Folks, need a suggestion from you. As you know a free directory attracts massive traffic while generating little sales. Mostly of these directories work on a 'freemium' model and I was wondering if allowing advertisements to external directories and submission services might help improve revenue. Please share your thoughts. If you have tried this, how has it worked out for you?
Well you want to pay your hosting etc. so if it's a completely free directory I'd say ads are necessary. From previous threads like this I know most people don't seem to think you should have ads if you have a paid review model although I don't agree. For me I had adwords running without much success, then when I'd eventually got to £29 something and the payout threshold was £30 Google closed my account, coincidence? I don't know but I'm happier without ads.
Na, I dint't mean Adsense ads. You should never use Adsense in directories. It won't convert well and Google hates the kind of traffic that directories get. Unless you get more traffic from real visitors, you should never use Adsense ads in a directory. I opened this thread to see if banner ads or other kind of ads will work or not.
You can go for adding banner ads and it probably can help in generating some extra revenue besides the premium listings.
I recommend relevant banner ads, I have 3-5 affiliate banner ads. A Social Bookmarking affiliate (socialmaximizer.com), a SEO Site (loveclients.com), Web Hosting (hostgator.com), Directory Submission service (DirectoryMaximizer.com), SEO company (Submitedge.com) If people are looking at your directory site then they are SEO focused so these ads perform well!!
I think the advertising could work. Be wary of giving a "dofollow" link to sites you are advertising, it could be construed as paid linking for PR and you may get penalised for it. Banners should be fine.
In my catalogs, sell advertising on the number of hits, if you have a lot of traffic on this site, this option would be the best.
I take a long-term view on paid advertising. First of all, I sell advertising, not links. Second of all, on my directories, I only sell advertising to sites that would qualify for a listing. Just this week, I said no to a cash offer for a text link (don't do those anyway on my directories) for a site that was outside of my niche. Sure, I'm giving up revenue, but I'm keeping my site on topic and hopefully maintaining my site's trustworthiness. I've also held the personal believe that direct advertising, as opposed to Adsense style advertising, carries a bit of an endorsement. I'm referring my site visitors to that advertiser. It might be an old-fashioned view but it's one that I follow on all of my sites.
No i dont allow advertisement on directory, bec the sole purpose of the directories is not advertisement, but to arrange the data.
While I favor banner ads, et al... I do agree completely and tend to use follow/nofollow as a part of my advertising strategy.
I'm not generally a fan of nofollowing links. If it's a site not worth linking to fully, why link to them at all? I only use nofollow for internal pages that I want to get less attention by the search engines (i.e. Contact Us) and any mandated footer links from template designers. (I'll happily include a designer in my About Us page, with full linkage, but when they force a footer link...they get nofollow.)
could you explain further that google hates directory traffic?if that was the case,wouldnt google just show service announcements or no ads at all if they "hated" directory traffic?although it might not seem like much to you big players,i make about $50 yr from adsense on 1 of my directory sites and that helps pay my hosting as well as further promotion of my site
Directory traffic are in most case non-business traffic for Google. Unless and until you have a directory that gets too much of "real" visitors traffic, it is a big risk in my opinion. If your directory's traffic is mostly from outsourced countries (India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philipines etc.,) where advertiser spent in less it adds up the risk. Adsense tracks conversion. If your traffic just generates clicks and those clicks are not doing well in terms of conversion, which will happen in a directory traffic, it is a risk. I define this as a potential risk. I am really scared to use adsense in directories.
I allow ads on my directory. But only one big side banner and nothing else. I don't get regular paid submission so putting ads supplements the directories income.