These questions are for those that have an income from their directory business- Have you seen submission fall recently? Are you spending less promoting you own site?
Spend per visitor is down, Visitor numebrs are up. Paid listings almost non existent, Ad revenue up Earnings are the same but only due to increased traffic.
Sure. One of the first areas that companies cut back on is on advertising and promotion. It is also affecting newspapers, radio, TV....
It's affecting many people both on and offline. I do think however some industries will be hit harder than others.
Sometimes it is hard to tell when looking at it from a broad perspective...localised buys, atleast where I am, are not affected at all here. People still be spending.
I don't think its the economic downturn - many areas of the world dont seem to be massively affected. I think its more that directories are less essential in many peoples eyes since Google took it out of their webmaster guidelines.
Ive not seen a drop, even with a free option in place, the amount of paid submissions is about the same as before.
I think that the economy itself is as it always has been. The only difference is that media has set panic into people, and thereby increasing consumers 'need to save' mentality. If the media said "hey everything is fine, and money is flowing," then people will be spending like they have money to spend. See what I mean?
OK so most see a slow down although a couple do not. I am seeing about half the paid submissions each day compaired to October (even though traffic is up) Thank you all for your comments.
I think you're pretty close. The sensationalistic media drives many of the issues facing the economy, real estate etc. Don't get me wrong as I do think there are definitely issues which need addressing, but the media scaring the public senseless certainly does not help matters at all.
I think that everything's affected, including directories business. Hopefully things are going to get better soon.
hmmm well The SEOs are still making money so submits come in but i agree that its not like it was a few months ago thats for sure... im sure it will pick up but it might take a few months or a year before consumer spending comes back to where it was at. laterz malcolm
Personally, my directory was doing ok before but its went to zero in the last few months. The internet is suffering this huge problem of having more and more content at the same time as having more and more people coming online wanting to make a quick buck, (a lot of this is due to article directories) as well as the economy having difficulty so - i think now is the time to really think about your strategy short, medium and long-term. Just as an example, i've seen many sites on sitepoint that have not sold that should have because people are expecting the old prices of the boom days.