Starting a business in 2023: 5 Reasons Your ‘Small Town’ Niche Matters

Welcome to the City Living Network, we help you launch and manage your own city-specific publication in just 30 days. From branding to web design, to social media and podcasting, starting a City Living Network publication has never been easier. 2023 is the year that you finally add Editor-In-Chief for your resume. Learn more about the City Living Network and schedule a call with our founder Lindsay here. She’ll put together a media kit displaying what your city-specific publication could look like and a timeline to launch.  

We throw around the words ‘city-specific’ and ‘niche’ quite a lot here at the City Living Network and there’s a good reason for that. We’re passionate about city-specific publications because we’ve seen firsthand the benefits of niching down for your hometown. In fact, we truly believe that niching down like this is going to be the single most important key to the success of starting your own business in 2023. 

So forget everything you’ve read about whether to niche or not to niche up until this point. This is why your niche truly matters. 

5 Reasons Why Your ‘Small Town’ Niche Matters

What is a ‘niche’?

First things first… what is a niche? If you specifically look up the definition of a niche, you’ll get something like this: denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population. 

But in blogging terms, a niche is what we use to identify the topic(s) that your business tackles primarily with its content. For example, if you’re a travel blogger, your niche could be travel, or luxury travel, or budget travel, etc. However, there’s a problem with choosing a niche as BIG as travel. If you choose a niche that’s too popular and too big, you’re going to struggle to stand out in the crowd, especially compared to businesses that have been around longer than you. This leads up to reason number one a ‘small town’ niche helps you grow. 

A small-town niche helps you stand out 

There are tons of California blogs out there, and even tons of generic travel blogs talking about California. But as you narrow it down further to specific regions or small towns in California, you start to see the competition thinning out. 

Niching down to your small town allows you to separate yourself from the generic travel and California blogs out there. People are more likely to remember you for your small-town v.s. getting lost in the lake of unoriginality. 

Laguna Beach Living is the perfect example of that, and there’s even content on LBL about other towns and places in California! But as the central theme of the publication is Laguna Beach, the content always circles back to that and it’s become a well-known publication in the area. 

A small-town niche helps you build loyal traffic

If you’re starting your city-specific publication for more than just ‘fun’, it’s important that you bring in the right kind of traffic. You want to find your audience, and the right niche will attract that specific audience for you. With more traffic and more loyal traffic, you’ll be able to work with more brands, take more press trips and earn more money with your publication. 

When you’re trying to decide where in California you want to visit, are you going to visit a generic travel blog with one line about each and every beach town in California? Or would you rather visit a site that has hundreds of articles highlighting a specific town, what to do there, and easy beaches and cities to visit if that’s your base? 

You would visit the latter, 100 times over! Why? Because it’s a lot more specific to the trip you're trying to plan, it’ll feel like they were writing it for you. 

This is what creates loyal website traffic. 

A small-town niche helps you make more money

We touched on this already, but the right kind of traffic and having steady traffic brings your publication cash. You can easily work with local businesses, run affiliate programs and sell ad space to companies that serve your small-town niche. 

Your small town likely has tons of businesses that need help marketing in the new world of social media and TiKTok stars. They want foot traffic to their store or website, and your website is getting that foot traffic. When you show a business that your publication is getting thousands of visitors a month, from people wanting to visit, shop and explore your hometown, they can pay to advertise to them through your publication. 

And luckily, at the City Living Network, we can help you do that without looking ‘salesy’ or working with an ad network that throws ads all over your blog. 

Having a small town niche helps give you the authority to work with more local businesses and make more money. Learn more about monetizing your city-specific publication here – we’ve covered the 4 best ways to make money with your new blog! 

A small-town niche helps you become the expert

Your city-specific publication gives you authority and helps make you an expert. You already know your town like the back of your hand, but the more you talk about it and share it, the more knowledgeable you’ll become. 

Your city-specific publication establishes your credentials for you. And not only does it help make you an authority figure in your town, but it also further establishes you as Editor-In-Chief – that’s important here. Because your hometown is the spotlight - it means you don’t have to become the face of the brand. You don’t have to become an influencer or model or even writer. You’re editor-in-chief which provides you with a lot more authority. 

A small-town niche challenges you to stay creative

Staying within your niche challenges you to continually develop new content, explore new hotspots, and continue having conversations with businesses in your hometown. It pushes you to regularly connect with your audience to find out what questions they have and provide them with creative solutions. 

You will soon become a trailblazer in your town. Answering questions that no one has answered before, working with brands and businesses you never imagined, getting invited to events and on press trips, and having, even more, to share with your audience. 

And like I said at the beginning of this post, it’s never been easier. To get started running your own city-specific publication in 2023, you just need to schedule a free call with our founder Lindsay today. Learn more here.