A lot of people are asking if it’s profitable to create a directory Let’s do the math 1º Scenario – Nice PR5-PR6 Directory One time investment cost $25 for the script $15 2 year domain registration $400 for a custom made skin $500 on link building and promotion to get to something like PR5-PR6 if it’s done right $60 other small expenses ----------- $1,000 Monthly cost to run a directory $5 for Hosting $50 for Continuous link building ----------- $55 Now make the math if you charge $5 for regular link’s and $15 for featured you need around 100 normal links and 34 featured to get back the investment. You can sell 6 home page links for $10 a month = $60 that covers the monthly cost and there you have it you make $5 profit a month 2º Scenario - cookie cuter directory PR2-PR3 $0 Free Script $5 For 1 year domain name registration Only free promotion No Custom Skin Hosted on a free server You sell 3 normal links or 1 featuread you make a profit of $5 Off course excluding the time you spend on it Do you see why so many people are creating cookie cutter directories it's less risk and more profit on the short run.
the problem with your calculation is that the profits you're talking about is hardly worth anyone's time...
It’s only to have the idea now people know if they go with scenario X they need to sell X links to be profitable. Loot of people asking to I decide to put the hard numbers, so people make the math easy.
You are excluding the single largest investment cost of running a directory and that is time. Figure 2 hours a day x $50 an hour=$100 a day x 30 days a month=$3,000 a month.
The profit is not only from paid submission. Adsense or any relevant affiliate program can generate nice income too.
Yes, I was trying to keep it simple, you can also had things like “site wide links†and others ...
If the dollar amounts you've specified were true - it would be more profitable to create PR6 directories not the other way around. Why? Because once they've hit PR6 you could sell them for a lot more than your initial $1000 outlay, a lot more. I've seen PR5 directories go for $3500 on eBay. PR6? name your price...
i would like to work on a senerio as to keep the site in the long run. what kind of monthly revenues does a directory generate ? how many featured links and regualar links are sold every month average? please come out with averages and not one month 500$ and other none. i am thinking if with lower investment a directory can start paying anywhere from 200-300$ a month an yearly revenue of 2400-3600$ can be achieved? all i will have to day is to make 5-10 directories is to have enough cash to work on other projects and ideas. are these figures on track to what people get or way off?? am new to directory ownership all the comments will be apprecaited.
one more thing. what has costum skin got to do with PR ?? if we are targetting PR we need not pay for the custom design and also for the paid script. so it shaves of 425$ from the initial budget.
That’s really a good point, if you objective is to sell it, than you are better of with PR6 scenario. Off course you have always more risk in this scenario. Skin as nothing to do it PR, but if you want to people to perceive your directory as a quality one and get loot of submissions is better to have a custom skin, is you can do it without the $400 on custom skin (you can do it even yourself) and without the $25 of the script, you can use a free one, and you can even hosted on a free server also.
so thats what i am saying now about promo by buying links and regualar reciprocal linking is the main factor. And it sure is expensive to buy links and go for reciprocal linking on an on going way. now my guess, and from what i read here, is that paying for a high PR link and selling of is the only way to work on a directory. Will this startergy work. setup a general directory? let submitters submit links? Approve some and disapprove crap and just buy a couple of links from High PR sites? Wait wait wait for a pr and put the directory for sale. a PR4 is not really difficult or expensive to obtain. please comment..
I don’t recommend building a free general directory, you get many, many submissions 70% are crap. The advantage of a free one is that you get a loot of natural links from sites that list free resources, but my experience is not worth it compared to the time you lose reviewing sites. If you make paid from day one you get some revenue that you can invest on promoting it. Getting PR4 is not difficult you can even achieve this with only free links; the things get tough from PR4 up, to get PR5 at least in less than a year you need to buy some links. If you want to sell it will be much more valuable with a custom skin, a new directory with 6 months PR4 and cookie cuter skin will be priced around 300-700 max in my opinion, but all this will depend on market conditions when you sell it, also a free full of links directory will be much less valuable than a paid low populated one. I also don’t think is a good idea to build it with the idea of selling it, do it for the fun and challenge, then if you make money that’s a plus. Hope it helped. Cheers
thanx ask, what ever you say really makes sense. i will surely create one or two niche paid directories in the near future. cheers
$400 for a custom made skin $500 on link building and promotion to get to something like PR5-PR6 if it’s done right $60 other small expenses ^ this is extremely high in my experience.. i didn't pay near this much, and I have a pr 5 and make more then 15$ a month
Yes you can do the custom skin yourself, it also depends on the leverage you have from other sites you may control and point for example site wide links. My scenarios are more for the newbie that knows very little about php and doesn’t control other sites. On a extreme scenario you can do it almost for free.