Geopublishers Stop Squatting, Start Building

It’s harder to typecast a geopublisher than you might think, even if you want to.

Among the early wave of dot-com, domain name prospectors, this was a special breed, laying claim to city names across the globe. Some bought in during the early 90s on a lark and almost literally a dime. Others came later, shelling out into the six figures and higher, betting that the choicest real estate -- even virtual -- will always appreciate.

And it did. Some got very, very rich just by squatting and waiting. Some sold at hundred and thousandfold profits. Others leased out their sites at steeply lucrative rates. After all, how can you undervalue such search engine catnip as Nashville.com or PalmSprings.com?

So when a small group of geopublishers met in Chicago last Saturday for the first-ever “expo” of their newly-formed trade group, one could be forgiven for expecting more than a few armchair millionaires having come to sniff the air and maybe do a little horse trading. Instead, the scene was more like a bunch of contractors meeting up in the aisles at a home improvement store, comparing lumber prices and the value of certain power tools.

The geopublishers are building on their empty Web lots, and some are looking for tools, others for blueprints.

Two of their heroes are Bill Hammack and Don Jones, respectively the chairman and CEO of NewOrleans.com. Hammack and Jones bought into the site at the steeper end of the price spectrum in 2008 (having signed a non-disclosure agreement, Hammack would only say that the figure was somewhere in the top five ever paid for a geosite), but they hit the ground running. First, they geared the site to a mix of tourists and locals, drawing revenue largely from display ads, directories and advertorial content.

They sponsored the local NBA team. They hawked the site at area festivals and events. But 2008’s recession dealt them a heavy blow. “We were successful in terms of bringing in market share,” Hammack said, “but we couldn’t monetize it.”

So NewOrleans.com rebooted. This April, it switched to a transactional model where 95% of its revenue started coming through tourism-related services, largely the city’s bread and butter (they still do around 5% in display ads, Hammack said). Pointing to the site’s home page, Jones told attendees, “Everything on that page is something we can sell.”

That means hotel rooms, restaurant gift certificates, airline tickets, ground transportation, swamp tours and tickets to gigs at local clubs. “Our ultimate goal is to become the box office for New Orleans,” Hammack said, noting that his revenue has significantly increased since the site refocused as a one-stop travel agency for New Orleans.

But while their fellow geopublishers glowed with admiration for the business model, Hammack cautioned that its scalability was limited. “The transactional model won’t work in every market,” he said, adding that New Orleans was one of only four or five markets that had a critical mass of tourism to support such a model.

And therein lies the geopublisher’s lament: “Their easy way of making a living has eroded,” Hammack said, “so as a result these guys are looking for models that make sense.”

Sara Mannix, president of Mannix Marketing in Glens Falls, N.Y. and the owner of Saratoga.com, Albany.com, Adirondack.net and other upstate N.Y. sites, said she was not above taking pages out of her local competition’s book. “We are totally copying what the newspapers are doing,” she told attendees. “There’s not an original thought here.”

But there is plenty of hustle. Mannix, who exudes an almost breathless energy, was the expo’s workingman’s geopublisher, having bought in to her first site, LakeGeorge.com, 10 years ago and snapped up many of the adjoining cities since (Mannix said she paid between $35,000-$50,000 for many of her domain names).

Mannix shared her own DIY approach to maximize the value of her Web real estate, ticking off a must-do list to generate interest in the sites and then keep visitors returning: Contests, social media toolbars on every page, being the title or presenting sponsor of local events, sponsoring local happy hours or MeetUps and giving out local “Best Of” awards were all part of her nuts and bolts tact.

“You have to really be in your market,” she said, noting that all of the glad-handing, car magnets and outreach has paid off: “Most of our sites have increased in traffic 50-100% in the last two years,” she said, adding that Saratoga.com, for instance, is averaging 450,000-500,000 unique visitors a month and is pulling 60% local users in the seasonal tourist mecca.

To keep them there, she updates regularly with calendar-heavy content along with certain perennial features -- a fall foliage story, for instance -- that can be dusted off each year and brightened with a little fresh color, so to speak.