Well this is a new one on me. Other's have reported getting traffic from KingBloom Directory, and I've had countless testimonials about the good people have seen from using our directory of the years. Today we took a call from a very upset Executive at a prominent Foreign Bank. They were upset over a listing in our directory. Apparently someone listed their bank, the web site, used a legitimate email address, but used a description that even got past our viewing. Apparently someone does not like this bank and as such listed them in KingBloom with a not so favorable Description and Keywords.. So favorable in fact that this bank was routinely showing up on the first and second pages of a Google Search, often out ranking the bank. YIKES!!! I can see how the description got missed the first time as it was almost missed the second time around by two different people here. In any event, we have removed the listing at the request of the bank, and will take measures in the future to make the review process for inclusion in the KingBloom Directory, a bit more scrutinized and redundant. It just amazes me that KingBloom has become so well indexed that someone tried to use a listing to bash a Bank, and that the Bank actually saw it, then called us! Amazing!
If this is a link baiting campaign...next time try do it better (or at least try showing some links so the folks here will have stuff to chew)
It doesn't look like linkbait to me.... Look how quickly Google picked up this thread, 25 minutes, not bad.... but anyway... do the search shown in the picture and click on the cached version of the 3rd result. It's pretty obvious which bank it is.
Ok, well, out of respect for them, I would rather not say... I'd appreciate it if no one else did either. I wanted to keep this anonymous for the banks sake.. And, I really don't need to "link bait" a directory this old, that has already long since earned its respect.... I just found the whole thing quite interesting and though I would share.. Take that for what it is worth... Again, just please do not publicly post the bank's URL or cached description here... Next thing you know they'll be calling Shawn and harassing him.. Again, Just found the hole thing kind of interesting... It's not that important... Again, if you want to figure it out, it would probably be pretty easy... Anyway, the listing is gone completely, that is unless they bank wants to pay for a link!
Mia, I deliberately didn't link directly and didn't name the bank in either the post or image as I guessed thats the reason you didn't put it in your original post My intention was that if you were curious like me, you could use that term and view the cache as stored by Google. Anyway, I'm removing that image now. I just wanted to show that you were not baiting as to be honest that was my first thought too.
Well that really shows you must have done a lot of SEO work on KingBloom Directory to make it such a success. Congrats, doing SEO on directories are a nightmare and to do it well is nearly an impossibility. You should do a screen capture and keep it, really something to be proud of.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Anyway, I guess one of the things I wanted to illustrate is that this incident raised two very serious issues we need to address with KingBloom. 1. We need to check and double check descriptions a bit more carefully. 2. Our directory can be used equally effectively for shaddy listings as it can for legitimate ones. I think addressing item one more carefully and scrutinizing listings a bit more will take care of item two all together. The biggest problem here is that this listing was entered when KingBloom was a free directory and did not have the checks in place that it does now, so I cannot entirely fault our review system or staff with missing it all together. However, our listings do come up for review from time to time, that said, this should have probably been caught some time down the road, however it was not. In the future, we will try to insure that this is not the case. Yeah, I did do a screen capture both from our admin, and saved it with the email after the phone complaint. I think the biggest part of our success or any directories success for that matter comes in actually keeping the directory kept up. We update it every single day, several times daily. Setting up the directory is only one part of the equation. Keeping it updated and full of valid fresh listings is the bigger and more important part. It's easy to create a directory. Keeping it fresh, that is another story. Since we do not allow people to edit their own listings, we do not see as much fraud or shaddy listings as I think we would. I think it would behoove every directory owner to both manually approve and manually edit listings for their customers. This manual attention to detail helps insure that the quality of listings stays consistent, and you keep people from taking legitimately approved listings and altering them later. Of course another successful point if I might add, has been the fact that we have not only given an email to contact us with, we have also included our phone number in our contact page. I see far too many directories with contact us forms, many of which probably end up in no where land or ignored as they probably attract spam. We've given people a way to contact us, and have gone out of our way to attempt to respond same day to those that contact us, if time permits. Finally, adding this methods of contacts goes a long way to legitimizing a directory as a valid trustworthy business, and not some fly by night internet site out to make money. Hopefully these suggestions and ideas we have used will be useful to others that own directories.
You know, I have toyed with that idea for over a year now. I consulted with 1/2 a dozen or so loyal trusted DP'rs, who gave me a pretty wide range of options/thoughts. The thing is, we chose to keep it as is, because the formula works. We see consistent listings with the $5 ones being the most popular, the $15 next, then the $2. The $2 ones used to be a buck, but the problem was, paypal, percentage wise on such a small amount took about 60 cents on dollar as a result. I figured why make paypal rich, at $2 it is still reasonable, and that number percentage rate drops considerably. At some point in the future we may raise it, but it's not like my costs of increased that much, nor have listings gone down. We still see a consistent number of entries, and in the last 3 years I have not had a day where I have not had at least ONE listing. The only factors I could see that would warrant a raise in prices at this point is if we see a rise in costs. Luckily I am the ISP/host, so I can mitigate my hosting costs. I already have a staff, and as such we all have access to the admin and can edit on our own time as we see fit, so not a day goes by without updates. The only area where we have a large drop is in site wide links and banners. I can only imagine this is because of the coup scare in Google land with directories and links. I have a lot of site wide footer space available that I would love to sell, even at a discount. At this point that is the only thing that might prompt a raise in listing fees, is perhaps at the very least a reduction in, or elimination of site wide links in lieu of higher listing fees to offset that loss. At the moment our other directory SeekWonder carriers higher fees, but then again is smaller, much more concentrated and we seek to keep it smaller to help keep a heavier weight on each listing. Hope this answers you question.
The funny thing about pricing is you can't price it too low, it will be perceived as lower quality, you need to price it at a price where customers feel they are getting value for money. Sometimes I did see vendors specially hiking up prices to make their customers feel more exclusive. Take for eg Macdonald's experience in Japan, they had to lower prices, where LV in Japan was hiking up their prices and saying that the hikes are not enough. Pricing is quite an art I must say.
Like I said, for us, the formula has worked. While I agree that the lower end pricing can discredit a directory by keeping the listing rate high and quality low, we've actually seen more people go for the higher tier than the lower and I think having that lower entry barrier and wide range from $2 - $15 garner that "value" factor anyway. Couple that with the fact that we have had good success keeping our directory updated, I think we have a well founded amount of respect as a directory that people do see value in, even at a bargain price. I know I could get a lot more, but why be greedy. My philosophy is to provide a great service at a fair price. I think we have been lucky enough to find that "in between" between the low price and premium price. So far, it has worked. Would it still work at a higher price, probably, but I won't know unless I try it.
Thank you. I hope it works out for you as well. I've have very positive feed back over the past 3 years. Let me know if you need anything else!
Have to agree KingBloom has achieved respect a long time ago, which continues to justify respect today Of course Mia is a DP stalwart too
Thank you! Thank you too!!! Sure, traffic is indicated at the following link at the KingBloom Directory web site here: http://www.kingbloom.com/advertise.php#traffic