how much is a directory site worth these days?

Long one - sorry, I am new to the whole developing a website thing (always just coded the things and let them go).

I am curious as to the monetary value of a business listings / directory site -with and without the domain. What I mean is this:

I coded one in 2004 for a client who has thus far failed to develop it much - it's being used as a niché for UK businesses (kind of like yellow pages) with a twist - it's aimed at helping foreigners find things.

anyway, it now has PR 3 (drop from 4) and some deep pages PR (on the old structure which I just 301'd to new more friendly seo urls). It also has site links and appalling traffic of around 70 uniques a day, search engine raffic is about 40%.

Obviously, I have the source code and the DB, the new web 2.0 skin is almost ready - but what I'd really prefer is to buy the domain and keep it all there so I can develop it in terms of real traffic.

What would be a fair price to offer for the lot? the site in question is www.bgyell.co.uk, the new skin is just on the homepage on a dev domain here: http://www.vanillaspy.com/

and long term, with the new look and more traffic, what can this be worth (value or adsense / trade doubler, keyword sales etc), can others that run directories share some ideas on monetising or point me to posts that mention this?

thanks for the read, +REP to any useful answers (and dofollow listings if you really care).

 

Price of directory has many factors involved like: Traffic, Revenue, Brand, Reputation, Submissions, Promotion, Advertising, Ranking, Design.

I personally cannot comment on what price tag can your directory have without knowing everything. As far as what a 'normal' directory can sell for, anything between xxx to x,xxx is what a directory can be priced at.

 

hmmm.. "Traffic, Revenue, Brand, Reputation, Submissions, Promotion, Advertising, Ranking, Design"

ok, since I am trying to arrive to a figure here, i will try to give fair evaluations of this:

1. traffic - it seems to be growing somewhat to about 100 uniques a day, even my blog has more than that.
2. revenue - it's all tied into to some stupid private listings, side banners and trade doubler codes, but it's not much at all
3. reputation - it's a niché as I mentioned, known amidst bulgarians in the uk and some other foreigners, or british people that seek to do business with bulgarians / bulgaria. i think i will have to move away from this and open it up to anything - going into direct competition with yell.com
4. submissions are free atm and i plan on keeping it like so. the v 2.0 is going to have various options for lisings under different postcodes (for services), keyword tagging and keyword bidding. a nofollow is applied at random on 50% of free listings as an incentive to upgrade.
5. pro-active promotion is virtually non-existent, with the exception of a few backlinks from some portals.
6. advertising: see revenue
7. ranking: better than most, 600+ entries, site links etc but crap keywords on serps. SEO was literally non-existent but on v 2.0, organic one will be 100% covered.
8. design: see new design, it is being addressed and it will look better than most with a great web 2.0 look and functionality when i get a chance to finish writing it (contributions, self editing, comments, ratings, badges / user levels like on stackoverflow etc etc - all in the plan for how it can grow). since it's also a geographical directory, listings will also be tied to a google map representation.

so, this gives an idea of what it WILL be once I do ver 2.0 - but what is it worth now though...

 

offering rep for comment is wrong

value ? did you inquire in regards a net profit summary ? income - costs ? that seems like a fair call, this is usually then * 10 / 12 to give a indication of value

as for long term value that can not be done for this reason, say you purchased it, no one here knows your business ability or skills or the amount of time and effort you place into the site, so to say its worth ? well its a worthless call

you need to once established a real net profit then sit down with a rule book and pen and draft a business plan as to outgoing / incoming to work out a estimated or best guess return.

with all of that done and you know you rough price it can be sold for when you have worked your magic, the key then to making money is not when you sell it but when you buy it and the amount you pay.

 

why, if somebody takes time to read of a problem and offer advice / help then it's fair play - they dont _have_ to do this and i can't offer anything else in return.

feedback on solutions to questions is very web 2.0 - take a look at stackoverflow, for example...


anyway, aside from that - no, I have yet to see any concrete figures but I doubt there are any. the bloke that runs it just has it sat there and does nothing over it for months - costs are none as it resides on a server used for other sites that pay for themselves, so anything it does is considered a bonus.

i appreciate you saying that the level and skill of the commitment involved will reflect on the value of the site as it evolves - which is why I seek advice from people that run directories themselves, the only thing I am 100% certain of is the technical know-how. I grok the basic marketing that must ensue but my expertise has thus far been into making e-commerce sites work, the monetising here will be very different...

 

the value of your directory depends largely on its income or its potential. In a niche like yours I doubt that anyone would pay a high price for it until proven revenue..

if it doesnt have any revenue right now you probably wont get more than couple hundred for it (if its an old site and since it has PR3)

 

Having the word yell in the domain isn't helping its value, i suggest you look back to 2007 and see what happend, then you decide.

If you completely ignore what im saying then you will regret it.

Thats not a threat by the way a genuine suggestion, read about it yourself though to fully understand.

 

which dispute was that? i had a look and it seems yell are in the business of disputing domains over trademarks (which they have a lot of) and claiming damages all the time... probably the only reason why bgyell has survived is because it is too small to matter so it remains under the radar. yellow pages is a trademark in the uk... perhaps if the domain was .com ... anyway

for example: yellowikis shutdown threat of 2007, they are still going...
http://blog.eucap.com/creative-commons/yellcom_threatens_to_shutdown_1.html

but having seen the number of disputes, i think i will rename it and build it from scratch instead, he can keep his and deal with yell's legal team when they come.

 

Nah separate from anything to do with yell, to add to any troubles the web directory business got turned upside down in 2007, thats why i said have a look backwards first.

 

oh you mean - the domain name is lacking relevance hence it will have diminished results? i know / am vaguely aware of the shake up in directory services - but to be honest, I don't really care much about that as I don't do it for SEO returns for people - it's a business directory and the plan for monetising was always going to be adverts and keyword bidding internally - you can't make enough money from getting people listed to gain page rank imo (I could be wrong).

the point about yell stands though - i am currently looking for a snappy short name to go to instead...

 

I'm glad you've opted to not use the name. I didn't know that Y`e`l`l protects their brand so aggressively but from a branding perspective using their name in yours would always make yours just a copy or second best.

I also would not use words like directory, link, url in the domain. Think resource more so than directory. Think about the niche - a list of UK businesses for foreigners to use. Build your name and brand around your niche not around overused directory keywords.

 

No but.... um, nevermind what i said, carry on it takes too long to explain.

 

@dimitar - no that is not what pipes means <imo> pipes is a bit of a sour-puss on the directory industry lately and continues to return to 2007 when a certain search engine cracked down on some spammy directories with some good ones also getting caught up in it. If one wants to live in the past that is where they will remain.

IMO people should look to the future.

In regards to the site in question. Based solely upon what your saying I would say that it is not worth much. Like Nima said maybe a couple hundred tops because it has no income and gets basically no traffic. A free directory that gets 100 uv per day is pathetic. Domain is nothing special other than it might be a few years old.

Basically there is nothing really to the site in my opinion that would give it any advantage over starting a new one fresh. So to determine whether to purchase it or not compare what it would cost to purchase vs what it would cost you to build and make a decision. The only X factor would be how you value the age of a domain and if the "yell" thing is a concern to you.

It is a tough call to decide between picking up someone else attempt and trying to make something of it or starting fresh. Most times I would lean towards starting fresh.

 

True hence my reason not to go all deep with an explanation.

 

Are directories like these actually worth anything?

Whenever I stumble across them I leave immediately as they are invariably awful, irrelevant and depressing.

 

That clicks with something I been doing preliminary work on for nearly a year now. Good old Big G seems to love ranking totally useless 'so called' local business directories.

I am currently compiling the data needed to build a regional directory. Will be a local directory run by locals for locals. Gathering the information about businesses within a 7-9 county mostly rural area is no small task.

 

You have all the code right?

I would just buy another domain or two and start building. If you have good code, and a successful model, it can be replicated again and again with new domains. No need to be tied into this one is there?

 

Looks like a very impressive directory design (referring to the one on the dev domain), at the current value I would say around $5xx but if you keep up the developing and make it a useful resource for your niche, it can go higher than that. Business niche is a good pick for directories.

 

The problem you have here is that the directory as it stands now, doesn't sound like it is worth very much. I doubt that the owner would be too impressed if you offered him, say $100-$200 for it, since he probably paid you more than that for coding it! I would definitely make one from scratch if I were you, or even buy a template and modify it.

 

you are right - they did pay more so it would be kind of odd to forward such an offer.

i think i am happy to go with my own design / template under a PR3 7 year old domain i am sitting on, should be a good investment / return for little coding and design work and some promotion... it is tough to populate a local listings directory with data to make it attractive and this one already has nearly 600 'good' listings (and 100 spammy ones which i will cull) - perhaps I could just buy the data for like $50 off of him...