You must work for at least one year and your directory must have at least PR4. Then you will earn valuable money from it. You are right that there are thousands of directories whicy worths to be in the trash bin. If you will do this business, you must work hard and wait long.
Like with any site it takes time to build up the site to earn those kind of figures however it is possible
What a negative thread!! Its all about commitment and drive. If you are talking about a free directory script you downloaded, spent a couple of hours tweaking and left to wither on the vine, then no, you won't make any revenue. But if you start from day one with a plan and strategy, have patience, belief, a tinge of luck and a thick skin, there's no reason why you can't develop a successful directory, or indeed any online business. I know personally 3 other Business Directory owners which are going from strength to strength. Remember 6 figures is only 100,000 which for an established business would barely cover salaries for a small team, let alone other overhead like hosting, office, accountants etc. If you have a 1 man home based hobby business, which you spend a couple of hours a week, then of course that's a different matter. As with most things, you get out what you put in...
Theres nothing negative about being honest, you dont strictly always get out what you put in, there are many situations where millions of pounds can be put into businesses, projects and ideas and nothing worthwhile comes from them. I love optimism, but its also terribly naive to simply "believe" and think that its just a case of doing this n that and its somehow going to set one directory apart and make it a success, its not true.
On one hand your are right that one should plan a strategy, have patience, belief and so on, on the other hand you are very wrong as it is not nearly enough to plan a strategy, have patience, belief and so on. Many already established business put up thousands if not millions of pounds into websites and ideas, marketing it and not much comes from it.
Directories usually do not make healthy revenue because most visitors only concerned to find out some site and nothing more. Directories got good traffic but less ad revenue.
Fair play, you need a tad bit more than belief, bringing useful skills to the table is obviously essential, but I did give a caveat of "a ting of luck and a thick skin" I've also seen first hand examples of millions of pounds being pumped into projects and watching them fail spectacularly. But each time there was a good reason which came down to very poor project planning, weak management or misjudging market conditions (dot com bubble). These very expensive disasters tend to be the reserve of large Blue Chips or Govt Depts, and not your average directory start up, but your right, there are sound lessons to be absorbed.
currently my directory makes anything from $20 a month to $200 a month. It about five year old. Use to make bit more before google penalised it.
I have a pr5 directory and I dont make half of this. Too big figure to be correct. Maybe i am doing something wrong thought...