HaraPaulKim

In the last few months I read about hundreds of webmasters that complain that there directories aren’t making any money. They may say they make a few dollars a month from featured submissions but from their advertisements they seem to make none.

I did a few tests with some of my directories and encountered some problems with making money from Ad’s. First off making money from pay per click Ad’s on a directory is very hard. The average click rate is horrible compared to a normal site.

This is because most of the people coming to your site, go strait to the submission page. One way to avoid this from happening is to make sure that your user must actually go to the category they are submitting to.

The most important reason you want the person to stay on the site and actually be there is because directory submission software’s such as SubmitEaze allows a submitter to submit without even going to the page. Most of the time it happens to sites that are using the script phplinkdirectory or otherwise known as PHPLD. SubmitEaze strips the submit page from a directory and the only thing the user is shown is the submit field boxes. If you are using PHPLD I highly recommend you choose a different script or else you could possibly insert ads within the submission form.

A good directory script to avoid all these problems is eSyndicat

I hope this helps some of you that have a directory that isn’t making money.

As you read this you will learn how to create a online web directory and create revenue from it. Most people learn about web directories looking at famous ones such as Yahoo’s directory. Yet this is far from what kind of directory the average person will be able to create. First you want to think about which software you will be using, this is assuming you have a web hosting provider and a domain name. I recommend using a directory software such as phpld. If you do a search for “phpld” you will find their site.

They offer a free and paid version of the script. I highly recommend not using the free version yet it lacks certain features that are crucial to success.

Next the important factor to a directory is building its page rank… Now there are a number of ways to increase page rank. You can submit your site to other directories, use forum signatures, or pay someone to do link building for you.

One of the vital parts of getting people to submit to your directory is listing it on a site like www.directorycritic.com. This is where webmasters rate each directory. You will also gain lots of exposure from the site and its 100% free to list a directory.

Another great place to market your directory is to go to www.digitalpoint.com and in their forums they have a designated area to list directories. You can list it there for free and many people will submit their site to your directory.

After doing this you want to make sure that you have an option in your directory to submit a site for free. You may also create a paid links using the phpld software. I normally price paid links for my new directories at a average rate of $5.

Once doing these steps and marketing your directory properly a directory can make a stable and profitable income with ease.

After looking through various webmaster websites I stumbled upon phpldpros. This site provides tons of great and vital information on starting a directory using the famous software PHPLD. They tell you what you should consider when starting a directory. They also give helpful tips on how to market your directory in order to become successful.

If you go deeper into their site you will find that you can find PHPLD modifications and templates for the script. These will help make your site look better and easier to manage.

What I found most interesting is they provide a list of the top web directories using PHPLD. This shows that people and companies use this software and are able to build a big directory.

You can find more information at their site:
PHPLD PROS

You can also view this directory below using PHPLD:
Totally Web Links

After surfing the Internet for a while one webmaster related site caught my eye. Site-Sift is well known for its web directory. They currently have a PageRank of 6. Their rates are reasonable for anyone who is marketing their own sites. They offer many different solutions it seems to have your site marketed. What is also unique about Site-Sift is they let you use there directory script for free. That’s pretty cool I would say! It’s 100% free to use so its perfect for any webmasters wanting to start a directory.

Don’t know what a directory is? Or how to start one? No problem go to Site-Sift forums. It’s a webmaster community that is related to marketing websites and directories.

To sum it up Site-Sift are one of those sites actually there to help you instead of taking your money I recommend them to the fullest.

You can visit the different parts of their website below:

Web Directory
Web Directory Script
Webmaster Forums

To start off I personally love this project. When a directory is made it is so simple to run. The only thing you need to worry about is accepting web links! It’s so easy! Dexurl.com is a general directory and I don’t to go crazy on it either with extended features etc. I want to keep the site simple and clean. I have also added a forum where webmasters can meet and chat. But, the main purpose of the forum is geared towards “Web Directories”. Everyone should check the site out and drop your link in the box =). Thanks!

Many of these directories are free but some of them charge a fee. First, getting listed in good quality directories such as Open Directory (Google’s directory), the Yahoo will give you a good start. This is “key” and will help you find specialty directories and sites geared towards your niche market.

I’d stay away from many directories, however. Many directories are bad to submit to simply because if they charge a $5 fee and your site link gets put on a PageRank 0 page its not worth the money. If you want to submit to well established, older directories, you should check out the digitalpoint.com forums. If you look under directories you will see what you’re looking for.

You should avoid link farms as these are totally different then a normal link directory. The difference being link farms have thousands of links on one page. This is horrible and Google many penalize you if your links are there.

Link Directories carry a great amount of value, but overall the usage of link directories is steadily going down. This is also because Internet directories link to thousands of other websites, the value that they can add to your PageRank gets diluted by all the other links. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion. Which in turn will normally give them better link placement on a high Page-Ranked page.

By reading this you can see that there are bad and good sides to everything in marketing yet when it comes down to it directory submitting is worth doing. By the way while doing all this you can use software to help you submit to directories much quicker. I recommend looking up “handy submit directory” on Google. This will make the job much easier. Thanks for reading!