Hi Folks, I know we have a lot of expertise here. I've been running Grokodile as a completely free directory for some time now. There isn't much by way of PR on city level pages but the first several levels have PR and I'm not going to be disappearing any time soon. I'm looking for ideas on earning revenue. Basically, I need to start earning some revenue so I can afford to promote the directory more. I want to continue to offer blog listings for free, but I am thinking of having listings in other categories require the payment of a small annual fee. Will I need to establish PR in low level sub categories before I can make this work? I'm also willing to consider any other advice or suggestions. Thanks! EDIT: I hope it is only the pending PR update, but I notice the lower level pages are showing no PR right now... that is fairly new.
I am not a blogger but I wanted to say you can always offer either banner ads or sponsors ads also one small critisism on your pages for instance here http://www.grokodile.com/dir/USA/North_Carolina/?loc=Lexington your words are hard to read you should darken them up
I agree, you might want to sell off a couple of home page banners and/or text links. Other than that you don't really have many choices beyond charging for listings and becoming a paid directory. You could convert over to a directory script that allows featured listings and charge for those while still offering regular listings for free? good luck