I added a directory to a small site (The most useful site) and I've sold some paid links. That already payed for the domain name and extras. Now I expect to get some traffic once it gets indexed in google.
In order to be able to evaluate the income possibilities, the main question is: How many submissions/day [submissions/week] has the paid directories? Examples are more than welcome!
In my experience there is not too much money in monetizing a directory with adsense (probably because mostly webmasters go there), featured links will make you some money though.
My tip would be find a niche, theirs so many now that you really should try appeal to a certain group of people.
Niche directories typically need to suffer longer initial hump in terms of monetization from paid submissions than general directories, simply because submission is open to smaller group of websites. However, once you survive it and establish yourself in the niche area, roi may be pretty sweet since competition is less fierce than in general web directory market.
i've a site linkshall.com its getting about 20-30 free submissions but i'vent even sold a featured links which costs only 2$. Why? What is the reason? How to sell them?
This topics remembers me that I have to approve links on mine =) I've been too busy with my latest project! =D