progress of Lowell.com. While I launched the site publicly a couple of weeks ago, I have been working on many content updates, adjustments, and additions to optimize the site for search and to promote stickiness. In the past two weeks, the site’s ranking has grown quite a bit (probably because of the new content), but there is a long way to go until I am satisfied. I am not in a rush to generate advertising revenue, so I don’t plan on soliciting advertisers until I feel the site is ready. Although I have had inquiries, I am planning to wait until I believe the site is optimized and ready to roll.

While I haven’t been able to stick to this religiously, my goal has been to add a page of content just about every day to grow the site. It is much more manageable to build a new page a day rather than becoming overwhelmed by adding many pages at a time. Doing this also gives me time to think about different topics of interest in Lowell that might be searched to help drive traffic to the site. I used Aaron Wall’s Keyword Tool to do the keyword research, and I also used Google News results to help me find other topics of interest. Also, I used the tool to purchase a few domain names of keyword strings that were unregistered - such as FrancisCabotLowell.com, and I forwarded them to appropriate pages within the site (thanks to Rob Grant for that suggestion!)

One thing I am very much against are having user reviews on the site. Although it will presumable increase stickiness and site awareness, I don’t want to have to police user comments. If three people post a negative comment about Joe’s Steakhouse, I don’t want to be responsible for making sure the comments are legit and not Joe’s competitors. I don’t want to deal with the legal liability that a forum/review site could pose - at least not right now. Perhaps when the site has grown it will be an option, but I decided against it for now.

I recently added a news section which uses the Wordpress blogging platform. I’ve been told blogs are looked upon favorably by Google, so frequent news updates should help the site with ranking. Last week when I was in Lowell, my fiancee and I were enjoying a coffee at a sidewalk coffee shop and happened to have a nice conversation with the patron at the next table. It turns out he is the band director of the city high school, and the band had just returned home from a competition they won in Virginia. Of course, that was a great story that I blogged about - complete with two YouTube videos. While I won’t become a “source” for most news articles, I will write about the happenings in the city that would be of interest to residents and visitors.

I also added two neat features using feeds from other websites. GasBuddy.com has a feature that allows me to create a page with a feed from their site to offer local gas prices in the city. On the Lowell Gas Prices page, I have the ten least expensive gas stations in Lowell listed, and this is updated daily. Additionally, I used the three day weather forecast from iBegin.com and paired that with a chart of monthly record and average temperatures on the Lowell Weather page. While I have a small weather widget on the home page, I hope to drive some traffic from people looking for weather records or a longer weather forecast for the area.

I met with city officials in Lowell, and they didn’t seem keen on the calendar I envisioned. Since they have been building a main city calendar that will be utilized by non-profits and governmental agencies, they asked me to not list those types of activities on my calendar. Their calendar will have RSS capabilities, so I will link to those instead. Additionally, I will be listing various business events - such as happy hours and live bands at local night clubs. This will enable me to link to the Lowell ticket site as well and hopefully generate revenue that way.

Whenever I visit another website (large or small), I always look for ideas that can be adapted to Lowell.com and eventually Burbank.com and Salinas.com. The goal is to drive traffic to the site, and encourage people to return by giving them a reason to come back (gas prices for example).

I will get into a revenue generation discussion more in a week, but ideally the site will be optimized before I go out and solicit business. When I was in Lowell, there was strong interest from the few business owners I met, and I told them I would be in touch. I want to make sure the product I am offering meets my standards before trying to sell it. I want to give advertisers a reason to advertise on Lowell.com other than the fact that it’s Lowell.com (which isn’t a good reason). I want to be able to say, we are #1 for the term “lowell,” #2 for “lowell restaurants”….etc. We aren’t there yet, but that’s what we are working on at the moment.

Sorry for the light posting this past week. I have been in New Hampshire and Lowell, Massachusetts doing research for Lowell.com. Now that the base of the site has been built, optimizing it for search has become the main priority. This involves going through each page, changing meta tags and anchor text to make sure each page can be seen and read by Google. Not so much fun, but a necessary part of development. Hopefully the fruits of this labor will help with the ranking of Lowell.com.

Once the website has been optimized (although I think it will be an ongoing process), I am going to begin seeking advertisers. In my visit to the city of Lowell spanning a few days, I met some business leaders and city leaders, and I was warmly received. I hope they saw my passion for this site, and I have really taken a liking to Lowell. My goal is to make the site mutually beneficial for the city, its residents, its visitors, and the businesses who will advertise on the site.

For now, it’s back to the optimization process. I should be back to blogging next week.

I just had a great tour of the Whistler Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts led by the museum’s curator. As a history buff and art lover, the museum tour was great, and I saw some nice pieces of art, in addition to making a new friend and contact in the process. I am planning to do this type of thing quite a bit to meet people who live in Lowell and to learn about the city of Lowell so I can make the make Lowell.com a useful resource to residents and visitors.

In the process of the museum tour, I met the artist in residence, who is a very friendly lady and a talented painter. After I introduced myself and told her about my website, she let me know she would check it out when she had a chance. She also told me she planned to check out another city .com website for an upcoming visit to her daughter who lives in the midwest. Since she had never been to this city, she wanted to learn about the history and about some of the art related places in the area.

Incidentally, the city where her daughter lives is Nashville, Tennessee, and of course she plans to visit Nashville.com, owned by the Castello Brothers.  What a small world!

There is still some work to be done, but I am happy to announce that I have launched Lowell.com! While my developer and I are still working out some of the kinks, we are at a point where we are able to release the first version of the Lowell.com website. I know it’s not perfect and many tweaks will need to be made in the coming days, but this is all a learning process for me, and I hope the launch of the site encourages others to develop some of their domain names.

There are still some grammatical, SEO, linking and other various issues, but I am comfortable enough with the presentation to launch it. If you notice anything funky - be it grammar, punctuation, spelling, links…etc, please be kind and drop me a note. This is my first “real” website aside from my blog and corporate site, so the learning curve is still pretty steep.

I would like to thank everyone who helped me by giving fantastic advice and recommendations. I really appreciate it. And to those people whose emails I haven’t responded to in the last couple of weeks, I apologize. Feel free to send them again and I will try to respond more quickly.

On the Lowell.com Blog, I discuss how I am using affiliate websites to generate passive incremental revenue for Lowell.com. I am using affiliates for hotels, tickets, and jobs, although there were other verticals I chose not to use for various reasons. With the three affiliate companies, I am able to create customizable pages within my site, and then the traffic is forwarded to the affiliate sites to close the sale. I can basically set the sites up and almost forget about them (except for minor updates).

By using affiliates, I am able to create brand stickiness at Lowell.com, as visitors will presumably find what they are looking for, and they will return to find it again. The transition to the affiliate site for the purchase is fairly seamless, and since the site has the look and feel of Lowell.com, it will make visitors more confident tha they aren’t being taken to a shady website.

One of the most important things to remember is to choose trustworthy partners. By working with well known and respected brands, I am confident they will give visitors a good experience, helping to promote the Lowell.com brand. The affiliates need to have great customer services, be reliable and give exactly what they promise their customers.

On the Lowell.com blog, I discuss which affiliate companies I chose and why. Hope this helps you in your development projects.

Finding advertisers will probably be the most difficult task for me once Lowell.com is softly launched sometime next week. It is difficult to convince someone to spend money advertising with an unproven business, especially considering the current economic situation. As bad as it is around the country, Lowell, Massachusetts has a fairly high unemployment rate and business is suffering in the city. However, because of rejuvenation efforts taken on by the city, there are some positive signs, and I want to do what I can to improve the economy and drive tourism (as much as a website can).

Because I changed my revenue generation strategy for Lowell.com from the directory model to a guide model, there is going to be a greater emphasis on acquiring individual business clients to advertise. On the Lowell.com blog, I discuss my strategy for acquiring advertisers. I am planning to get in touch with businesses in several less invasive ways. Based on my experience working in my father’s retail store, I am going to avoid the most common (and easiest) way to communicate with a business.

If you have time today, check out the Lowell.com blog for more information about my strategy to acquire customers.

The Lowell.com site is currently going through a thorough search engine optimization analysis. I wanted to catch all the low hanging fruit before I officially launch the site, and everything hould still be on target for a launch in a couple of weeks. I blogged about the SEO analysis on the Lowell.com blog, although I didn’t really get into too many details on the topic.  I am far from an expert, and it would only be humorous for me to write or preach like I was one.

I do think that search engine optimization is almost as important as the unique content I had written. I used the example of my website being like a home in the forest that needs a road and electricity. It could be the most beautiful home in the world, but if you can’t get to it, the home won’t be enjoyed by others. Search engines need a way to find Lowell.com (and other websites), and optimizing it for the search engines is the best way to get noticed.

If you have some time and interest in developing, feel free to check out the Lowell.com development blog for more details. I also added a few resources I used in addition to my friend.

I ran into a technical problem with the Lowell.com website hat has caused a minor setback and will hopefully cause just a short delay. Throughout the development and review process, I have always viewed the site on my Macbook using Firefox, Safari, and the most updated Internet Explorer browser. The few people that have also reviewed the site have used similar browsers and computers as well. Unfortunately, after asking a friend to review the site, we determined it not only looked distorted using Internet Explorer 6, but it was unusable. Additionally, the site looked distorted at 800 pixels.

My developer is working on a fix for this as we speak, but it is causing a delay at the moment. While this is something that I will catch well in advance the next time, it wasn’t something I spent much time considering. We all make assumption when doing things, but you know what they say about people who assume things!

You can read more about this minor setback as well as the progress of the Lowell.com website on the Lowell.com blog. I am still hoping to launch it in a couple of weeks. Please keep in mind that the site is being built offline, so the current Lowell.com website looks nothing like how the new website will look.

I apologize for not updating the Lowell.com development blog in a while. For the last few weeks, I have been busily trying to finish, revise and edit the Lowell.com website, and I think we are getting very close to launch now. Basically all of the pages are done and set, but it’s just a matter of going through to make sure there aren’t typos, ensuring that all of the links work and take people to the proper places, and just cleaning everything up. There will be many tweaks made after launch, but I want a presentable website launched before I begin soliciting advertisers.

Since the last update, I made a major change in the execution strategy of Lowell.com. Previously, I intended to use phpMyDirectory to allow me to include a full directory site that would be easy for businesses to update and enhance their listings. After spending quite a bit of time thinking about this - and even starting the work on this, I decided to change course and not use a full directory. There were several reasons for this decision, and I expounded on them on the Lowell.com blog.

I plan to write a couple more updates in the next few days, and hopefully the Lowell.com beta site will be launched by the end of March or first week in April! We are only a couple of weeks behind, but I think that’s pretty good!