How has 2007 been for Directory Owners? Share your experience!!

2007 was a great year for me and my directories, I have learned a lot and will continue building better directory based projects. These are the three most successful directory based projects of the year for me personally:

www.TopUrlSearch.com
www.Portal4Health.com
www.Portal4Finance.com

My hope for 2008 is that the number of junk directoires being built each month will drop as folks realize there is no quick bucks to be made in this business.

 

Apart from the pagerank crap, i think 2007 has been a great year for me. In anycase, i wasn't much of a webmaster anyways in 2006.

 

Dont count on that, but i know what you mean.

Well done on your accomplishments.

 

I share your hope.

Web directory should be more than: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Step 1: "Hmmm... I should make some quick $$$. I am really not in 'working mood' so... I'll try to make some money with a web directory."

Step 2: "Let's go for a great domain. It should contain web directory or, at least, directory. Let's find one domain with directory as... the name shouldn't be too long..."

Step 3: "WOW! I have it! It is: doncidirectory.com*. It is composed by Donci [the name of the guinea-pig I had in my childhood**] and directory."

Step 4: "My skateboarder friend, when he's free... I mean... after he has unfortunates accidents and he has to stay in the house, he use to do some design and programming works... I'll go to him to make some business. I'll buy some PHP script and... I'm quite sure that he'll do the site in max. 2-3 days..."

Step 5: "After all these efforts I'll do some SEO work... I'll send out 3 million e-mails and... if only 10% will buy a link I'll do a lot of money... Of course, my links will be affordable... $35/link, not $99,95 like at Alive..."

* actionally, this domain is available...
**yes, this is a fact

Feel free to laugh or, at least, to smile... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Theres nothing wrong with wanting to make cash from a web directory, dont tell me you do it because your bored.

 

I believe it is possible to make quick money from directories and keep making it, maybe were all just crap at running directories

 

got me laughin, scateboarder mate,

 

Could we see it? You made a qualification, so please provide the link, too.

 

I am really not a scateboarder, but I am glad you liked the story...

 

I think mike is refering to this post I made a while back 13 Stages of Free Directory Ownership

Or it could be a post I made detailing how one DP member was starting free directories on dropped domains and selling links, then flipping them over at SP, I will try and find that link too.

I agree, making money is a commendable goal but it is how you go about it that serperates the scammers from the honest business person.

For example there is one DP member here that started a really nice bidding directory at the height of the craze and made some very quick cash, I think that is great. But now there are tons of followers that create multiple crappy directories, some on dropped domains and then they try and trick folks into buying links and advertising. Those two examples are of making money the right way and the wrong way IMHO.

 

Spot on, i agree, how you go about it is a big difference, to your business and your reputation in general.

Good point jg123

 

I have owned directory sites for over 3 years now,and started a new one back in jan.Overall 2007 was good.I learned alot this year about how to better promote my sites more than anything.Also,the Google update helped one of my sites tremendous,but hurt a few others as far as PR goes,but submissions are steady so i will not complain.2008 should be a banner year!

 

Thanks Mike, if you enjoyed that one you might like the new ending (two more stages) I added here, http://www.portal4directories.com/articles/article-1.html

After reading templates post I should also add that learning what works promotion wise is a tough thing to do. I thought I had it down pat when I had multiple directoires getting regular (pretty much daily) submissions, but I am not sure about that now. I guess I will know more as my current directory projects mature.

 

Mike in my case you are correct the directory did get sold, but I never started another free directory again....I learned from my mistake. Plus I wanted my post to be a 'cliff-hanger'!

 

Wow I made it to stage 10 in 3 days

 

I can see that new directories would have had a good year, but it seems to me that many established pages must have suffered with google's pretty savage lowering of PR for directory based pages over the last few months