I have a popular free web directory, which is in my siggy. Outside of banners that make me very little and premium listings that are few and far between, what other ways can I make money? I've done an article or two...those work, but I really would prefer a passive cash stream to come from this site...that or find a way to at least use the autosubmitters for my own bidding while they are on my site and do something slightly evil like use their IP's to post links for my sites...lol...
Apart from dropping adsene in, which is known to be less than ideal on directories, the choices are unfortunately limited.
You could actually try to make a real directory with objectively edited quality submissions. What you presently have is a clone of failure.
A new window opens when 'submission rules' is clicked. To avoid this, you may want to modify the code in submit.tpl to: <td><input type="checkbox" id="AGREERULES" name="AGREERULES"{if $AGREERULES eq 'on'} checked="checked"{/if} /> {l}I AGREE with the <a href="http://tiptopdirectory.com/rules.php">submission rules</a>{/l}<br /> {validate form="submit_link" id="v_AGREERULES" message=$smarty.capture.non_rules_agree}</td> Aside from that, there are more things you have to do than go for a custom template The first link I saw on "Latest Links" had Metin2 Yang as anchor text : no site description! I am not here to criticize you but I am suggesting that before you'd like others for to "pay" for your "service", you may want to "create" something that is marketable(...) If you're too tired or bored to "review" those free submissions before approving them, you may want to either 1) stop running a free directory or 2) make it 100% paid, delete all junk listings and feed the directory with editorial listings (first!)... Else, in a few months, before you know it you'd be making a post on BST forum "Free link directory on sale. Low BIN - 5000+ links pending" If your main intent is to make a few cents per month, go for chunks of AdSense on every page! (no offense meant to pro-AdSense members!) I have a lot of respect for quality 'countable few' free directory owners because I can only imagine how hard it is to run one...It's almost like inviting the whole neighborhood (and then some strangers!) to your house every day knowing that they would leave it in a total mess and you agree to clean all the s### up by yourself every night without losing your smile! My best wishes to you!
1.Try to reduce the submission fee for some time and also provide deep links for (Sponsored Review), 2.In directory's business, thing which matters at the end is of PR so try some SEO and work on how to improve your Google PR. These steps could play positive role.
This is spot on. Until you put serious effort in building a quality directory with at least some sort of editorail standards, you are wasting your time thinking about making any money. For example: Check out: http://tiptopdirectory.com/index.php?search=dildo How do "dildo" sites belong in categories like "Toys and Games" (uh, are you kidding me???) or "Shopping Services"? You've got 35,000 listings in only 700 categories. I know it's a ton of work (and boring work at that) but you need to add categories...ALOT of categories. In your "Business" category you have 580 sites listed in that one category. That's ridiculous. Clean that up, add appropriate subcats, and delete some of the garbage. Garbage? Yea...like: http://tiptopdirectory.com/detail/everis-25184.html (Do you speak French?) http://tiptopdirectory.com/detail/online-furniture-store-20260.html (keyword stuffing, reeks of spam) http://tiptopdirectory.com/detail/coches-usados-16186.html (Do you speak Spanish?) http://tiptopdirectory.com/detail/cochescochescoches-11514.html (LOL at the description!) And that's what I found in 30 seconds looking at just ONE of your category pages. It's obvious you spend very little time on this directory and are auto-approving everything submitted without any editing. Until you change that, you may as well not worry about making money. No one wants to pay for featured listings, or text link or banner advertising on a site of questionable quality.
Ah! I found this too Thats called keyword stuffing à la française... The first four words: VOYAGEENINDE, INDEVOYAGE, voyagerinde, Voyager en Inde mean: TravelIndia/ TourIndia, IndiaTravel/IndiaTour, TravelingIndiaTouringIndia, Traveling in India/Touring in India... When the description ever gonna start? Je me demande!
You could offer additional SEO service offers in your directory email templates. The problem doing this with a free directory is that they tend to attract folks who would never pay for anything online.