How can we make money with directories?

There's a number of threads on warriorforum related to making money with directories, I've read them over the past few months but can't link to any ATM. You'll have to run a search, some are pretty decent.

http://www.warriorforum.com/search.php Try that! It's your friend.

I have ran all of those types of directories and mini locations do the best. IE a small town or location within a bigger city.
You also run into pulling data, formatting data, user submissions etc. (I hope you have plans for this amount of work.)
When I build a directory I always think in terms of the business owner who plans to use said directory. Directories full of listings do not do much for a small business owner.
A directory that is personalized by the companies that are listed is where you will find followup business. Remove the idea of a marketing firm from your mind, and think in terms of local small business helper. Good luck!

Yeah, i would appreciate ideas

Perhaps a more specific niche? I'm a marketing newbie, but speaking as a potential visitor, I'd frequent a smaller, more focused directory. For instance, I enjoy Jazz and would be more apt to click on links and ads within a jazz directory as opposed to a yellow-pages like directory. Just my two cents

For a while many of my SEO clients that are local to me would come to me and say "Hey, I just went to this seminar last week that was put on by this company that ONLY MARKETS for "Whatever their industry was" and this is what they said..."

In about 5 minutes of research, typically I would find that that company who held the seminar, is basically a sub of a larger marketing company just like mine, and uses this same model across multiple industries. And even though I was providing a good service, they still were able to lure my client to their pitch, and get them thinking. Now usually this ended up with me providing a little more and charging a little more.

One company did beat me though, it was with a self storage facility client of mine. The reason I got beat was because they had a directory of self storage places who they marketed for. They charged a monthly fee to list their open units on their site, and this site also did PPC and was beginning to rank in my area as well on google. Every time the storage place rented a space that was listed on this directory site, they paid a commission that totaled the entire first month, IN ADDITION to the monthly fee they already paid, and they were happy to do it because they signed a 6-12 month lease with their customers. The directory charged $50/mo + Commissions. My client easily rented 1-5 spaces at an average of $70/mo each.

So I would recommend that you build a big directory, one niche at a time. Once you get this going successfully in one niche, wash, rinse, and repeat into another one.

we are in the same boat

i looked for business directories wordpress themes or HTML templates for reviews
i cannot seem to find anything to use,i dont really want to start from scratch
any advice on the design?

thanks

Create spammy directories, sell links, charge money for link removal. rinse and repeat.

Sorry, doing a link removal right now, and coming across guys who are doing just this. Bitter : ) Dirty, but they are no doubt cleaning up.

I've made very good money in the past by creating vertical niche directories, that is, directories focussing on just one niche.

It makes sense when you think about it. You can become an expert in marketing to and for that niche. You only need one set of autoresponder messages for dentists for example. So if you were to upsell an email service, you don't have to get a whole new set written. Just edit an existing set. And that can be done in seconds with a global search and replace on the source set. Just save the new set under a different name.

HTH

Glenn