A disruptive Web presence in four steps

Here’s a brief business plan I’ve been kicking around for a few days. Comments?

1. Pick that cool neighborhood with all the those bars and coffee shops — the one that you and your friends love to hang out in. This is the area of town where you see new stores opening and old shops closing and wonder what the story is. Find four other people¹ who will commit to report on this part of town with you and set up a site. A pre-made Wordpress template like Mimbo, with a (relatively) low start-up overhead, might be a good place to begin. It might be a good idea for at least one person on the team to have photography and/or design experience.

2. Create content like crazy. Shorter entries are better; just link them to longer, developing stories (like the closing of a neighborhood favorite or the opening of a new building). Put up fliers all over the neighborhood you’re targeting. Talk to local bar and business owners and gain their trust — they’re your ticket to content. Once you’ve built a small base of Google-able content, create a honeypot: the best event calendar out there. Make sure you’re on the E-mail lists for those bar and business owners, and make your calendar easier to use than the local paper’s.

3. Open the platform. Comments should be enabled by day one, but as soon as you see some particularly witty or snarky commenters, promote them to the front page. The team of five should be doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to reporting; deputized commenters provide color commentary, as it were. This is a prize for the snarkiest commmenters with the most personality.² Also, create a photo gallery so that users can post photos of musical acts and special events. Your team is taking picture, right?

4. Profit! Those same bar and business owners you hooked up with in step two? Sell them ads. Conflict of interest, schmonflict of interest: the goal here is to prove that you’re providing eyeballs for them, and get them to pay for the privilege of advertising to your users. These ads don’t have to be flashy to get attention. Do things like front-page branding takeovers, games, polls, etc.³ If you have a pool of regular users — which you should, if the neighborhood is hot enough and your content is good enough — you’ll be able to command those ad dollars.

Newspapers have been trying to create sites like this for a couple of years now. But with the Web’s low barrier of entry, why can’t a group of amateurs (or semi-pros) do it instead?