Turning a free directory into a paid directory

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vculp

Joined: Mar 30, 2006

# Posts: 89

Posted: 10/29/2006 09:50 am

I'm looking for your feedback for those of you running paid directories. This might be slightly off-topic for this sub-forum but I hope I found the best place to post my question.

I run a regional directory which has been up for 3 1/2 years, PR4 and is listed in DMOZ.

Thank you again for all the suggestions I recieved earlier this year on how to fix a few things with my online promotion.

I was speaking with an SEO consultant this weekend who prompted me to consider changing it to a PAID directory and feels I can justify the price of $125 lifetime.

When I started the site it was never my intention to charge. I was just doing it to generate more traffic for our web development clients, as I have invested a lot of time in search engine marketing for the site. I don't earn much AFF income from it, but of course a bit of pocket change from the site would be nice.

Currently there arebout 650 links to businesses in our city of 350,000 peple, and I have just this weekend expanded it to cover about a 25-50 mile radius. He suggested I consider growing it to cover about 200 mile radius. If so I think that would be a gradual migration.

The site gets about 4,000 visits a month. It ranks well for our city with many keywords.

So to you exerts ... what do you think? Is he "onto something"?

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ClickIt

Joined: Jul 31, 2000

# Posts: 731

Posted: 11/08/2006 07:45 pm

Your SEO person is definitely maybe on something.

It is pretty well obvious that the Directory was built for the sake of web dev clients. It seems that the articles are all web dev tips, and not local interest stories. If you want to build the Directory into a local powerhouse, then really address the local directory needs. Do not do it simply as an on-the-side-thing-that-sorta-helps-my-Web-dev-clients.

Build it as an honest Local Directory - and that will help your local clients, who so happen to be listed in the Local Directory.

Adding AdSense or (intelligent, well-chosen) affiliate ads can, in fact, be of real service to local residents who are searching for local merchants. That is a quick and easy way to monetize your site.

We do not care for the one-time only sale business model. Rather, an intelligently priced yearly fee makes more sense to us. Businesses go out of business, change owners, burn down and all sorts of things change year to year. Your Directory might well radically change too. Do you really want to lock yourself into a non-changeable business model when we all know that the Web is constantly changing? Give yourself the opportunity to adapt your business to the changing environment.

A 200-mile radius "Local Directory"? Woof! The taxonomic structure of such a beast would be mind bending! To our way of thinking, a MAJOR benefit of a Local Directory is that it is built for the LOCAL environment, which may or may not have Farm Tractor Sales, Barber & Beauty Shops and Drive In Theaters. A 200-mile 'local' directory will have all 39,000 Categories and Sub-Categories of the more famous and better-funded big brand name directories. It also would increase the number of clicks required to get from the Home Page to the eventual Sub-Cat listing page. Moreover, that pretty much defeats the purpose of using a local directory in the first place. It is local, so by virtue of using LondonOntCADirectory.com, I already know that all of the Directory Listings are close to my physical location. The viewing public has already filtered out the Country, State and City, just by virtue of typing in your domain name. At your Home Page, you begin three clicks ahead of the all-things-to-all-people-everywhere Directories. A 200-mile radius is not local.

I would take another good, very hard look at what this SEO is suggesting.

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