Re: Any more feedback on CityAmerica.com?

> So far, I've received very positive feedback from other CityAmerica site
> managers. I've also emailed the company to find out how much control I
> would have over the templates. If I can modify the CSS, I can put a
> polished professional look on the site so it won't look like the hundreds
> of others out there already.

> Dave

Dave - I hope that this can work for you. However, I would be REALLY concerned about the fact that you have no control over the domain name. IMHO, that one negative outweighs all the positives. Not that I think it's any kind of scam, but I just wouldn't like the idea of someone else having control of that.

MaaMaw wrote:

> if you think this would sell well in your local area, why you don't just
> set off on your own and do the same thing?

As I read this thread, I was thinking the same thing :-)

I see that this idea has been discussed, and I think it's an idea worth considering. As I stated above the fact that CityAmerica keeps control of the domain name is just a real turn-off for me.

This is getting a bit off track of the concept that CityAmerica.com promotes, but since we're talking about local websites I thought I'd mention this. I think it's an idea that could be used in a lot of areas if you're thinking about building a website dealing with local businesses.

Years ago, I purchased a domain name with the idea of doing something similar for my childhood home town, which is a tourist area. I got the idea from a successful online marketer - he even did some research and came up with a good keyword rich web address for me. Unfortunately I never managed to get focused enough to get it done. The problem is that I'm several hours away from there, but I traveled down there quite a bit to help take care of my father. At any rate, this fellow suggested that I simply fill the site up with pages and pages and PAGES of relevant, keyword rich content, work at getting it high up in google with those search terms, and then approach local businesses with my stats and sell advertising based on that. It was - and is - still a good idea, I think. And that was long before Google AdSense came into the picture. With good content, I could add those for additional income.

I still have the domain name, and I still plan to do it. If I start now, hopefully by the time I get it up in the search engines it will be just in time for some of the businesses to be BACK in business. The website address is

http://www.biloxi-mississippi-c@sin0s.com (pardon the goofy look of the url, but I tried posting this message before and I think that word is what kept it from going through)

Right now only three are operating, but hopefully by the end of the summer most of them will be back in business (barring any more storms). And I know a lot of the local businesses are trying to get back on track. My plan was to include a lot of the history of the area on the site as well as information about c@sin0s and point people to a lot of the tourist activities that are available to people besides the "C's", since many people who visit bring their families since Biloxi does (or should I say DID) have a lot of family-friendly destinations as well. Most unfortunately, many of those have been destroyed - but they will come back.

Cathy