Many here at DP have a directory, and many of these have more than one, so I'd like to ask you guys about the directory project that worked out best. I suppose this is what you did: Decide to set up a directory (a niche if you can think of a good one is better) Choose and register a domain name and set up a webspace Choose a directory script (many use phpld, if I'm not mistaken) Install it and also install templates and mods What do you do next? Get sites listed I suppose. Maybe for free so you get some links more quickly. So do you market the site straightaway or do you start populating it by yourself? And after that what? Thanks for any help!
I put the first few links in myself, but then again, both directories I started were something I had an interest in. Forums are a great place to start soliciting submissions. If you have a very general directory, a simple post on these forums, as well as a few others will probably give you a healthy flood of submissions. If your directory is very targetted (for example, if you're a car buff and your directory is for listing sites relating to 'classic cars'), then a post on a classic car forum will probably yield good results. As far as offering listings for free or not, there are an awful lot of directories out there. Unless the sites have reason to believe your directory will either a) net them traffic, or b) create a quality backlink for their sites for the search engines, you might have difficulty getting anyone to pay. If your site is PR0, it might be hard to get people to even link back to your site. You will probably have to offer free listings at least for a while. Once you've gone up in pagerank, or developed a healthy chunk of links (or are getting so many submissions you can't keep up), it might be worth charging for submissions. I think the biggest thing to ask yourself is "what am I hoping to accomplish with this directory". If it's to make money, you're probably going to conduct things differently than if it's there because you have an interest in whatever niche your directory is targetted towards. Just my opinion anyway, I'm sure others will differ though. Good luck
i just set up this directory thing to keep all the reciprocal links for my site well sorted - nobody wants a link exchange with you if you just drop 500 links on a single page
I have one goal, create nice directories, with some value added, and no PPC ads. (or any ads). I got tired of directories specially paid ones, that are just MFA(made for adsence) sites. Right now I'm working on a shopping one, getting link, and getting some listings in before oficially openning it up for bussiness.
I pretty much did what you listed and waited. Make sure that your directory offers content that keeps users coming back, and dont stuff it with Adsense ads and other PPC ads and banners.
From what I hear, I really don't understand why people keep inserting and keeping adsense on their directory. It devalues it in a way, and it doesn't appear to give a lot of revenue. And that's not only for Adsense, but of course it mostly is... I don't know if I'm going to insert adsense at all, prob not for the above reasons.
Well for my newest one after I did all of that I posted it in solicitations forum. It has gotten me alot of links. Then I posted and vilesilencer, it has been added to there list of free directories. So now my directory has 100-300 uniques a day and reaching in on 500 links after a week. It is not that hard the hardest part for me was accepting and rejecting the links lol. Once I posted it in forums the links and traffic started coming in. DIRDIR Web Directory - 100-300 uniqes daily.