Generating traffic to an automotive news website

Frimley111R · Oct 22, 2020

Hi All,

I thought I’d pick your collective marketing brains on this issue as I’m in the first stages of building a curated automotive news aggregator website. It is aiming to be the ‘go to’ place for car enthusiasts to go for news on the cars that interest them.

However, generating traffic/getting people to go to the site is the real challenge.

So, firstly, where are these people? They are on the other main automotive media sites, Facebook groups, owners club sites, YouTube channels, etc.

Ok, so how do I get them to come to mine? I can write some articles etc. but me sharing them on these other sites is frowned upon and I’m likely to be kicked off them. That’s understandable given that I am essentially trying to get their users to use my site (they can use both of course).

Perhaps Facebook adverts? I can target by interest in cars but this could be slow and expensive, I think?

What else? Any good ideas?

Thanks

Accounting Controls · Oct 22, 2020

Hi
I would say your starting point would be to write interesting articles on your own site, blogs and content on your site. This in turn, it will take time will generate traffic to your site through good SEO work and google will gradually push through customers to your site. Google ads pay per click will help push traffic to your site but you have to build content on your own site. It's long, hard work but eventually if you persevere you will get the traffic. Look at Martin Lewis Moneysavingexpert - it took him years but eventually he became the go to site for all those hints and tips - he set it up originally in 2003.
Jane

Darren_Ssc · Oct 22, 2020

As above, find your niche and stick with it. If you are prepared to knuckle down you may start to get somewhere after 5 years.

If this isn't what you wanted to hear then tough. There is a reason why most people don't own a successful online publishing business.

fisicx · Oct 22, 2020

Frimley111R said:
So, firstly, where are these people? They are on the other main automotive media sites, Facebook groups, owners club sites, YouTube channels, etc.

Ok, so how do I get them to come to mine?

With great difficulty.

Why would I want to come to your site when I can already go to a speciaist site?

mattk · Oct 22, 2020

Is there demand for another automotive news sites? I'd have thought Top Gear, Auto Express, Autocar etc. have got that stitched up.

I am amazed at the viewing figures YouTube car channels get though. Even the most mundane dreary old men (Harry's Garage) gets hundreds of thousands of views, all the way up to the channels getting millions.

If I was going to launch something in this space, that's where I'd be looking.

Darren_Ssc · Oct 23, 2020

mattk said:
Is there demand for another automotive news sites? I'd have thought Top Gear, Auto Express, Autocar etc. have got that stitched up.

I am amazed at the viewing figures YouTube car channels get though. Even the most mundane dreary old men (Harry's Garage) gets hundreds of thousands of views, all the way up to the channels getting millions.

If I was going to launch something in this space, that's where I'd be looking.

I think there is enough of a market for something niche and authentic. I am no expert on motor publishing but a lot of it appears to be glorified advertising with the same old manufacturer's being plugged over and over as if they are the best thing since sliced bread despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

WebshopMechanic · Oct 23, 2020

AS @Darren_Ssc said, you must find a niche. You just be a website for 'car enthusiasts' because you will never be able to compete with other sites that have teams of freelance journalists.

Think about your passion and why you want to do this. What type of cars are you most interest in? Do some market research into different niches to understand the volume of monthly searches there are for particular subjects. (you could use a 7-day trial of SEMRush.)

You can also use Google Trends to find what areas are growing in interest and use Google Instant Search to find ideas for questions people are searching for.

You also need to think about the future of where the car industry is going. What are the trends? What is technology doing to the car industry? How is driving evolving?

For example, think about:

Electric cars (the future)
Self-drive cars (the future)
Muscle cars
Family cars (whilst it doesn't sound exciting, a blog for family cars would probably be quite cool and helpful)
Crossovers
First time buyer cars
Camper Vans / Best cars for long-distance travelling
Best Japanese cars
Vans for the trade / Commercial vehicles
4x4s / Off-road
Classic cars
Convertibles

Being a niche site also allows you to monetise it easier because you can arrange partnerships with brands once you can prove you are useful to them. Not only car companies either but leasing companies, valet companies, car mats, car wax companies, dash cams, etc.

You also need to think about your angle. Do you want to be just a blog? Or will the personality be you and your expert reviews? In many cases, people like to put a face to things because they built up a rapport and liking for that person. A bit like Clarkson and TopGear.

Think niche and you will build a more engaged and loyal audience. They are easier to monetise.

Hope that helps.

Matt

Frimley111R · Oct 23, 2020

Thanks Matt and others. I know the market very well and I am not about to start another generic news website. As you rightly point out, there are much larger and established players doing a decent job there. But as with any sector this size there are opportunities to find niches and do things differently, which I am confident I have.

But really, that's the easy bit.

Just like the next 'Super social media App', building it isn't the challenge, getting people to us it is. I ma sure Instagram and TikTok had many competitors doing the same or better but those managed to scale more quickly (although Instagram is obviously owned/linked to Facebook).

fisicx · Oct 23, 2020

What are you offering that isn’t already available?

My wife has a mini and get all her news via Facebook. I’ve got a classic car and get everything in need from the club website, forum and Practical Classics.

If I visited your website what’s going to make me go wow!

Mark T Jones · Oct 23, 2020

So, you

Frimley111R said:
Thanks Matt and others. I know the market very well and I am not about to start another generic news website. As you rightly point out, there are much larger and established players doing a decent job there. But as with any sector this size there are opportunities to find niches and do things differently, which I am confident I have.

But really, that's the easy bit.

Just like the next 'Super social media App', building it isn't the challenge, getting people to us it is. I ma sure Instagram and TikTok had many competitors doing the same or better but those managed to scale more quickly (although Instagram is obviously owned/linked to Facebook).

So, you have definied youre niche, which is a great start.

Where do the consumers in that niche currently go? How do they consume information? What are they missing? What are you offering that is better?

If your niche is grey-haired Riley owners, they will have very different profiles from drifting fans..

WebshopMechanic · Oct 23, 2020

@Frimley111R

If you want to get traffic to the site then you need to be smart because you don't want to waste too much time or money.

Once you have a decent level of content uploaded, I would try to gain feedback as soon as possible to see if you're on the right lines (fail fast, tweak then go again). The best way to do this is to run some paid campaigns on Facebook or Google. Content-focused ads are usually very cheap on a cost-per-click basis.

You don't need to spend a lot but you want to be measuring engagement levels and try to get people to sign up to a mailing list. That way, you can continue to build the relationship with them and get them back to the site without paying for them.

Building an email list is key!

If you're going to use Instagram and Tiktok (which could quite possibly work) then you're talking to a younger audience. That means your site needs to have content that appeals to them.

Another good way to generate traffic is through Facebook Groups. People who have a particular interest are quite active in some of these groups so you can, either set up your own or infiltrate others. But the key here is to 'add value' and not sell or promote. People can see that a mile away.

You need a strategy where you are just 'overly helpful' and people learn to see you as somebody they should take note of. They will then check out your site or social pages.

Matt

Darren_Ssc · Oct 23, 2020

Mark T Jones said:
Where do the consumers in that niche currently go? How do they consume information? What are they missing? What are you offering that is better?

Honest John is a popular column in the Telegraph but, since they have moved behind a paywall, many readers aren't getting access to it and won't pony up for a subscription for one column.

I know he has his own site but it's a bit of a mess. The Telegraph column is neat and concise with loads of user generated content as well.

If I were to start a niche motoring themed site I'd be using this for inspiration.

Financial-Modeller · Oct 23, 2020

Frimley111R said:
Hi All,

I thought I’d pick your collective marketing brains on this issue as I’m in the first stages of building a curated automotive news aggregator website. It is aiming to be the ‘go to’ place for car enthusiasts to go for news on the cars that interest them.

However, generating traffic/getting people to go to the site is the real challenge.

So, firstly, where are these people? They are on the other main automotive media sites, Facebook groups, owners club sites, YouTube channels, etc.

Ok, so how do I get them to come to mine?...

...What else? Any good ideas?

Thanks

Perhaps ask the same question on PH!

You have some excellent advice already here, and I guess that the difficulty is finding a balance between identifying a sufficiently engaged niche that you can monetise appropriately to meet your financial objectives, and widening far enough that you become another generic aggregator with no appeal to those with expertise to share.

One approach might be to try to operate in more than one niche simultaneously. Another might be to take your niche to a wider market.

Frimley111R · Oct 23, 2020

Thanks all. I know the market very well, the groups, where they are, who reads what and how to do something differently/better than them. Like many sectors, companies in them follow the same format they always have without standing back and seeing/understanding what is needed now, today.

In addition to the successful publishers I know the ones that have failed, often set up by journos from the sector trying to do something new but really just doing the same as they did before but without a well-known brand name.

Frimley111R · Oct 23, 2020

Financial-Modeller said:
Perhaps ask the same question on PH!

You have some excellent advice already here, and I guess that the difficulty is finding a balance between identifying a sufficiently engaged niche that you can monetise appropriately to meet your financial objectives, and widening far enough that you become another generic aggregator with no appeal to those with expertise to share.

One approach might be to try to operate in more than one niche simultaneously. Another might be to take your niche to a wider market.

PH? never heard of it

WebshopMechanic · Oct 23, 2020

Piston Heads?

Paul Carmen · Oct 23, 2020

It sounds like you really know your niche, and more importantly where the potential customers are (as it differs widely depending on demographic; e.g. age, niche etc.), which is a great start.

However, the next step is to try and asses the ROI and viability of the site by creating a marketing/business plan, to see if this is something that can be monetised and return a profit.

You should be able to model the costs and approximate budget to start up and get your niche customers visiting, then work out what that brings in revenue; e.g. a basic example might look like this:

Costs

Research time/costs (tools; e.g. SEMrush, Ahrefs, your time etc)
Launch and initial content (your time, journalists, copywriters, photography etc to produce onsite/offsite copy etc.)
Website build (development/build costs, hosting costs, platform costs etc.)
Initial marketing; e.g.
- Google PPC (are you running ads, if so, you can carry out keyword research & model approximate spend, CTR & traffic)
- SEO basic (if you want to rank you'll need to produce a good site technically & great content, but you'll need to setup GMB, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, citations etc),
- Advanced SEO (you'll probably need to seed, and spend money on, offsite content placement too, to rank organically for you niche and relevant searches)
- Social Marketing (you can setup trial campaigns by demographic on most sites, for age etc and get an idea of cost per click/impression here)
Ongoing content (your time, journalists, copywriters to produce onsite/offsite copy etc.)
Ongoing website & marketing work (adding new content, improving marketing and conversion rate optimisation)

Revenue

Logged in paid content (if there's a paywall)
Advertising revenue (most sites like this generate income from banner ads etc)
Sponsorship (supplier content, homepage takeovers etc)
Sales (do you sell any items; e.g. cars, merchandise etc.)
Events (do you carry out meets, track days etc)

This is the sort of work that people don't often bother with initially, but when they start looking at the complexity and the costs, many of these projects aren't viable without substantial initial investment... often they find this out well into the project!

fisicx · Oct 23, 2020

All good advice, but we come back to the same question again: what are you offering that isn’t already available on the vast numbers of existing motoring/auto sites? What is the usp that will turn their heads? A news aggregation isn’t enough of an incentive.

Lucky8 · Oct 23, 2020

I know you know your niche, and you probably don't want to give it away here, but I have a slightly different question.

If you are going to add lots of great content yourself, and not just aggregate, what is the purpose of aggregation at all? Couldn't you just re-write the lot or just write your own content entirely?

If you aggregate mostly, then the 'but why you?' because the lead question. So on that, you sa you know the "why you?" - without giving your idea away, is the answer to this:

a) your own content is wow/unique/valuable
b) the format/look and feel is wow
c) the curation of content you aggregate blows people's minds
d) you are the thought leader in this space and you're Jeremy Clarkson

Financial-Modeller · Oct 23, 2020

Paul Carmen said:
This is the sort of work that people don't often bother with initially, but when they start looking at the complexity and the costs, many of these projects aren't viable without substantial initial investment... often they find this out well into the project!

This reminds me of a promising start-up that I was asked to help building out forecasts for valuation purposes.

Whilst the management team were planning how they would spend their millions from a forthcoming IPO, I had to explain to them that their burn rate was so high that without a quick injection of cash they would be insolvent before we could take it to market! It folded soon afterwards.

Frimley111R · Oct 26, 2020

WebshopMechanic said:
Piston Heads?

Lol, yes I know. I think I have a 10,000+ post count on it.

Frimley111R · Oct 26, 2020

Lucky8 said:
I know you know your niche, and you probably don't want to give it away here, but I have a slightly different question.

If you are going to add lots of great content yourself, and not just aggregate, what is the purpose of aggregation at all? Couldn't you just re-write the lot or just write your own content entirely?

If you aggregate mostly, then the 'but why you?' because the lead question. So on that, you sa you know the "why you?" - without giving your idea away, is the answer to this:

a) your own content is wow/unique/valuable
b) the format/look and feel is wow
c) the curation of content you aggregate blows people's minds
d) you are the thought leader in this space and you're Jeremy Clarkson

Good points, the main aim is not to write loads of content myself (I do have a copywriting background) as this is just limited by my time and there are others who are already doing it to death. I'm not looking to me another media source in the same way as the big names in automotive publishing. I wouldn't be able to compete.

Lucky8 · Oct 26, 2020

Frimley111R said:
there are others who are already doing it to death. I'm not looking to me another media source in the same way as the big names in automotive publishing. I wouldn't be able to compete.

OK, so what is your position in the market? Where will you sit, and why?
And if aggregation is your primary source of content, why would your audience come to you? What startdust do you have?

Frimley111R · Oct 26, 2020

Paul Carmen said:
It sounds like you really know your niche, and more importantly where the potential customers are (as it differs widely depending on demographic; e.g. age, niche etc.), which is a great start....

.....
Revenue

Logged in paid content (if there's a paywall)

Advertising revenue (most sites like this generate income from banner ads etc)

Sponsorship (supplier content, homepage takeovers etc)

Sales (do you sell any items; e.g. cars, merchandise etc.)

Events (do you carry out meets, track days etc)

This is the sort of work that people don't often bother with initially, but when they start looking at the complexity and the costs, many of these projects aren't viable without substantial initial investment... often they find this out well into the project!

Yes, 100% this. I run another business and have run others in the past. Virtually my first question for any idea is will it make money and how can it make money. Advertising revenues aren't too difficult to work out as there are a number of sites out there which publish their rates on their site along with other information. For example one charges around £500p/m per advertiser and has over 20 advertisers. Other sites vary but there's lot of info if you look. I'd love to post all the great opportunities but one step at a time.

A key element of the design is working out how to monetise the site without it looking like a mass of advertising hoardings with some car-related information. There has to a good balance.

Despite such a big and crowded marketplace there's still plenty of niches to fill. Others have failed by just doing the same thing as the major sites but under a different brand name. I am aiming not to do this!

Some of the ideas you mention above are on the agenda, some are not, at least not initially. And there are a few more that you've not covered.

Aleksander_Gramm · Nov 2, 2020

I think you should use another approach to segment audience (to find your niche). For example car audio, oil for cars, etc. You need non-standard, really niche topics.

forevergroup · Nov 10, 2020

Hate to be the bearer of bad news.

+car +news
+auto +news
+automotive +news
+ford +news
+audi +news

etc etc

All heavily difficult keywords to rank for with a 'keyword difficulty' of 80%+

In fact 'ford news UK' has a KD of 90%+

On that basis it's safe to assume that you are never going to rank for SEO for those terms.

Especially as your desire is to 'aggregate' news from other sources rather than create new content. Hint: The original sources will rank higher on Google than you will.

Paid search including Facebook etc will also be incredibly expensive for any meaningful volume of traffic especially when there is no clear 'conversion' result. You aren't selling cars, and won't have enough traffic for sizeable ad revenue.

That just leaves word of mouth then. But you can't get that because you'd have to troll other enthusiast sites/forums to drum up interest.

The one chance you are going to have is to find niches that are less contested.

Here are some example search terms with more than 1000 UK searches per month and KD less than 60%:

classic car show 4400
premier cars 3600
specialist cars 2900
japanese car imports uk 2400
elite cars 1900
german car specialist 1900
car dealer forum 1600
country cars 1600
dubai cars 1300

Best of luck

Kevin Joseph · Nov 18, 2020

I have personally worked with websites like Team-bhp.com & tried multiple ways to attain this goal. Here are a few things I learnt along the way.

1. Your main traffic source in this Industry, regardless of how popular is going to be Google
2. Since you will be making a forum on general car content. You should be making a separate section of your site that lists the make & model's of every car with as minute detail as possibile. Since you will be building general domain authority over automobiles
3. Use AMP (accelerated mobile pages), it works like a charm for news websites
4. Add Google News Schema.

Once you're done with this, you should certainly see an uptick. If you need advice in more depth, feel free to reach out to me.

fisicx · Nov 18, 2020

Kevin Joseph said:
Since you will be making a forum on general car content.

Don't think he is. What he said was:

Frimley111R said:
I’m in the first stages of building a curated automotive news aggregator website.

ScribblingStick · Nov 19, 2020

I think PetrolTed was doing some consultancy work, perhaps he'd offer up some advice now that it wouldn't be treading on toes. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire the Ted-Team... [cue music]

He had an interesting Geolocation based site he was tinkering with iirc but don't think it went anywhere. Not sure what he's upto these days.

meteora · Nov 20, 2020

Accounting Controls said:
Hi
I would say your starting point would be to write interesting articles on your own site, blogs and content on your site. This in turn, it will take time will generate traffic to your site through good SEO work and google will gradually push through customers to your site. Google ads pay per click will help push traffic to your site but you have to build content on your own site. It's long, hard work but eventually if you persevere you will get the traffic. Look at Martin Lewis Moneysavingexpert - it took him years but eventually he became the go to site for all those hints and tips - he set it up originally in 2003.
Jane

Great contribution, i advise you check google trends and the search traffic on cars and the keywords and try and create or generate content related to the keywords about your blog, so you can at least get some traffic from search engine results

Emre Eldar · Nov 24, 2020

How about appearing on a podcast that relates to your niche? Do you know that 44% of the US population listens to a podcast? Due to that, the podcast now is one of the hottest marketing channels need to leverage. Creating a podcast is tedious work, the shortcut is, to make a pitch to be a guest! Search for top [your niche] podcasts, and you will get tons of curated lists. Find the host and pitch yourself as a guest. Good luck!

fisicx · Nov 24, 2020

Emre Eldar said:
Do you know that 44% of the US population listens to a podcast?

That looks like a made up statistic. In any case, this is a UK business forum.

Frimley111R · Sep 30, 2023

Morning All, well I'm finally in the final(!) stages of the site build. It is a MVP but should not be too far away from a full site. Fortunately, the structure is fairly simple, as most aggregators are. I've done some testing and also found some useful information from other, similar sites which has helped me to refine the site.

My next challenge is generating traffic and I'll pick your brains on this later on.

I am planning to use SM to drive traffic and so I can use short videos/reels and maybe static ads to get people to the site, and I think this should be relatively simple to do but it's the first time I have used SM this way so any tips/good ideas would be welcomed.

Thanks All

fisicx · Sep 30, 2023

Are your potential readers using SM for related content?

Our car club has over 6000 members and a survey last year showed only a tiny proportion were subscribed to car groups. Most were signed up to the big forums and news sites.

Paul FilmMaker · Oct 2, 2023

Frimley111R said:
Morning All, well I'm finally in the final(!) stages of the site build. It is a MVP but should not be too far away from a full site. Fortunately, the structure is fairly simple, as most aggregators are. I've done some testing and also found some useful information from other, similar sites which has helped me to refine the site.

My next challenge is generating traffic and I'll pick your brains on this later on.

I am planning to use SM to drive traffic and so I can use short videos/reels and maybe static ads to get people to the site, and I think this should be relatively simple to do but it's the first time I have used SM this way so any tips/good ideas would be welcomed.

Thanks All

Good luck with your site! We've done quite a bit around social and it's a very noisy place so to cut through that noise needs a lot of clever strategies.

Here's just one tip that massively boosts engagement - numbers are consistently huge for us and others - (it's on my Linkedin account): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paul...-u?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Hope it's useful. If you ever want a ton of other tips from channel takeovers to driving engagement using principles from the Werther effect, let me know. We do it professionally for channels so happy to help give you a load of free tips.

And good luck again!

kantanLiving · Oct 11, 2023

Consider partnering up with as many brands or services you can to offer to your reader, exchange an article for discount code with them, im sure they will be happy to do that.

Maybe occasionally write about the car products too not just about cars itself. Like what you use maybe, what security you recommend, what tint? these are common things car owners look at, these will also hit top keywords which will help with traffic. If your site purely talks about news, then dig deeper in the articles. One thing that is popular now adays especially in Esports is commentating the match. So maybe when a new car is annouced or there is a trailer for it. Commentate on it, and add it to your article so readers can benefit from reading and listening.

Comic is always a good way to engage. I would happily listen to a podcast about car news if you can make it exciting or funny in some way, or pick out the humour in the car, just like how Topgear presenters use to always banter about the Dacia brand and the Sandero mode, or the Kia Cee'd lol.

Frimley111R · Oct 13, 2023

kantanLiving said:
Consider partnering up with as many brands or services you can to offer to your reader, exchange an article for discount code with them, im sure they will be happy to do that.

Maybe occasionally write about the car products too not just about cars itself. Like what you use maybe, what security you recommend, what tint? these are common things car owners look at, these will also hit top keywords which will help with traffic. If your site purely talks about news, then dig deeper in the articles. One thing that is popular now adays especially in Esports is commentating the match. So maybe when a new car is annouced or there is a trailer for it. Commentate on it, and add it to your article so readers can benefit from reading and listening.

Comic is always a good way to engage. I would happily listen to a podcast about car news if you can make it exciting or funny in some way, or pick out the humour in the car, just like how Topgear presenters use to always banter about the Dacia brand and the Sandero mode, or the Kia Cee'd lol.

Thank you. Yes, I've considered those options.

For the first stage my intention is simply to test if it rally is going to work as well as I think it will which is mostly related to traffic and sign-ups. Luckily i am not selling anything to the readership yet and so it is just a news related site.

If I can get the traffic there then I can expand it from that point. SEO is important but with a lot of competition I do not see it as the key driver for the site, at least in the short term.

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