Web Directory Business Woes: How Things gone Wrong?

January 24th, 2012 | Author: admin

Web directories are said to be low-quality websites today by many people, including experts. I don’t blame them – indeed, many web directories today suck real bad. In fact, as indicated by many pro web directory owners that make thousands of dollars a month off their web directories, the whole directory business is undermined due to the irresponsible, so-called web directory owners or directory network owners.

So, if you are a website owner or directory submitter looking for web directories to submit your site to, or simply someone who is interested in starting a web directory, read this first.

Web directory life cycle: The circle of death

Here are several typical, bad strategies many web directory owners employ, mainly to make money online:

Web directory flipper

There’s nothing wrong with website flipping. However, some potential buyers don’t really understand how bad things works in web directory business.

Typically bad scenario:

Buy a dropped/expiring domain name, typically with high PageRank and plenty of backlinks.
Install directory script.
Offer free link submission for limited time, announce it via Webmaster’s forums, such as DigitalPoint..
Sell links to make use of the high Pagerank.
Charge a premium for featured listing and/or regular listing
Maybe sell it on website marketplaces, such as Flippa, or keep it if you like your cash cows.
Rinse and repeat

Web directory network owner

This type of web directory owner establishes many web directories, and run them all as a network of directories, typically resides in one/several IP address and have similar front-end design across the directory network.

Typically bad scenario:

Buy cheap domain name, typically .INFO
Install the free version of your favorite directory script
Host each on the same hosting account you have.
Auto-approve link submissions.
Make money from featured listing/link sales
Maybe sell some directories to make extra money
Rinse and repeat

You see, when hundreds – if not thousands – of web directory business owner wannabes do the above – and some other wicked stuffs, including PageRank faking, directory listing cloning, and many more… no wonder Google reduces the role of web directories through times!

It’s like the circle of death, really. There will be more people jump into the bandwagon and do exactly the same scenarios… there will be more of misled people, thinking that they are doing the right thing and teach other to have the same perspective as yours.

As a result, the web directory business will be more and more “polluted” in such a way that it’s no longer that attractive.

So, what to do now? Well, there’s 1 set-of-things you can do: Start a directory, use premium template, use quality directory script, manually approve each and every link, do online/off line promotion, categorize and re-categorize, and such.

And yes, ask the right person for advice…