I recently met a friend of mine like me he is also a directory owner. He told me that his directory earning good money and he never did any promotion and he gets 'natural' traffic from various sources. Is it possible to make good money from a directory without any promotion @ all what do you think about this?
No, the directory business model as i know is surviving on the PR gimick, a dir without a PR would find it very difficult to monetize any kind of traffic. It would be more precice if you would ask your friend how exactly is he making money off his diretory and how much ? Is it paid submission, adsense click ??? Also, a url would help None of the directories i know have survived without promotions
Directories are a solid established business model with or without PR Has anyone ever seen a Coca Cola sold out of can without a logo Branding and Promotion are an integral and essential part of advertising Directories The main majority of Directories have no connection or affiliation with gimickry if they are serious about their Directories
Promotion and PR are two different things. You can get PR3 or even PR4 (or more) without promotion or cost if you want to spend lots of time building links. When he says he does no promotion I think he means 'paid' promotion. I think if you are patient and build links through exchange and trade you could probably make a few bucks after a year or 18 months. Spending money on promotion really speeds things up and allows you to spend your time on other important things. and like centime says, it is all relative to what this person thinks good money is, a part-time directory owner from India might be doing great averaging 4 paid featured links a month.
Yes its possible to do with a good established free directory If your directory is over 2 years of age ,PR would be around 3-4 and the some very good traffic!
I agree with part of your message, but I don't agree with the above. What if you knew of a directory that was getting 20,000 unques per day, but it was PR0. Wouldn't you submit for the traffic? I think a lot of people are too wrapped up in PR and the "possible" traffic from search engines. If you can get direct traffic from another source, that's all the better. I certainly understand when and why PR is important for some, and it has its place, but I think everyone should also keep traffic in mind. That's one thing I have been working very hard on, for Big Web Links and Alive Directory especially...so that listed sites can benefit from that as well. Now, with all that being said, getting 20,000 uniques per day with no promotion is not something everyone can do. It's definitely possible, though, especially if you can develop a tool that would be popular and offer it for free, for example.
I believe it is possible as well, but in order for that to happen I think you need at least one site that can push tons of traffic to it and someone is bound to take the bait and buy a listing. If you can get in the right locations without any cost then sure it is possible. But I'm sure you would do much better if you put a few bucks into it.
I agree with mystik, PR has it's place but traffic, especially quality traffic is just as important or more so. IMO it is easier to get a PR5 than to get 500 quality uniques a day, so that says a lot.
Agreed. A lot of traffic is not of much use if the visitors are not interested in what you are offering. That's only one of the reasons it is best to have links on sites that are related to your field, rather than just any link.
well said ! I had a PR 5 directory before it was getting only some 40-50 uniques a day. So building links will not give you the traffic you expect from those sites. If i get to know a site that sends me 100 quality visitors a day, I will not mind if the link is indirectory(java) say a site like Proxy.org Are people submitting to proxy.org for PR ?
Without promotion that would be next to impossible also how much many from the 20K will actually click my site A permanent listing definitely, a yearly listing probably not Nothing personal, but i just dont have deep pockets and plan my budget accordingly Maybe a bid directory can be lucrative for traffic, but i am very skeptical about traffic coming from a general directory If it is traffic in tens, than thats would be a problem anyways Agree and i believe thats i am building my directory on this concept.. I believe that the future of web directories is not as a backlink building engine but a mean to bring exposure and visibility for a listings. Many are yet to understand this Quoted from my blog: http://www.directorytrials.com/branding-a-web-directory/ Totally agreed, but then as a tool might not be in reach for every webmaster i believe that content will play a big role and that is why Aviva and now Gii have my full respect And the hard fact is that for majority of the dir owners, the PR/PS is doing the trick The best example is the promotion they do in their signature
Very interesting thread getting much nearer to the reality of the Directory Sector Which is relative to quality unique focused visitors and lots of them We run a much bigger directory than Forplex but its in an Accommodation Directory and has approx 4 to 5000 unique focused visitors per day, but 100% of the users do not give a hoot about PR, but they do care 100% about the focus of the ten of thousands of fellow focused visitors Why, because you can create a quality traffic interaction that just spreads far and wide, bringing in with the reach more and more new unique visitors
My directory www.frogengine.com now gets about 80% of its traffic from new keywords not related to internet marketing or directories at all. It's people finding it thru searches in Google and frogengine pops up for terms related to something they search for. Mainly I get web surfers now, and some become repeat visitors. PR is not really the main issue here. I also have a lot more people submitting who I can guarantee you don't hang out in this section on DP, just marketing reps for different sites looking for opportunities to show their sites wherever the right traffic for them might be. So PR might be the main reason here, but it is not to me and not the smart people out there looking for new exposure for their sites and their clients' sites. Mike
I believe a good SERPS can also drive more sales than just PR. It need not be a high PR site. I observed from my experience people who submit their sites not necessarily be webmasters or seo's. People from various backgrounds submit their sites. In such cases they dont know a dime about PR.