Forum Moderators: mack
I'd like to know what is a directory site and how can i make one for myself?. Does directory site have many outgoing links to other sites?.
A web directory is normally a site dedicated to one subject or region. Its sole purpose is to bring together a bunch of sites in one catagory to make searching far easier for a surfer. There are directories that list more than one catagory but these take time to build.
So if you have one directory dedicated to vehicles you would break them down into more catagories, i.e: cars, vans, repairs, parts, heavy duty, work vehicles, etc.
You also find regional and national directories. You would find one for the region where you live. I have a shopping directory which is doing quite well. It has been online for 4-5 months and is at present bringing in 800+ uniques per day and I predict it to do better over time.
Marketing a directory is by far much easier than marketing an ECommerce site in my opinion. The hard work is the building and maintenance of the site. As website owners look to find directories to submit to then the owners of the directory don't have to keep looking for link swaps which takes quite some time and effort to do properly, website owners find them. A little link exchange to start with would be ideal as otherwise you will not be found. Just keep submitting to the search engines, everyone that you can find.
Building one takes planning. You have to research all the catagories that you will be placing into the site. Then you have to find websites to put in there. Many of the directory owners start with affiliate programs then build on that. They then offer a free listing for a link swap on either their home page or a page that is accessable from the home page - normally the links page.
This was the reason when florida kicked in at Google a few months ago you seen the SERPS crammed with directories, mostly shopping.
Building one is pretty simple once you have the layout planned. Just use pure HTML and CSS.
After about 4 or 5 months (with effective marketing) just sit back and maintain the site whenever appropriate. Whatever requirements you want for a site to be listed is up to you. You could list just high traffic sites to help get your directory better ranked (refering to link swap).
All in all having a directory could be a good move, however there are many of them out there so try to find a subject off topic to those that are dominating the SERPS. You could build a niche directory maybe? I'll bet there are not many of them. Such as Arts and Crafts, or other things that pop into your mind.
I hope this info is useful to you and good luck if you decide to build one.
Terry
Mack.
There are many ways of generating income from a diectory. You could use affiliate systems. In my experience using these is good to start with but it gets quite annoying when you make one company mega cash but they pay you rubbish commissions.
For one instance, we made Expedia $1,780 on one sale once and we got $7 or so commission. Thats quite frustrating. They are not all the same though. Mobile Phones is a good affiliate to start with, they pay fair commissions and everyone is after one. (If anyone here is from Expedia, don't take this to heart but it IS pretty bad commissions). Since Jan 04 we have made Expedia $8643.80 and received $164 in commissions.
A good benefit is the fact that you can deep link to the companys products, looking like you are hosting them yourself but this takes a lot of work and you have to keep up with all of the companies when they drop/add products to their website.
On the whole though you could charge webmasters for a listing. This could be a one-off or a monthly/yearly subscription. You could offer free listings but then offer 'premium' listings where if they pay you so much a month you will put them top of the list.
Otherwise you could act as a third party for Pay-Per-Click engine listings, this is what we are hoping to achieve but we are not yet generating enough traffic to overcome the revenue we have at present. We are thinking of making another directory and comparing the two for future reference.
However, if you do make a directory it pays off if you can get it to work. Confidence is the key, creating a directory takes a lot of maintenance but not much marketing as you can generally accept pretty much any website for a link swap.
It would be better to ask for a link from the homepage of a website as the PR is in most cases higher than the rest of its pages, in return you will accept them into your directory but only at the middle/bottom of the listing; and work on a first come first served basis - don't forget those who helped get your directory recognised in the first place. Also, to benefit your listings you could maybe only accept websites of PR4 and above.
OR - you could just put some affiliates above your normal listings, but if they have paid then maybe not because it wouldn't be fair. Thats the order you could work in, free listing (links) at the bottom, affiliates in the middle and paid listings at the top.
I hope this is enough information for you, if you have any other questions then please leave them here.
Terry
If you take this strategy then you won't ask for reciprocal links because they're irrelevant. You'll get inbound links instead from people who actually use your directory and find the quality of it useful. Also, you won't list the sites in your directory in order of when they first signed up or how much they pay you - you'll list them in order of quality.
This makes your directory look better and it gives the sites you list an incentive to improve their site to give the user a better experience at the end of the day.
If you build an excellent quality directory which becomes recognised as a hub of your topic on the internet, I assure you, you won't be worrying about things like "reciprocal links".
We always go off quality, but we do accept reciprocal links because firstly we review the site, we even have somebody employed to do that because we get so many requests for link exchange and we have more than one directory on the go. Higher PR sites with lots of resources for the visitors.
The way we worked it well is the fact that it is hard to start off with a directory and start generating income until it starts to perform, this the reason why we always start with affiliate links first and once the site builds up with good traffic we start to get requests from good sites.
We don't accept poorly designed sites, sites that are slow and misinformative, sites that are a one page promotion to another product, gateways, affiliates (except our own of course), and sites who are low on PR unless of course they are PR0 and prove they are doing their best to build up a good link campaign (they will be pending review). They have to be at least PR 4 or higher as that will prove to us that they are maintaining their site which is good for our visitors. If they are not they will go down on record for a review when the next PR update happens. If it is higher then that is enough evidence for us to offer them a good listing in our directory.
I know the PR bit is strict, but we have our policies and that is one of them. We stick to these guidelines and soon you have a good directory with top quality listings. We go head over heals to get where we want therefore we have to knock plenty of sites back.
Its a hard life :)
Terry
