Cart before the horse or horse before the cart?

My team at bakersfield.com launched a new site this week called BakoDeals that features coupons from local businesses. As a website, it's not breaking any new ground in the world of local coupons. But what's different is the site is an offshoot of an @BakoDeals Twitter feed I launched months ago as an experiment in local advertising.

The @BakoDeals Twitter feedI launched the feed initially to experiment with a potential new form of ad delivery and soon began promoting local deals of all kinds, whether they were paid ads in The Californian or Bakersfield.com, or from competitors or elsewhere in the community.

Feeble attempts at advertising -- embedded "house ad" sponsorships, a bungled effort to sell a paid Twitter ad -- went nowhere. What did gain traction was our promotion of local deals, regardless of source. Our only guidelines were that the deals be genuinely valuable and of interest to more than a few people.

Our followers spread the word, and potential advertisers and opportunists hit us up to promote their businesses. All good, and enough of a response that we had a foundation to build upon.

BakoDeals the websiteHence, Bakodeals.com the website, which we launched with nearly 40 local coupons, plus feeds from @BakoDeals on Twitter, our bakersfield.com Bargain Betty classified blogger and "Items under $100" classified feed from The Bakersfield Californian. So, while we haven't figured out how to make money on our Twitter feeds, we do know we can bring in revenue from an offshoot.

Typically, Twitter feeds come after the fact, created to promote something that already exists. With Bakodeals, we had the equation backward. But, with any luck, we can find success through the back door. And early indications are that we'll do fine; we've had 10,000 page views after just a few days.