How Directories Make Money Online
The wonderful thing is that it becomes easier and easier to make money from your directory. The amount of money you can earn depends on various factors. Such as:
- PageRank - Pagerank is one of the most important factors that determine if you directory is able to earn some money. It’s worth noticing that you will be able to earn good amount of income if your directory has a pagerank that’s more than 5. Number of backlinks, Page Strength and search engine ranking would be in this category.
- Traffic - If you directory is not popular enough and nobody visits it than it will not definitely attract any advertisers.
- Design - People purchase link(s) only if they believe in your directory. Having a nice unique template would built their trust and increase you chances of earning money.
There are two major ways of earning money through you directory, which are paid submissions and advertisements.
Paid Submissions - Where an advertiser pays certain amount to get listed in your directory. Most of the time directory earn the most of it’s revenue from this method.
- Featured Listing - This type of listing appears at the top of a certain category and before submitted sites. This helps the listing to get some traffic and higher PR so most of thetime featured listing are submitted for a fee.
- Regular Listing - A normal listing in a directory. Normal listings in directories are most of the time ordered by PR, but the listing can also be ordered alphabetically, date of submission and so on. This type of listing can be paid or free, PR, traffic and design determine if the listing is paid or free.
- Reciprocal Listing - A unique type of listing, where the submitter has to linkback to your directory in order to get listed. This type of listing can also be paid or free.
Advertisement - Different ways to make money from your directory, which include Sponsor Ads, Pay Per Action, Directory Affiliate Programs.
- Sponsor Ads - A situation in which a buyer pays you to put his advertisement on directory’s main page or side-wide (all pages). The advertiser’s aim is to get higher PR and search engine ranking position. Text Link Ads would be a great place to start to look for sponsors.
- Pay Per Action - A campaign where you earn money when you visitors click on certain advertisements. The most popular campaigns are Google Adsens, AdBrite and BidVertiser
- Directory Affiliate Programs - A situation in which you earn money when you generate a successful submission to a paid directory. V7N Directory and LinksJuice are common examples directory affiliates programs.
Always remember to put as less ads on your directory as possible and attempt to earn most of your money from link submission process.
If you know a way to make money from a directory then please leave it in the comments.
What is a Directory?
You should realize what’s a directory first and only then learn how to make money out of it. There a number of ways to answer this questions ranging from broad to extremely technical.
Here are a number of definitions just to get started:
“Topical lists of Internet resources, arranged hierarchically. Directories are meant to be browsed, but they can also be searched. Directories differ from search engines in one major way - the human element involved in collecting and updating the information.” Source
“A directory uses people to create an index or directory of web sites rather than using a spider. Some of the most common directories are Yahoo, The Open Directory Project (on AOL), and Overture. Directories are often divided into categories and subcategories.” Source
What type of directories are out there?
In the directory market there are various types of directories. Two most common ones are:
- General Directory - A collection of useful and unique sites in one database. The sites can be classified into categories, such as Arts, Internet and Business categories. Always remember that sites in general directory are designed for general public. An example of general directory is Aviva Directory.
- Niche Directory - An index of theme related sites. In this type of directory all sites are in the same niche or share the same type of information. Example would be a directory about computers and design. Agriculture Today is an example of niche direcotry.
The types of directories described above could be classified further into:
- Free Directory - This type of directory accepts all links for free. The only way of earning money in this directory is through selling ads on directory’s main page or using AdSense. If you are a beginner in directory business then you should establish you free directory first.
- Free Paid/Directory - A directory, which accepts regular links for free and while featured links are accepted for a certain fee. This directory is more profitable than free directory but it also needs more investment of your valuable time and money.
- Paid Directory - A directory that accepts sites only for a certain fee. This is the tougest directory to built but on the other hand it’s the most profitable one.
I hope now you have a basic knowledge of what a directory is. If you are still not sure than please leave your question in the comments and me or Directory Kit community will be glad to help you.
