Marketing a directory

This article isn't about how to make fast money from a directory, this article isn't even about where to download the directory script. My goal is to show you my point of view which is based on my own experiences.

First, let me write that directories became popular part of many web sites worldwide. As time goes by, we can see how new directories born, how they're maintained and naturally, how they disappear. In order to understand the whole thing, it's necessary to answer following questions.

1)Why people install any directory script,
2)Why people keep maintaing submissions,
3)Is it necessary to ask money for submissions?

The first question can be answered relatively in an easy way. Various webmasters use directories as parts of their sites; let's say that the webmaster's site is the „site A“. Basically, other webmasters come to the „site A“ in order to increase their sites' link popularity. Man could ask if there is any benefit of providing a directory.a At this point, there's no benefit from such action. And this is why about 30% of directories disappear in the first month after being published.

If you decide to run a directory, you should serve your visitors and they're usually SEOs from India admittedly. Bear in mind that launching a directory will not boost your site's rankings in a week. You will get more visitors, but nearly no-one will be interested in sites which you list there. So if you await an overnight success, do not start a directory.

Of course, everyone wants to make some bucks and this is the second reason why people launch directories. To be exact, I count on that nearly everyone wants to make dollars from accepting sites. However, you can't ask money for listing if your directory is new or if it has low PageRank. Moreover, PageRank's value is overrated nowadays. Webmasters don't mind to get high PageRank value even though PR7 or PR8 can be bought through a simple link. Thus there's no real difference between PR0 and PR8 site if they have low amounts of links. If any site gets 1000 natural links, it's much more appreciated by Google than 1 link of PR8. So you should know that any directory will not make enough money to live on throughout the first months. Directories like Yahoo! Directory ask relatively high amounts of dollars. But they're trusted by Google. Any new directory can't be and shouldn't be trusted until it becomes two or three years old. The reason is simple; Average age of directories is less than 1 year.

Going to the second question and it's answer, we can say there are two kinds of directory owners. The first type approves anything, might ask money and doesn't care about quality at all. The second kind is a webmaster who gives great focus on listed sites and visits them from time to time in order to check for changes. Both of above-mentioned kinds can ask money for successful approval. Making money isn't crime and it's normal to ask money for link. On the other hand, link's value usually doesn't equal to it's price. But it's another story. People keep maintaining their directories because they want to make money or they want to create a big resource of quality sites. Unfortunately, there are much more money-makers than webmasters who are willing to create lists of quality sites within their sites.

As mentioned above, everyone can ask money for submission. Just for sure, asking money for approval is worth it if only the directory has visitors who are interested in listed sites. Otherwise, such link has no value at all. PageRank isn't worth it.

The conclusion: You should start a directory if only you're going to keep the quality borders strictly differenced between quality and poor sites. Quality level doesn't mean PageRank. It means you should check every site for duplicate content, if it's content is valuable and interesting for visitors and more details including services, history, etc. Focusing on these rules, you'll be able to approve from 1 up to 10 links each day, which is quite enough.

Marketing a directory doesn't mean displaying Google AdSense ads, it doesn't even mean asking money for inclusion from the beginning. Marketing a directory means offering quality links besides quality categories structure. As time goes by, quality will differentiate from other sites and will be visible for more visitors than ever. Then you can offer some extra services which can be paid. This includes express listings, sponsored links, etc. This is the marketing I've been talking about. Unlike „make money fast“ ideas, giving importance on the quality level will take much more time but will result in incomparable income. Return of investment (also known as ROI) can be easily achieved within 1 year.

This article's author; Jan Hvizdak is a SEO consultant of the thruSITES web design company and created the link popularity tool.

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