In this latest installment of our “unfiltered” interviews with innovative people and organizations, we interview Brian Timpone, founder of Blockshopper.com.
Timpone launched Blockshopper back in May 2006 as a residential news site focused solely on the Lincoln Park and Lake View neighborhoods in Chicago, billed as a “residential real estate news service for… eureka … actual residents themselves.”
Blockshopper has steadily built a growing audience and now has sites in Illinois (Chicago and Lake County); New York (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens); Cleveland; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Seattle; St. Louis; and, South Florida.
Unlike the mainstream newspapers, it isn’t a site with tips and advice on how to sell your home. In fact, it’s a real estate site that isn’t about homes. It’s about people … people who are buying and selling homes in your neighborhood. You can search by street, by date sold, and by price range.
The stories carry photos of the people who are buying and selling, a short bio sketch of the person, and the amounts for which they are buying or selling their home. It even has a Google Maps mashup so you can view the location.
According to Timpone, the site is getting several hundred thousand visitors per month, it has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and here in Builder Magazine.
We can all learn a lot from the Blockshopper model.
How? The Blockshopper model is driving traffic and followers … because it is telling stories.
It’s telling stories about the people buying and selling in your neighborhood. And it’s telling stories about your neighborhood itself — the property taxes people pay, the schools they attend, the people who live there.
The content is fresh. It’s original. It contains easily aggregated data you can’t find anywhere else.
Through the data they are collecting, they are also able to hyper-target advertising not just to zip codes — but to actual neighborhoods. This provides an advertising model with opportunities that go well beyond these publications or the real estate market.
Blockshopper continues to grow and looks to have a bright future — especially with the opportunities provided as so-called “mainstream” news sources continue to whither (they actually partner with the Chicago Sun-Times and Florida Sun-Sentinel). And, as they grow, their business model continues to evolve … and new opportunities are presenting themselves along the way.
blockshopper.com really rocks, very innovative and a real great source of information.