new to directory ownership. getting around 80 submissions a day and trying to admit only good ones, makes me wonder is there a finite size for a directory or does one just keep adding to it? Mine I guess is quite small around 900 links but growing daily. How big should one go x,xxx's, xxx,xxx's?
invest time and money in it to make it good. Quality is what makes the difference. Doesn't matter how big it is.
Mine is getting bigger every day. I think there is no limit for it. It also depends on how long you will run it successfully.
thanks for the comments, yes, trying to keep the quality links, takes a while to wade through them all, site had 3,000 pending when I got it and trying to whittle that down and cope with the new ones down to around 2,500 around a month to go I guess. The comment about at least 1/2 links in each cat seems good, maybe I'll start approving and sorting by cat not date so as to even the spread. thanks again for the help
Yes, the bigger it gets the harder it will get to manage. Are you a free directory? If so how do you manage 80 submissions a day, do you review every one of them thoroughly?
harder in terms approving submissions? [/QUOTE] Are you a free directory? If so how do you manage 80 submissions a day, do you review every one of them thoroughly?[/QUOTE] free + paid, thats how it was when I got it, I am not sure whether or not to change it, maybe I should switch to just paid while I catch up, problem is my domain name - has free in it! (its in my sig) reviewing - I first check the domain and some I delete just based on that, foreign language I delete, usual adult, viagra etc delete, that gets rid of around 50-60% then I check cat and usually have a quick look at them using cooliris if they seem legit ie not MFA of clickbank,ebay etc they go through. If there is a better way PLEASE let me know.
if you change to paid, expect submissions to drop to nearly nothing those 80 people are submitting because its free and only a small number would pay to let a directory grow larger is the natural progression but try not to run ahead too much in adding lots of empty categories
Quality over quantity. I would rahter have a free directory with 500 high quality links than 10,000 pill, warez and other spam sites in it.
It all depends, I know we get well over that amount of submissions a day, and we aren't free, combine this the amount in our old database and it's a huge task but will be worth it in the long run. A little hard work hurts no-one and the bigger you get the more people you can employ to review submission anyway. @mcjp6; This is a handy read for submissions and how to manage them.
The one challenge that no one has mentioned is category length. Be watchful over how many sites are listed in any one category. I've seen some directories that had 50,60, even hundreds of pages in one broad category. My advice is that when a category starts getting overly large to break it up into more subcategories. If you leave gigantic categories people will be discouraged from submitting to them and will either submit to some other category where there site does not belong or leave without submitting at all. The only real limitations on size is your time and any restrictions of your hosting account and both of those have the ability to be fixed with some inve$tment.
Good advice, category management is vital to a directories success. Growth is usually accompanied by income to suit, which if done correctly should allow you to cover all bases ref hosting etc. It should always be people's ambitions to get their own servers co-located, when that happens you know you've pretty much made it.
yes but was your directory free to start with? starting a free directory gets you people mainly interested in not paying for a listing when you change to paid..very little submissions
It's not mine, but 8 years ago it was free, but there wasn't so much crap about as there is now which takes up so much editorial time when reviewing. Believe me when I say, there were no real plans to start charging for reviews, the idea was simply to run off advertising. Things don't always pan out the way you want them to though, and market forces together, with the evolution of the internet and subsequent abuse made it impossible to run a free directory. It is planned though that when we get back to where we want to be we may even revert back to that model, you never know. It would certainly be my hope as, if and when I take over the helm.
The bigger it gets, the harder it can be to manage. You have to clean the listings periodically, and that occasionally means a manual re-review. You can automate to some extent, with a 404 checker or something that looks for parked pages. But there's no automation that will catch family-friendly listings that change to porn, or dead listings that leave a unique message explaining why the website is down.
the bigger the better, but I think quality plays a big role here. If you are getting so many submissions a day then you can just choose the best ones to accept.