Hello I recently bought a PR3 directory. It is a normal directory selling featured and normal links along with banners and other things. However, it doesn't earn that much yet I have seen several PR3 bidding directories with loads of bids, many of them over $50. Do you think it would be worth changing to a bidding directory, what is most profitable? Calum
Don't be fooled by those bids. Many (not all) bidding directories game their own site by making fake bids. Another method is where one directory owner bids $100 and the receiving directory owner gives it right back in the form of a bid or paid link placement - in the end there's no real money being exchanged. Your post hasn't been on the forum all that long and I suspect before long the proponents of both sides of this issue will descend. The issue of bid vs not bid has been quite heated here in the past and it might be helpful if you search the old threads a bit and you will see arguments on both sides. Personally, I think a bidding directory would be harder to make viable now that Google has come down so hard on paid links. I'm also a quality over quantity kinda gal and many bid directories sell their souls to the highest bidder and give little regard to the quality of the site (owner) making the bidding.
It's true that bidding directory is more profitable. But normal directory or normal niche directory is better for SERP.
Can you some us some tangible evidence that the bidding directory is better than the general because I for one don't think they are worth anything. I don't think I need to say anything more than YMC has.
Normal directories are better, I seen a site pay for about 1500 dollars worth of links, made to a PR5, but Google reduced the site's rank to PR4, might go down even lower. In all reality, your traffic will come mainly from search engines even second hand search engines at times, but not much in from directories in general. You would also get more traffic from other sites linked to your site that is related to yours. More so than directories. I think the only exception is if your a directory site, you may get more traffic than normal...
It's alot harder to earn from normal directories. The bidding directory market is limited time, however. Soon it will disappear. So grab a bidding directory ASAP!
Purely from earnings point-of-view, bidding directory is better. Once a bidding directory gets popular, people start competing for positions and this is good for the webmaster....
Absolute rubbish, and take a look at your homepage on your sig, look at how irrelevant the subject matter is with each other, organised chaos at best. Bidding directories are a gimmick and no self respecting seo company would ever submit to them.
That's why I said "from earnings point-of-view." The reward:effort ratio is much better for a bidding directory. I don't know what self-respecting SEO companies are doing, but I speak for my experience. Personally, I consider most directories (bidding or not) as tools for SERP manipulation and nothing more.
I am not speaking from my experience as a directory owner. I am speaking from my experience as a webmaster. The kind of earnings that sites like bigweblinks.com have generated in such a short time span, are not possible with normal directories. The owner of bigweblinks has more experience with general directories, but when he added a directory to his blazemp.com, he added a bidding directory and not a general directory. The bids in the directory (http://www.blazemp.com/dir/) justify his decision. He would never have achieved such earnings with a general directory.
You can launch a bidding directory afresh rather than converting a general directory to a bidding one.
I had in the past a normal directory with a descent pr. But because it tooked a lot of time, before I earned something from it, I've started a bidding directory. Now so far, I'm very happy with it and I don't see any reason why I should stop with it In fact, I'm in contact now with a designer, to hopefully soon have a unique template for it Greetings from Jason