Went into mainstream... and don't know shit about what I'm doing.
 

A little over a year ago I was moving from my home to a new place across town. I'd been out of running adult sites for about two years, and I couldn't take not working on something, but my experience adult left me.... A tiny bit broker than I had hoped to be when the last site was sold. TGPs went from thousands of hits daily to a few hundred, I'd been working with a girl to build her a solo site, but I was thinking with my wallet and not my brain.... I ended up paying her :helpme thousands for tons of content and the unrestricted rights of ownership so that I could make all the money.... And the TGPs were helping make that happen.

But in the end, I knew I had fucked myself. Tubes came and fucked up a lot of peoples days... lol. Shitty of me, I saw the writing on the wall at least as far as my business was concerned. Pay her for videos, one paying customer later they're all on a tube. I said to hell with it, found a brave young webmaster and was able to sell him all the content for about a thousand less than I paid.

So I didn't totally fuck myself. I did kinda fuck him though... Another story for another day.

Anyway, during the move I discovered that my new neighbors were total fucking assholes. Huge, bloody, unclean assholes. Because of that I came up with a pretty nifty idea to build a site that allows users to log in and build a database of all the places they've lived, the neighbors, etc... Because if that site had existed before I moved... I wouldn't have moved right next to asshole central. :Oh crap

So I built the site. It took too damn long to do..... And I'm not fully happy with the search functions but everything else seems fine and the site operates at about 90% of what I had hoped it would. All in all, not too bad.

But I'm at a new crossroad now. Just last night I finished my work on the site and it's been live for a few hours.

I'm embarrassed to say this... I don't know what to do next. I know SEO is a must but I've been out of the game long enough that I know what I knew about SEO is likely stone age garbage now.

I've no clue how to advertise the site, or where. No ideas in bringing in users... I didn't think of any of this, at all.

I have a mind for porn, and people seek out porn. If you fail at at least bringing a steady stream of possible converting traffic to your porn site, you're really blowing it somewhere.

But mainstream is not porn, and I've got no clue what the hell to do now to bring in users.

So far... I've placed ads on CL in the housing section.

I plan to add FB 'like' or 'share' junk sometime soon....

I'm out of my element....

Any ideas for good mainstream advertising?

Ok so your website is in the property niche.

so i take it your ad revenue will be coming from estate agents mostly (they are called something different in the states i think)

Well you couldnt really be competing in a tougher sector estate agents spend thousands of pounds paying the seo guys to rank them mostly in house aswell.

depends how black hat minded you are but if it were I, I would probably market it with a couple of shills get a few people to sign up and then to slag off their neighbour get the neighbour to complain to the local papers about upset they are to be labeled slobs etc etc

start in one area and work your way out.

I can see this being a money pit myself but if it does go viral it could be profitable

I think own a black hat... That's about as far as we'll get there. :1orglaugh Fuck...

I'm looking at it as something that is either going to spectacularly fail, or build itself into a monster. I like the idea that it can be used for good, and bad... I think that both of those qualities will appeal to users. Especially the angry ones who just want to muckrake and write nasty things about the people who live around them or their landlord...

Very honestly, I think it's one of the better ideas I've had pertaining to an online business. But you are correct. There are some companies out there who spend thousands monthly to keep themselves above the fray.

When it comes to monetizing the site, IF the site can become a well known internet entity, paid ads from those very companies would be the way to go... But that's down the road.

None of that will happen if I can't figure out how to properly optimize the site, advertise it, get users to come to it, and actually use it.

I think it's a great idea and worth putting time into. Not so sure about putting money into it though. We'll see how it works out I guess.

I don't really see it as a real estate site, more of a review/opinion site like Yelp or Angie's List. I don't think you will have much luck advertising in real estate, this is something that kind of needs to catch on to really grow. Your target user is likely to be 18-25, so I would look at larger college markets to start. I would actually pick a state like Texas (California is too saturated with new tech crap to make a blip), identify a few sub-markets like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, then advertise where college kids in those places are most likely to see it. Once you have built up a decent database of listings, you could publish locale-specific compilations and have universities hand them out to incoming students with their orientation packets - I actually did that with a different business to get it rolling and it worked quite well.

You will likely encounter the usual chicken and egg scenario that any user-generated content business hits and that is not enough content to bring the users and not enough users to bring the content. The good news is that once you build up a critical mass, the problem will solve itself. The bad news is that you have to figure out how to attract that critical mass.

One last thought - you will probably end up having to police your listings carefully lest you find yourself a defendant in slander or libel lawsuits.

Loot at General Forums that are get a lot of traffic. Post your site after telling you story. As this site is not really a niche site but a review site.

You might be able to find some ideas on Curbed.

http://curbed.com/

try some email harvesting programs - you can probably get a few bucks per lead.

google mundo media - might work...or something similar.