Ok so heres the plan. I'm thinking of creating a clean, SEO friendly directory. I'll spend $3000 on purchasing links and featured links on other directories and forums. Like what Alive Directory is doing. After accepting free submissions for a few months, i'll make it a paid only directory and then reinvest every penny for the next YEAR from paid submissions back into buying more links on forums, directories and other forms of advertising. What do you think? Will I eventually make money after the first year?
Don't give free links, Making money really depends on how much PR you get and how much you will charge. Take a look a this thread i created. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=129836
that is the worst directory strategy, Think about it after 3 months you'll have like 3000 links, all categories will be fill and you'll never sell any links cause the # of outgoing links on a page is very important, it decreases value of my paid links. Also most categories would be on page 2, I would never pay to be on page 2 when I could of got on page 1 for free. Its either paid or free, end of story Goof luck, to answer your question people buy link based on 2 things - PR and traffic. Some people care about traffic mostly, and some about PR, and some want both. Make sure you have a nice design too $3000 is way more than enough for a PR 6, and possibly for a PR 7 so I think if ou invest $3000, your return profits could be huge, the directory market is oversatured, by 95% of them are crap, so the quality directory market is wide open please paid from the start
You have a very good point. I don't own a directory, i know nothing about them. I only know how to submit to them. If i knew it all, I wouldnt be posting a thread here asking for your opinions. I guess the cost will start out low and then gradually increase as traffic and PR increases.
I think the way you plan on going sounds good, but I do agree. Don't allow free links, even if you charge just a small amount, .99-2.99 at first you will be better off in the long run and have better quality sites. That is what I am doing here Submit4Backlinks.com. I offered DP members first crack at listings as .99 each and have now raised it to 1.99. After I get PR3+ I will raise it again. good luck
With that budget you can get some serious backlinks! I wonder how much alivedirectory spends on paid inclusions.
i'll do this instead... 1. spend the $3000 to get toolbar pr and traffic up as high as possible for 1st few months 2. then open up for submissions - all paid 3. then take the new money and reinvest to further increase toolbar pr and traffic 4. after that pocket whatever extras you get as profit no matter what other people say about how useless toolbar pr is... most people still look at it when they buy links, buy sites or submit to directories... another point about not allowing free submissions for a few months - all your potential customers would have submitted by then... not many left to buy links when you change to paid mode...
Yes PR is very quick simple objective way to evaluate a site quality and alexa is another so 90% of clients will look at it.
We have both paid only, and free/paid directories and the preferred option is paid for a number of reasons many that have been addressed already in this thread above It is very very important that promoting and marketing is a top priority to support a quality directory
Free directories are really a “pain in the ass†if you charge 0.50 you will get 20% or 10% of the submissions and don’t have to deal with all these crappy sites out there.
With 3,000$ budget you can do alot. You can bring your directory to a very decent position. Don't do only featured link campaign, buy links in webmaster related sites, sponsor projects (such as free templates) and concentrate on SEO. Here is a suggested table for you to spend: Projects Sponsorship : 500$ Site-wide links in miscelleneous webmaster sites : 700$ Featured links in directories : 500$ High-Quality Template : 400-500$ Directory Script + additions : 100$ The remaining 700$ you can spend on other ideas of promoting or simply spend more in one of the mentioned above options. Do not make it free. As soon as you get the template and install the dir put the desired pricings (suggested price by me : 19,95$ for a normal link per year, since your budget is 3,000) and leave them like that. From the beggining, people won't submit to your dir of course, but if you continue with the campaign and don't stop, you'll see the results I hope this will help, Rezo
Another note, don't leave your directory empty while building traffic and PR. Put in quality links yourself at least and like the above poster said just put up your prices so folks can submit if they want. Allow the early-birds to get a deal on the price and then raise it when you get toolbar PR and have some traffic.
If you will be getting high PR in the long run, open it with the price you will be selling links for in the end, so if you aimed on the submission price being $29.99, open with that only! just my thoughts..
didnt someone just get in a big hissy because they had a free directory and then after the PR update decided to make it paid so they sent everyone an e-mail telling them to pay up or else they were going to delete their previously free link ?