I have a directory and i strongly believe that if properly developed could become the future dmoz. I am currently thinking of non profit directory, where there will be always free submissions for sites that are of high quality. Intention is maintain high quality listings with strict guidelines. Whilest most people talk about making money from a directory, i still believe a high quality non profit directory allowing free submissions would take one step ahead of all those paid directories. My questions are... * Will i survive if i keep my directory a non profit one ?? * How do i support myself(in terms of money) with such a directory ??? * How do i get sponsors/capitalists/investors ?? * Will my directory stand long or will get saturated at one point of time like dmoz? what are your solutions and advice ??
1) Depends on traffic and revenue ;-) 2) Place/Sell ads (clearly distinguished from the real content) 3) You'll need only about $50 to get started for a single year of Web hosting 4) Wait and see Some advice: Make your directory's content freely available under some flex license, this will let other sites copy it and result in an increased value for a submitted site. Write about it and let other people write about, spread the word. @PortProphecy: Actually you're right about the difference between non-profit and free submission. I assume though that the topicstarter wants to start a free submission directory.
How would it be one step ahead of those paid directories? Other than offering a free service. I can certainly see a couple steps you will be behind the good paid direcotries with a non-profit directory. Without any money coming in , it will be very hard to really promote your site well, and to provide good traffic and good PR to your site. With absolutely no money coming, you can't expect to survive. Free directories, if promoted well, can quickly start receiving XXX number of submissions daily. You may decide spending several hours a day of just reviewing submissions for nothing is not really what you want to do. You might do this for a week or two, maybe a month. But soon, you will need some money in to make all your hard work make sense. I'm confused. You said it would be non-profit. So to support yourself, you need another source of income obviously....like a job, other web businesses, rich relatives, etc. Again,I'm confused. You said it would be non-profit. You could make a little money with sponsors and with ads, but this isn't non-profit, now is it? Not something you need to worry about for many, many years. Something I ususally recommend to the guys that want to start totally free directories, is offer at least one paid option. Have an express review option for sure, for a few bucks I can get listed in a day or two (rather than the weeks or months the free ones have to wait due to the backlog you will definitely have). Another option may be featured listings. Many link buyers like this option and will gladly purchase them. Having some good paid options will probably bring you in a nice amount of money, even if you also offer free submissions.
in order for this to be successful you'd have to spend a lot of $$$ to promote it, period. Imagine your starting from sctrach, it won't happen over night. to get money if it is non-profit, the only option would be to ask users for donations like wikipedia, good luck, i hope you make it, and kill dmoz
Are you sure? Dmoz Have "over 4 million sites - 73,118 editors - over 590,000 categories" BTW - To properly Develop it require $$$..
You guys should really listen to portprophecy, he is the man. Thats a great post Also zeal was a non profit directory, what happened? Zeal shut down. Many directories out there ran out of business because they were non profit. Being non profit is a good thing, there is a human behavior behind that but its not for the long term! You can remain non profit for a while, depend the kind of income your receive or investment you put into your sites, but later im sure you will change your mind
very nice post portprophecy and irka. People love directories, that are available for free, especially good directories. There is no end to this. The problem is you have to devote hours for work daily, plus expenses, spam for nothing??? hard to survive !!!