I am in the process of building a directory of businesses in my area. I will not make my money off of adsense, but off of selling ads locally to the businesses (door to door). If a business purchases a directory ad, their listing will have much more than just a name and phone number. There are many other details to this as well. Questions: I do have at least 2 other sites that will be competition to me. Anything i need to be worried about legally? What is the best way to pull the information of all the businesses in my area? I need to pull this information for the site to be useful to visitors. In other words, all businesses in my niche must be listed. I am reading in the forum that directory websites are typically links, but that is not the case with mine. What would you call my directory website? I am curious so I can do more research on this. Thanks!
You may want to invest in a Hoovers account but it is pricey but it will provide you with a list of all businesses in the USA
Right! However, do people typically just put in all the entries manually? I can get all the businesses from the yellow pages if needed. I just wanted to know if sites like these pull from somewhere, or if it is typically a manual process.
If you want to make a quality resource, there's got to be a manual element. You have to check the businesses are real and still live, and that the information for them is appropriate. One of the main things you will have to consider is copyright, which also exists in databases. You definitely can't just copy Yellow Pages. However you can use a Dmoz dump, with proper attribution, as your starting point. So can anyone else. So the question you need to ask yourself is, how am I going to make my offering different from anyone else's?
Thank you for your response. So i cannot manually copy entries from yellowbook or any other public directory? Isnt this jsut like copying down addresses and numbers from the phone book or is this too an issue? Thanks.
I see now what you mean about the database copyright at Yellowbook. Does that mean a phone book is the same way? I checked out DMOZ, but it does not have the stuff in my area. I am not really sure how other people get this info.
Theres no reason to be worried about anything legal unless you plan to break your local laws while doing this or are intending on ripping content or something from your competitors. Why are you going to sell door to door? It seems like an old fahioned and annoying to the potential clients way of doing it. If you setup a website to explain this and what the customer gains from being listed in yours it will be a better use of your time. You need to be able to convince them from a website that your website service is worth paying for. You should only be willing to turn up on their doorstep or answer questions on the phone if they really require it. Your going to list all of the businesses in your niche/area regardless of them purchasing from you from the door to door experience?
Theres no reason to be worried about anything legal unless you plan to break your local laws while doing this or are intending on ripping content or something from your competitors. >So copying a business name and address from a directory or phone book would not be illegal? Why are you going to sell door to door? It seems like an old fahioned and annoying to the potential clients way of doing it. <<This is not the only way I will be doing it, but keep in mind that most of these businesses have no presence on the internet what so ever. If you setup a website to explain this and what the customer gains from being listed in yours it will be a better use of your time. >>agreed, but see above. You need to be able to convince them from a website that your website service is worth paying for. >>Agreed You should only be willing to turn up on their doorstep or answer questions on the phone if they really require it. Your going to list all of the businesses in your niche/area regardless of them purchasing from you from the door to door experience? >>That is correct. The site must be useful to visitors. They key is to get the traffic, then I know i can sell it. I have read a lot on SEO, and dont have too much competition in this area.
No, it's not illegal to do that. Good idea to be concentrating on getting visitors to it and not just a place to list companies.
I don't think he can use dmoz simply because his info must include such a things like: Street Phone Number Open Hours Google's Location Map etc. dmoz has nothing to offer in this regard Note to K-Dubb Check Arfoo directory script. It has all you need to run Business directory and if I'm not mistaken it has a scrapper you can use to rip off your local YP. That script is free to use BTW
I don't know what area/country you are talking about, but there may be a database provider that covers your area, which would allow you to buy/rent data. Providing a lot of information making your site a useful resource for visitors is key to growing and sustaining traffic growth, so your going the right direction if you are looking at a commercial directory, rather then a link directory. Ref the door to door to gain customers, this may be a viable tactic in your part of the world, so don't be put off because people tell you this wont work. Every region has a different formula, trial and error will soon tell you what works in your locality. The only constant is ongoing hard work Good luck!
That is fine with me, I just wanted to make sure! I will check out the arfooo script. Thank you all so much for your help.