Pick the service
Look for services where homeowners call fast or where jobs are big: water heaters, water damage, heating and AC, roofing, mold, septic, plumbing. People with a flooded basement call; they don't browse.
Pick the city
Start with mid-size cities and suburbs (roughly 50,000 to 300,000 people). “Water heater repair Los Angeles” is a war; “water heater repair Lakewood” is a chance. Plan one service across 5 to 10 nearby towns, or 2 to 4 related services (like water heaters and drain cleaning) across a few towns: either becomes one site.
The 10-minute competition check
Search “service + city” on Google and look at the first page:
- Good sign: directories (Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor), thin or outdated sites, pages that don't even mention the city.
- Hard market: many strong local company sites with lots of pages and hundreds of reviews.
Check there's a buyer
Before you build, confirm your network pays for that service in that area. The payout table in CallPosts lists markets with reported rates; your network dashboard has the current ones.
Write down: 1 service, 5 to 10 towns, and the network that will buy the calls.