Started my first website www.rablamuc.com in July. It is a PR3 webdirectory I bought. I have just got 2500 websites listed in my directory and have had just under 2000 unique hits! I have left it as a free directory and was getting lots of hit then after the first 2 weeks I got greedy and started to charge for listings and the hit went down to 10 a day. I guess I learnt my lesson and have kept it free. Are many of these listings done by bots? Also what are my stats like compare to other directories? Thanks
i have a free directory. those stats are typical. free directories get better traffic with no promotion, but make less revenue. its quite time consuming to review submissions when you get over 200 a day
Something that i found out when my directories were free, i review carefully and the sheer numbers of submissions while free are overwhelming if your taking your time reviewing.
Two reasons for that is folks almost always take 'free' over 'paid' anything and lots and lots of submission bots are probably doing the bulk of submitting to your directory. Your experience is quite typical for a free directory owner and I myself was there around 2 years ago, here is a blog post I made some time back that you might get a chuckle from, 13 Stages of Free Directory Ownership
I have made about $40 in selling sponsered links I bought the pr3 site for about $20 and have paid about $5 in advertising so I have made a profit. I didnt really have a plan this is my first site just wanted to see how well it could do.
not that much really 15mins a day to check submissions and a new linkswhen they are sold. The problem is there are so many web directorys around dont think you can make big money from them
Captcha is a code that generates an image passkey for your user to input before the submission is accepted. I'm sure you've had to use them everywhere. They disrupt automatic submissions, so most directories use them, you probably should, too. You'll get fewer submissions, but they'll be higher quality. On the other hand, not having it is probably helping you populate the index so fast.
one way to make money from directorys is - offer free listings to attract webmasters, make sure they have to verify their submission (i.e. you are verifying their email address) and send out monthly / bi weekly newsletters. For example, sign up for paycom.com and find some software or program that you think will be useful to webmasters, review it, and send it as part of your newsletter to webmasters. It has to be something that would be relevant to webmasters, like a search engine submission tool, or some templates etc. . . you will find a high conversion rate from people who submit to your directory. You could make even more if your directory is for a particular niche. . .