adsense on directories doesn't work for me either - i think you better concentrate on marketing it and will see really better money from the paid submissions instead.
I think if you are providing some services for free, you are authorized to put adsense, I have adsense on my directories and result is decent. But If a Directory is only for Paid listing then I don't think anyone need adsense.
Adsense and other ad-based programs as a revenue stream only works on directories with non-submitting traffic. Submitters typically don't click on anything unrelated to completing their submission.
So only one revenue stream is allowed? As the vast majority of visitors to my pay-for-review directory do not buy a review why shouldn't I offer contextual ads? Some users obviously find them useful as they click on them, I get some £s what's wrong with that?
I was just giving a general Idea because I have visited quite a few Paid directories Ranking in 5 figures are without Ads). AS I said before, it's a good thread to generalize how directory owners are running their directories and what are they Targeting)... But You are the owner, and whatever the way is to earn money, is fine))
Who said you have to make money reselling ads? We never make any money with adsense, so we deleted them to have our site real estate to ourselves. Sell $5.00/mo. spot and you will make 10 times more than by giving Google space for maybe 50c. per month my 2c. fastreplies
For $5.00 per month you don't need PR and lots of traffic. You can also exchange adds with related site as well Just use your imagination fastreplies
If you are selling banner ads I would suggest you make them nofollow, which takes PR out of the consideration anyway. The more traffic you get the more you can heap up the prices - but that's a general rule for advertising I've just recently created some room on one of my directories to start selling ad space [it's at $5/mth too], so it will be interesting to see how it goes. It's a relatively new site but the traffics growing at a good rate.
Do you think this could be a viable business model for advertisers? Making the banner nofollow may reduce advertisers' interest on the site altogether (...)
Well as a directory there's already enough pressure on you by search engines (Google especially) to do good. If you're selling PR it's one more thing they can penalize you for. I'm not a complete expert when it comes to Google & penalties but perhaps some of the others can help out here. If there is a chance they penalise you because of it as I suspect, it's not a risk I would be willing to take to make a few bucks. I guess it would also come down to how obvious or otherwise it is that you're selling PR too. Selling based on traffic alone eliminates that risk factor - and lets face it, as a directory you should be aiming to be able to send some traffic [although I realise most directories don't succeed here]. Otherwise you're just a facility for others to add their website. Also banner ads usually have the primary goal of traffic. If the goal is search engine optimisation, text links are generally more powerful.
Directories are easy.... if you are willing to work at them as if they were any other site: Useful content = Visitors = Saleable product Adsense makes me a small fortune each month. Why? Because categories are so niche defined with unique introductions and every listing being unique that they appear as individual pages about that subject... and they're useful! If, as 95% of directory owners do, you put up a "link price" and think you'll sit back and wait for the money to come in you're wrong. Invest in your product and people will want to advertise with you. Moreover they'll come to you! Investing in your product doesn't mean buying links, again as 95% of directory owners think, it actually means reviewing sites and creating something unique... Invest the time and make something no one has done before or do it better than the current best in class. Thats simple business and applies equally to websites, coca cola, arms manufacturers or Directories! Doe adsense work? If you have genuine visitors and you're offering a good service / information then I've found that on any website there are perhaps around only 3% of pages that it doesn't!
Reviewing web sites, their quality and descriptions submitted is the main job for any directory owner. Directories are harder to maintain IMO than a regular web site...specially when it's offering free reviews. If you find yourself in front of a list of 500+ websites that you'll have to review one by one and actually modify site description/ category if required...you'd understand what I am talking about...
Lol... I can tell you that of each page of 25 listings on average: Rejected immediately: - 14 go in the bin for being submitted to a wildly incorrect category - 4 go in the bin for using Spammy titles - 3 go for using the URL in the description - 1 goes for being a Spammy site Approved: - 1 gets approved for being submitted correctly with a unique title and description and is in the most appropriate category. - 2 Sites are edited by hand in their description and title as they're useful to visitors and good sites. With an average of 400 subs a day (some submission services got the idea when I started "Banning" their clients sites) it takes around 30 - 45 minutes to clear through each days submissions. It means the site grows by around 3 pages a day and thats ok. Especially seeing as that within a month each page makes $1 via adsense and continues to go on doing so each month for the rest of its life... Now multiply that by the 15,000 listings in the directory and it quckly adds up! All for 30-45 minutes a day to create something "Unique".
Nice post Swedal. One more point which I need to add on, which is very practical. All the orders of submissions to directories are given to directories submitter who are working for long time and they do know where to navigate to submit your stories, so no one will click on the ads. I never clicked on ads in webdirectories.
That's true. But I personally believe that directory owners should be focusing on getting user-traffic, as opposed to submission traffic. Otherwise, what's the point of having your directory on the world wide web? If it's just a facility for people to add their sites IMO your directory is useless, and pointless at that. User-traffic will give you an awesome click-through rate too. Just something else to think about.
True. That's also why only listings cannot make the content of a directory if you're trying to attract general visitors...
You can if you; a.) Edit your submissions, as to produce *near* unique content, and; b.) Actively find and write submissions of your own as to produce unique content, and quality links you might not get otherwise.