Are Directories Decent Money Makers?

I was thinking about starting a few niche directories with a simple free script, but before I do, I was wondering if its worth my time...

Will a simple directory with basic seo work and adsense produce enough income to justify the time spent creating it and sorting through submissions?

What type of effort would be needed to make $50/month, $75/month, $100/month?

I'm just a poor college student looking to make a few bucks, any thoughts appreciated.

 

Your not going to make money getting paid submissions unless you have a high pr / traffic. That will take some time. Otherwise, a free directory would get you many more visitors and you could make money off of adsense or some other ppc. Not much though. I have a couple directories, they make about $10/mo from adsense.

 

Thanks for the reply, I figured after 2-3 months of submissions and indexing $10-$20/month would be the result from adsense, plus $20-$25 for text links once the main page hits a PR4.... anyone else see similar income?

 

20-25$ for a pr 4 link, your joking right?

anyways if you use a script like 'phplinksdirectory' you can set it so that you have both 'free' (helps build the directory) and 'featured (helps make a few extra $$) and is also easy to mod (so you can add adsense or whatever into the template.

 

Yes, I think it's worth the time and effort. I operate a few directories, and together arund 4 of them are worth $300+ per month.

 

$20-$25/month total for home page PR4 links at $5/month each.

I was planning on keeping all submissions free unless the sub pages started showing decent PR. I'll look into phplinksdirectory, I was thinking Biz Directory script, but I've just started looking at whats out there.

 

Ahh i see, i thought ya meant $20 each

phplinksdirectory, is very seo friendly (and has mod-rewrite option in admin panel) and every part of the template can be changed to however you want it to look.

 

Well, on a similar note, just to clarify. My directory has made $65 in "featured" links thus far, to go along with the adsense. So, it's been worth about $100 so far. Not really worth my time, but hey these days having a directory is the "in" thing.

 

I hate my directory right now, I'm sooo tired of looking at spam websites. I'm in the process of having it totally redone into something useful, that'll get some traffic. I'm expanding it to be more of a portal, with articles, shopping, news (uploadable feeds like froogle or something - that'll be so cool) and lots of other stuff.

 

Talking adsense profit is talking about traffics. Dont go only for directories, there are plenty of option out there.

For example:
If you had a powerful writting, you can try blogging. Another good option is doing teens traffic. Not porn! I mean targeting your website to teenagers. Talk about sports, daily life, horoscope, hobbies, love, wild jokes and so on.

 

Niche directories may make you more money both from an adsense and submission perspective.

 

100%...

My main directory is now almost enough to live off (in london $$)... but took a lot of work... I guessing its paid me about £0.50 per hr about $0.27...

I use a monthly / yearly set up... and the adsence bring in about the same as the directory...

Note a not so niche directory returns low low adsense as most of the people on it are people looking for backlinks and many SEO's will not click on adsense....

 

A directory is like most businesses. You get from it what you put into it. If you’re willing to spend a year in development and don’t mind spending a minimum of $20,000 to get it rolling and fund continual development and marketing you have a chance of doing well.
This also deepens greatly on how much experience you have with directories as well. If you don’t have the experience you will probably end up with another high PR wonder that gets banned in a year or less by Google for buying PR or numerous other tactics banned by Google exclusively for Directories.

 

My directory makes me a little money. I probably get about 10-20 bucks a month from AdSense, and around 150 or so a month from paid submissions (only charging 3 bucks). My site is fairly new so I am happy with those figures. The site at least pays for itself. With a little more time and money invested by myself I could probably pull in a bit more.

Also what a pain in the backside to sift through all those submissions that keep piling up, probably 80-90% are spam.