Well I am slowly but surely getting there. After three weeks of being online I have obtained 3 sponsored listings and 69 regular listings. Its just a time consuming process but as you said it is for a niche market so it is certainly more time consuming then I would imagine a gneral directory would be. But its worth it plus I have learned a lot about our little sport
I don't agree, I think a niche directory has to be considerably less time-consuming than trying to categorise the whole general internet. But you do have to spend some time at the beginning setting up your filters. General directories do tend to get overwhelmed with submissions, it's true. But even if they have thousands of entries they will always be a long way from listing most of the useful resources on any topic. Whereas you will never have to work so hard in order to have a good-quality and comprehensive directory on karting.
In a specific niche directory, as TStewartFan said, a lot of your time is spent on the marketing to get visitors. With a general directory it's the opposite; you get visitors without trying too hard, and therefore your time is spent on reviewing. With the SBD Directory Script 2.1, we've included filters where you can search for parts of a URL, Title, Description or Email to return and delete multiple submissions. So if you come across a lot of bad submissions from a certain email you can delete them all in one go. If you're not including certain sites you can search keywords in the description, url and title to again mass-remove unwanted submissions. We've focused on structuring the script so you can work smarter and not harder. Thanks
Good point. Another aspect of this is that, to begin with at least, you can't rely on other people to populate the directory with listings. It takes more effort to get things started. My theory is that, once established, a niche directory will be easier to maintain. But exactly how hard it is to get it going depends on how narrow the niche is, as well as good marketing.
Well for my little directory it is quite time consuming trying to find karters and karting businesses worldwide and presenting the new directory to each of these webmasters/karters. I am quite certain once the site has been populated with quite a few listings and begins receiving a substantial amount of word of mouth advertising that my work marketing the website will greatly dimenish but as of right now it has been quite a time consuming process. Between searching for the websites, determining the best category for the website, and emailing the webmaster/owner with my directory information and my recommended category has been quite intense. However I am slowly starting to gain ground and now have 83 submissions total into the directory and am doing pretty decent with the search engines (considering its only 3 weeks old): My Week Three Stats Maybe one day I'll try out a general directory but for now will focus on one directory at a time....heh It has been a tremendous amount of fun doing this though so I would never not recomend doing your own...regardless if its niche or general
Your karting directory looks great! If was into karts I'd go in it - so that's something. I've attached a blog to my directory linking back to the main site, in which I'm posting niche relevant articles. Perhaps this will help in your case. See what I mean here http://www.prestigedealer.com
Now thats a cool little directory you got going there as well. I was like hmmmm I wander how many Lambo listings they got...maybe one day I'll be able to save up enough pennies from my 11 an hr gig to buy one And thanks for the compliments and assistance because I can use the help Will prolly give old php link a shot next time because they seem to be a bit more helmpful with their script and now I see they already have a bloggin feature
I'd say that's a pretty good theory. Once you're recongnised as being "the" directory for say, karting, people with karting websites will feel a need to be included in the directory.
So I guess it's more attactive to have niche directories than those general "covers all" directories.
I'm probably being a bit slow here but where is this available and is it simple to use? Thanks in advance,
Our PHP SEO friendly directory script is available at http://www.snowblind-development.com if you want to consider all of the alternatives before making a decision.
Phplinkdirectory has hundreds of users, it's well marketed. As well as to create some unique additional features, one of the main reasons we coded our directory script was to make something that isn't being used by mass numbers. We also discourage having loads of directories with the same footer, which is why we don't offer a cheaper option to link back to us.
Definately no association there - I actually use phpld! Although I have been considering different/custom directory script for a new site / directory i'm contemplating. Thus all the q's.