Here is my experience building directories and watching others build them. A bit tongue-in-cheek. Feel free to add your "Stages". Stage 1 - You dream of ownership and possible fame from owning the next BIG directory. The desire to help your fellow forum members and maybe earn some cash along the way is the driving force behind your decision to build a directory. Stage 2 - Building your free directory, getting the free script installed and putting up a free template. No pre-structure categories for you. You start from scratch and add in all 300 categories manually, you will do it right, not like those lazy folks. Stage 3 - The excitement and pride when you announce your new directory and the traffic and submissions start flowing in. Wow if I knew I could get 100+ uniques a day this easily I would not have bothered with all those other sites and blogs. Stage 4 - Becoming a little annoyed at folks that submit MFA sites, spam sites and wrongly submitted sites. Surely these people could at least read my terms and conditions, after all I am offering them free backlinks. Stage 5 - Realizing you are spending 2 hours a day on this new venture and you sure hope some of these folks (other than Chris) decide to buy a featured link so you can at least pay for your hosting and buy a burger or something. Stage 6 - Facing the reality that 90% of your time spent on your directory is checking out MFA sites, spam sites and fixing other folks spelling and submission errors. To read the rest please visit my SEO - Webmaster Blog
Good post. That is so true. I just started mine to add a bit to my site and I posted it here with clear rules and I deleted 175 porn/gambling/MFA sites and only ended up with about 100 good links. Thanks for the article.
creative topic for an article, good job btw, u might like to know that your 'recent blog' link is not working
I have to agree with most fact you pointed out, but ... that's not all bad. With a serious work you can profit from your directory, either it's free or paid. Of course that with so many directories poping out everyday, if you dont have something new on your directory than sooner or later you'll give on it. So, free or paid, what matters is how serious you are about making it big or at least medium
I just to have free directory 1 year ago and it was exactly like you said. I sold it for 300$ after that(it had custom design) and never started another one. It was funny to read and remember that.
Yea, but i guess every big directory started from somewhere. And it must have been from the bottom, being a free one first. Then they began climbing all the stairs. It's true that it involves a lot of time and patience, but maybe in the end it worths the work, if it's done correctly
what' your point dude? have it for free or close it for good? i am for close it for good and as much as possible. Directory Bubble 2007 Free Web 2007
well said... Strength and Patience as well as Determination are key factors for anything to move forward and florish. thx malcolm
I've found that you need to name them something different. Non online marketers have no idea what a directory is, and don't care. Calling it an organized search engine (never use the web 2.0 word vertical) is one way to appeal to a larger audience.
It's really hard if you never find a way to get pagerank or traffic. I have a couple that have decent pagerank and I converted to only paid so they would be more manageable. I haven't heavily promoted them (1 pr 4 and 1 pr 5), but I get enough featured links each month for it to be worth my time. I do know that if I worked harder to get bigger like alive or aviva, etc. I could make more.
haha, your being spammed by 500+ sites right now? You and jg123 make it sound like its a common stage to go through...do you have an0n's spam guard?
Thanks for all the great comments, I appreciate it. I went through every stage except for the last one, I resisted with all my will power. renoir you gotta know the lingo or this post ain't for you