Give some feedback please

Hello, I'm trying to get some feedback on pricing for my directory from some of the experienced directory owners here at dp. The directory in question is http://www.mystickcal.com Its a PR3 directory and right now I have featured listings at one dollar per month. How should I do pricing? Should I do it yearly instead of monthly? I'm not doing one time as I do free listings and featured is my only source of income for the site. Also, for a PR3 directory what should I charge? Does anybody care to take a stab at pricing for featured links for one year from pr0 to pr10 directories. Because right now I'm a pr3 but predicted to be a pr5 so if you could give me all prices I won't have to ask again lol Thanks in advance and I'll defintely give you some green for your help!

 

I will take a stab at it...

PR3 = $5
PR4 = $10
PR5 = $15-$25
PR6 = $30-$45
PR7 = $50-$85
PR8 = $90-$150
PR9 = $155-$300
PR10 = $305-$1000

Of course, there are other factors to consider in some cases since it has been so long since Google has had a real PR update that provided updates for sites that already have PR. Even then, there can be other factors, including traffic as a big one. That is, it's hard to pay more than $20 for a featured listing if traffic will not be a factor at all. So, you should definitely be trying to get traffic to your directory too.

 

Do year prices, the only one that makes money with month payments is paypal
$12 year looks good for a pr3 directory, also depends on the pr of the page.

 

Okay, well my 3 month alexa ranking is 98,000 how good is that when it comes to traffic?

So from what I'm understanding about $12 - 15 dollars a year for my pr3 directory for a featured link? That sound about good?

 

My personal opinion
I look at your site:
- custom template (good, I like it)
- homepage pagerank 3 (good)
- Internal pagerank 0 (very bad)
- big google adsense (bad)
- google cache on selected internal page
http://www.mystickcal.com/Computers-and-Internet/Web-Directories/(absent) – other cached pages 6 regular pages 14 supplemental (very, very bad)
- backlinks one pr5 some pr4, loots of pr0 (normal for a pr3)

Sorry I would pay $0 to get listed, if you fix the cache I would pay $5 for a featured
That’s my honest opinion
Cheers

 

That's a very good start with Alexa.

 

Very good points. These are the kinds of things I was talking about with other factors.

 

Okay, and what is the best way to increase my cache with google? I currently am using the sitemap feature and I have a sitemap at both google and yahoo. So basically it will just take some time???

Also, hey I'm glad your being honest ask. Thats why I asked here. If you were just telling me what I wanted to hear how would I make my directory any better. Thanks for your honesty and please continue to let me know what I'm doing wrong

 

- Get more quality backlinks, and preferably deep-links, normally hard to build you will have to pay for them.
- Unique meta-description for each category, you can automate the process.
- (This one is really hard for a Directory) Write unique content.

 

How can I automate the custom meta tags and info for each category? Can you PM me about that? Thanks for the help, also, how do I have unique content? Maybe make a blog about stuff happening with the directory? Kinda like a blog about myself trying to build a successful directory. What do you think? Thanks for all the ideas so far and please keep them coming!

 

That’s really an excellent idea and could also became a real traffic magnet the problem only solves the problem on the blog pages not the directory pages, you have to insert unique content on the directory pages.
I will PM with the code you must do to automated the meta-tags.

 

Hmm but if I put unique content on the directory pages wouldn't that take away from the links. What if I had the rss feed of like the top post displayed in the footer of each page from the blog?

 

Example of unique content, on my Ask Directory every review is unique, I review the site and the description the user enters is modified to my own words. Loot of work if you are running a free directory I think you can’t do this.
That is the difference from free / paid, and one of the reasons you have to pay for getting listed on my directory, I could not offer this service for free, sometimes I spend 30 minutes optimizing 1 review.

 

Hmm yeah that sounds good but I don't think I could keep up as a free directory. I'm already behind on approving links lol. Well on my blog I could always update about new sites in it and link to the catagory which would give me a link to that catagory? What do you think about that? Also, your pricing for your directory ask-dir is it yearly or what?

 

Yes it’s yearly, it’s a continuous work sometimes I have to change the review, I have to visit the sites so no "gone bad” sites are listed next to yours. And it’s a guaranteed for the client if you don’t like the value the directory offers you just don’t renew.
My idea is not to have many listings if you go for a inclusion only price you have to always get more listings and are diluting the value of already listed sites, my model I cap so you are getting more value year after year.

 

Well its not that I'm trying to have a bunch of links in my directory, as I manually do go through all the links that are submitted and make sure they are good sites. I feel I do work hard and well on that part. I just started it as a free site because visitors that come ot my directory and do a search and see no sites...not so good. Right now my return visitor rate is 47% which I think is really good. 47% of the people that come to mystickcal directory end up coming back. I'm sure it will turn paid as I increase in pagerank. Not because I'm money hungry but because if I get up to a pr6 for example I would have soooo many free listings a day I would never be able to keep up so I would probably change it to a paid directory so that I could keep up

 

I don’t believe in the free directory model on the long term, you have to invest hard to get it to pr6 and then you have a directory full of free links.
Best luck to your directory.