What advice could you give me for launching this project? Do you use other ppc search engines (overture, findwhat, etc) to get your initial traffic? I’m not expecting to generate more than 3000 searches per day since it’s so specialized.

I’m interested in making this a quality project, and am willing to invest some time in making sure that it works out nicely.

Thanks for any help,
Steel

I may just wing it, whats the worst that could happen?

Starting a new ppc is difficult, but not impossible. Consider this from my own advertising experience with new ppc's:

I put $100 in an account [se not named], knowing all about their new status and traffic levels, but I really like the site and believed in their efforts. The frustrating problem I've come across is that no matter what keys/phrases I select I can't get my account depleted because the traffic simply doesn't exist or it never materialized.

So I just wanted out and looked for the most popular keywords and phrases on the web, such as 'tattoos', 'britney spears', 'free porn', etc. -- I justed wanted to close this account. To date, after 14 months, I still have $75 in my account.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you are going to start a ppc, getting new accounts is the easy part; if you can't give them traffic it's a difficult resale to get them to spend more with you.

I do wish you the best of success!

Note: Please don't ask what PPC I'm referring to; it's just my personal experience with a new ppc, the acutal name is irrelevant.

Organization counts for a lot. Make sure your site is well-organized ... sounds basic but I've seen so many SSEs that are impossible to navigate.

It helps to get webmasters involved. I offer an integrated Top 50 site list based on ratings, an email newsletter where they can get an additional listing if they write an article for me, a webring service, and a button exchange. This gets the linked sites linking back to me and builds traffic as well as linkpop.

But the most important thing I've found in running specialty search engines / directories is updates. Keep your site updated regularly and visitors will flock (sooner or later). This is vital, especially in terms of linkrot. Visitors hate linkrot.

I've started two sites that were not the first of their kind, but are now canonical sites in their fields based on up to date info and webmaster services.

Hope that helps.

Best Regards,
Steel

thanks.