Making money online

It wont work.

Why would anyone pay money to get listed on a startup directory with no pagerank or authority. What is your business plans answer to this question?

I agree, that would be a really tough gig. What type of research have to done to look into this?

Have you got a business plan? Done your research?

The cost of setting it up should come third in this.

It could work, but only if your google rankings are incredibly high and the site is amazing. But that wouldn't be cheap...

Research first, find out who your competitors are, if any. Create a proper business plan.

Best of luck

Lilach

I do own and am currently running a network of paid web directories, and I can say that it is something that you don't simply do for fun. You have to be really serious about wanting to start a directory and the motivations behind it. If all you want to get from your directory is just a quick buck, then I suggest you look elsewhere. Otherwise, it can be a profitable venture, both to yourself and your visitors.

Yes in general when you do something like that, you need to build it first and then worry about monetizing. I do some consulting on the side and that is a huge mistake a lot of people do, they try monetizing their sites from the start and thus cant get enough of a presence to make their idea viable.

A good general strategy is when you start something, try and create a demand first. This may mean giving stuff for free, letting people start for free, free memberships, etc. Once you have traffic, rank, whatever, then worry about monetizing.

There's some things to consider like content, traffic, design and structure.
I even have a PR1 site have some advertisers paying $20 per month.
But since I am focused on the product creation and list building right now,
I probably continue creating directories in the future and buy hundreds of domains
again for this directory business and will add more domains on my quick minisite
builder. I still think directories are profitable but really takes time, effort and money.

There are free directory script out there like phpld that you can use.
With the content issue you'll have to gather links first from dmoz since
dmoz is a quality directory.

To have a good design, just find a good phpld template.

Since PHPLD has a good structure then you don't have to worry about
the structure anymore but template to use.

After that, all you have to do is put traffic and you're on the GO.

Anyways, try to consider buying good expired domains, so your
domain is not new anymore

Ross

There are lots of people using phpLD to create local and niche directories right now, and many are making good money at it. Creating a general directory of the internet is a bit more challenging now, but there are people doing reasonably well with that too. If someone is thinking to start a directory right now, I would recommend doing a local directory. If you are a decent salesperson, you can easily get local merchants to start paying a monthly or annual fee to be listed in your directory, and there are all kinds of things you can do to get creative such as shooting videos or pictures or doing articles about the business.