Whats the best way to develop and market multiple directories (5 or more )? Do you hire people to submit your directories manually into other directories for backlinks?
One thing I have seen done is people will offer a special deal when you buy featured links on multiple directories.
Yeah, go hire someone to submit them for you at the marketplace: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=60 There's some submission services with very reasonable prices.
I'd actually recommend that you try to keep the directories as separate and as different as possible. Bob Mutch's 5 directories got nuked, in part because they all had similar inbound link profiles and the similar listings (even though I think he tried to ensure that the descriptions for a particular site differed across directories).
i think you should keep it different, but make sure you add them all as your network sites ... like in the footer keep it like Network: and name it ... Also to advertise them .. what u can do is hire people to submit for you .. but the good idea is launch one directory and than once you get backlinks for that one launch another directory ... and put this one on your main directory ... and follow the chain .. this way it is not as stressful buy links from other sites ... always have different keywords, description and title... Jeff have a good point to keep it different because the PR does go down if its not different. Other than that ... good luck...
ive created a few directories by chosing something im interested in (like a hobby) and creating a niche directory one was a gaming one was a drifting/motorsports one is dir of dir one is general and one im working on is a local directory (new zealand) so all are/were unrelated get 2 hosting accounts 4 directories a b c d a and b are on the same account c and d on another a links to c , b links to d, c links to b, d links to a
Drop the general directory Pay to get them submitted to other directories Make submissions free initially (always?) Promote on forums related to each niche