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Building a Web Directory and having a Business Model to make money

Posted on 13. Sep, 2009 by swati121 in Web Directories

In this arti­cle I will look at cre­at­ing an online Web Direc­tory and the busi­ness and pro­mo­tional model that could be used.

1. Firstly, setup your direc­tory using direc­tory soft­ware or a plu­gin for Word­press. I rec­om­mend WP-directory plu­gin for Word­press, although there are many other great soft­wares and plu­g­ins that you can use.

2. Because direc­to­ries are not niche spe­cific, just try and get as many “no fol­low free” back links from as many medium to high page rank sites as pos­si­ble. The links can be from absolutely any­thing but links from other direc­to­ries might be the best way. Spend as much time as pos­si­ble on this because this is the most impor­tant way to get your direc­tory to stand out. You could mon­i­tor your back links and then make an edu­cated guess on what your page rank will even­tu­ally be.

3. Get into Google! Just being in google for your key­word helps, but because there are so many direc­to­ries this could be very tricky. Also at this stage allow friends to sub­mit their sites to your direc­tory to beef it up a bit. You should be adding a depth of cat­e­gories too.

4. Once your site is indexed in Google, Wait till you’ve got a page rank. Pro­vid­ing you spent a while work­ing on back link build­ing, you should have a good page rank. A page rank of around 3 is a good start but you will be look­ing at nearer 6,7 or even more to attract a lot of submissions.

5. Because out­bound “fol­low” links do not affect your SERPS, allow three options of links in your direc­tory (this can be achieved in most Direc­tory sys­tems). a. Fea­tured link: you charge a price for this as this is a fea­tured link usu­ally at the top of the cat­e­gory the link lies within. b. Stan­dard link: you charge a small price for this link. And finally, c. This is where you link to them and they link back to you. If you have a low page rank, this is a really good way to help boost yours by higher page rank links than your site com­ing to you. 

6. Use such pro­mo­tion meth­ods such as Search engine mar­ket­ing, other direc­tory and search engine sub­mis­sion, social media and social book­mark­ing, social net­work­ing and any other ben­e­fi­cial pro­mo­tion method.

7. Be patient, as peo­ple grad­u­ally build sub­mis­sions and your page rank and SERPS grow, thus more peo­ple want a link from your direc­tory and they might pay $5 for a basic link or $25 for a fea­tured link. It all depends on traf­fic and page rank.

8. Look at other ways to make money from your Direc­tory other than charg­ing for hav­ing a link. Put Google adsense on your pages, affil­i­ate links to related prod­ucts to the sites in the cat­e­gories (for exam­ple, in a games cat­e­gory you could link to games). You could charge for pre­mium ad space on your Directory.

That con­cludes the arti­cle, please leave your com­ments below, if there is some­thing I have missed and you would like me to cover or expand, let me know below!

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Tags: article, basically-submitting, business, design, globe, grant-leave, improve, look-at-creating, over-the-globe, the-way, Web Directories, will-look