While the web was once a way for advertisers to promote national brands and sell regardless of geography, the move to localization has begun. In the past, local advertisers, by virtue of their market size, tended to focus primarily on local yellow pages and local or regional newspapers. Now, specialty retailers, department stores, doctors and dentists, realtors, insurance agencies and financial services providers, such as banks and mortgage companies have significantly increased their spending on the web.

With this comes opportunities for sites that focus on particular geographic areas. A site that provides information on a region (there aren’t usually enough sites for a single town) can begin to monetize their process of local information provision. Local civic and religious organization news, sports schedules, weather, municipal matters, such as road closings and water main flushing, tide charts can be supported by local advertisers, much in the same way that local independent weeklies were supported by advertising in the past, before many were folded into the larger local and regional dailies.

With about 20% of the population moving each year, the demand for content rich local and regional sites, with links or advertising of local businesses should soar. But the time is now, because a local or small regional area can only support one such content site, and the content site, at this point, can only make money as an affiliate in an environment with little competition.

Local businesses will need education about advertising and there may need to be a shift in the party providing affiliate business services. It is likely that the site may need to provide the affiliate linking capabilities, management and tracking, completely transparent to the merchant vendor.

Karen Kari's articles and more information on the affiliate business can be found at:
http://www.affiliatebandit.com
http://www.advertisingcellar.com
http://www.billionfreeads.com

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