Directory Websites = $$$$$

Do you make $10,000 a year from your directory?

There are already WSO's out there about this. The only thing really missing is a good looking directory/portal script included with the WSO (with automation included).

Hello warriors,

I wanted to show this theme, it's great for a directory.

Geo Places | Templatic


Cheers.

Thanks Fernando! wow all of those directory wso's and no one ever gave us a template or script of a directory site and here you are just giving it away for free!

And I doubt the OP had a directory that is doing 10,000 dollars per year or he wouldnt be here trying to make a wso and make money..especially when there are already dozens of wso's out there on this subject so the OP is probably a noob.

I have seen WSOs about this before (I'm not sure about "dozens") one in particular from "Joblessdad" who seemed to disappear soon after setting up his site and offering a coaching program on how to do this. :confused:

I think local directories are a great idea and could be used either as a moneymaker by themselves and/or just a great foot in the door in order to sell other services to local businesses. The challenge with charging people is that you need the traffic to justify charging people for listings, and without listings you won't be seeing much traffic - so its usually necessary to offer some number of listings for free.

Over the years I've looked at probably every option out there for putting together a site, from free to paid services, and never really found one I liked until recently.

While you can build a basic directory site on your own using just wordpress
this soon to be released WP theme seems to do just about everything one could want for a local directory site. That Geo Places theme looks nice as well and I'll be checking that out tonight.

Steve

P.S. While it's nothing to sneeze at - not sure how many folks would get all excited for 10k a year. Now if you got 100 businesses or restaurants paying you $30 a month for a premium listing - $36k is a decent income.

There are a variety of review sites. Some are user-led sites where readers can send and exchange views, others are commercial sites that offer their reading offers. Some turn to a specific age or interest rate is variable and some media-based sites for newspapers and magazines.

we are targeting restaurants because they need the help online and also we can charge them a very low price per month or per year that they all can agree on doing! You can charge more than $200 per year. We will probably charge $350 a year soon per premium listing. Regular listings are free. Picture listings are $99 per year.

This is pretty easy. Build the directory to be targeted to local consumers. Give free basic listings to all local businesses. Invest some money, And send their owners a letter or postcard informing them they have a free basic listing ,but for x amount they can upgrade to the silver plan or for just a few dollars more they can upgrade to the gold plan. Give them a secure web page to go on your site so they can order. After about 2 weeks invest some more money and hire a telemarketer. Have that telemarketer call all local business that you sent out your direct Mail piece to. Have your telemarketer offer them a 10 % discount if they order and pay in full today. One thing I forgot to mention is give away one free premium listing per catorgory , when people are paying for something like this they hate to be "the first" to try. ok next is traffic , cause no matter how good the site is , it's worthless without traffic . First find out what people are searching for in your area . Then with that data do some SEO work to get ranked 1st page, invest in some ppc and also some geo targeted facebook ads. For each premium listing give them the ability to offer coupons, as coupons will also get more traffic in various ways. Also when a business signs up for a premium listing one of the perks should be a free press release , stating they are now A member of your directory , use thier subdomain for your directory in the press release. If the press release is written with keyword rich words and submitted to the proper places, this method will get great rankings and traffic. Now you gave customers and traffic-rinse and repeat. One final note have the directory as one your services (think yellowpages) not just a standalone service. Now stop reading and go do it !

Seems to be an easy task. But I would be interested in more wordpress themes that fit this business.

I htink many are already doing this but slightly different. They have their site ranked high on a term and then sell rental spacing to various business. Some person created a detail guide who mentioend it was a spin off of gene's method in the War room...never could really have tell. It's very unique

I must admit I'm finding it a bit dificult to get interest. I have phoned / emailed close to 100 local companies simply to ask them to approve their listing (hoping they at least look at site) They all state that there are multiple free directory services out there. Anyone got a super closing line, that actually gets the customer to pay for the listing?

Kevin, we have been meeting with them in person and showing them how much traffic we have going to the site that they can take advantage of.

We have been telling them the amount of impressions we get each month which is 400,000 or so on Google PPC.

Then, we show them the value compared to placing ads in the local papers. Obviously, our prices are MUCH cheaper

Hey,

I do not speak to my clients about the traffic or SEO. I only offer them a commercial video and a photo gallery. They are fascinated.


Fernando.

I was also involved with a large group of people doing the local directory thing that cost lots of money and wasted time. I have a few local directories that I never got around promoting! The guru made all the money!

The directory biz is hard but it might be better to offer free listings and sell Advertising space once you have lots of traffic. You can also offer other services so this could be a starter for you offline biz!

But with Google Places and other directories it has become very hard! It might be easier to just offer SEO for local search!

What I am wondering about is the approach... for the sales process.
Once you a have site. it' ranks in the search engines decent you get allot of traffic to the site that is about two thirds of what the local newspaper who are charging 200-300 a month for advertising a simple 250x250 Banner.

To get in the door to speak directly with the owner/ manager, what is your sales process?

I bought a directory site from a wso, set it up, ordered post cards & flyes - I asked the person who sold me the directory for more ideas about advertising my coupon directory and the response I got was "....put up your site on as many billboards you can afford in your city. LOL." Not once did he provide a live site thats fully operational with paid advertisers even though I repeatedly asked for a live sample. Wasted $635 dollars total and that was all he could say was LOL....You need to invest thousands to make it work.

It could work but you will need to invest a lot of time, money and be willing to bare it out for few a years as your site get more recognition and local exposure.
Only two business were actually interested but all others were not - out of 250.

Yeah Thina, inclusion of all relevant details and data in my opinion will let your audience know its worth and it's good in all terms.

Good topic Ryan. I would like to know more. Unfortunately cant PM u. skype....? just add an 8 to ma us. Thats ma name on skype.

Looking at this from another perspective, Something I have seen in the past year has been companies that offer people discounts when they eat at local restaurants.

You can integrate this with the listings idea. When you pitch to your local restaurants, you say we will get more customers to your establishment, when customers show you our loyalty card you have to give them 10% off a meal. This way you can charge to put the local businesses on your website and charge people that live in the local area a yearly fee to get the loyalty card.

This would work very well in a area where there is a university, you can get a stool on freshers week and advertise to the students. Students like to save money anyway possible. Also all the restaurants in the area are targeting the students.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic from the thread, but it's a idea my friend had but never took action on it and I thought it was quite good.

In answer to the OP,

Yes in fact my sales crew (telemarketing room), sold over 19,000 web pages to small businesses for a directory website and created 5.7 million dollars residual income its first year, at $24.95 per month for a listing, with the first 30 days free.... For a company that used to be called BizOnThe.Net, which was later sold to prodigy for over $800 million dollars.

All verifiable.

So yes. I can say for a fact, first hand that directory websites work.

Yellow pages 360 does the same thing and they charge $79. per month for a listing... so does ATT, they charge $39. per month.

All of them sell thousands upon thousands of listings per year.

Interesting that this thread would show at the top of the offline forum up about now...

Local directory sites do work, IF you put a lot of work into them and treat them as a business, not just a website.

That means building relationships with advertisers and potential advertisers and proving to them that it's a value for money lead generation source.

We charge from $150pa to $1000pa for a listing, depending largely on the amount of traffic we're likely to generate in the advertising category. It has taken nearly three years to get to that point though and we do have significant rankings and traffic.

Tony