Yahoo! Local Beta Announced in Limited Cities

Yahoo! Local a new opportunity for freelance writers.

Writers, are you ready to go hyper-local?

Yahoo! Local (beta) was officially announced Wednesday, on the Y! Yodel Anecdotal blog. The launch covers more than 30 locations, with more said to be added soon. All of which will need writers to provide local content.

This new site launch is a freelance writing opportunity waiting to be seized. It is also a chance for writers to carve out a niche in their own backyards. So how do we, as writers, put ourselves in a better position to take advantage of this new market?

Do your research/study the market. Peruse current content on Y! Local and take notes on

Are Yahoo! & AOL Tapping into Local Content Goldmines?

Small Town Saturday Night, by Malcolm MacGregor.

...and are some towns just too small to matter?

Local content. This buzz phrase has been building to a roar for the past year, or more. Savvy writers, such as Pam Gaulin, have been preaching it to fellow online writers for longer. 

Search engines turned content providers AOL and Yahoo! are banking on converting loyal readers into profits, with Yahoo! Local (beta) and Patch. But will these new hyper-local sites, both in infancy stages, be focusing on areas where reporting is needed most--small town America? Would it be worth it?

Both sites do cover cities with populations under 20,000. For example, both are testing the waters in Birmingham, Michigan, population 19,291. But what about towns with under 5,000 people? That will be the interesting part of the hyper-local experiments--if coverage is given to these rural areas.

Hot 100 for November aka an Excuse to Post

 

My page views for November 2010 on the Yahoo! Contributor  Network (Y!CN), formerly Associated Content, merited a nifty 'Hot 100' badge. This is only the second time I've won this badge--the first being in September 2010--which is given to the top 100 contributors with the most traffic.

It's cool. It means my Y!CN bonus is larger than normal, but it is not the reason I'm posting. The badge is an excuse to post. Not that I've had a lack of topics to discuss. I seem to have contracted blog paralysis--where the ideas flow, but the fingers refuse to type.

This is me getting over it. Now if I could only kick this cold...