Recommendations for Best Traffic Product to Promote on Directory Site

So just a little update on my progress with this. I get about 80 unique visitors each day (90% from India, I am assuming people who are paid to do directory submissions). I have tried several different types of ads, and I tested each one for several weeks.

Here is what I have seen from my analytics of various pages:

Magic Jack: I tried advertising this because this service lets you set up a US phone number from abroad (and I thought that might be interesting for people with online businesses in India who might want to establish some credibility with US buyers). I get quite a few click throughs from my banner but no sales, so I might have to pull the link at some point. I will continue to try this though considering the click through is high. Their price is actually fairly cheap so I don't think that is the problem, but perhaps it is.

Shaadi (India matchmaking site): I just added some banner ads about two weeks ago and have gotten 8 clicks out of about 1,200 visitors. No free profiles set up yet and no paid memberships. I will continue to try this a bit longer because it's still a bit early to tell.

QueryAds: My thinking with this was that if people are getting paid for Directory Submissions, maybe some of them also are involved with IM, have affiliate sites, etc. I figured this was a stretch so I also did not give prominent placement to the ad, but I did use a clear contextual text link close to a key action button on the submit page of my directory site, so it was visible. Not a single click in over 3,000 visitors so I'll be changing or pulling this soon.

A free classified ad service: Same idea here and no clicks...will be pulling soon and trying something new.

Google Adsense: Okay, so I have tried several different ads, a link unit at the top of the page that blended well with the main site menu, a link unit within the main directory categories that of course stuck out but still blended fairly well, text ads within the directory categories, sidebar banner images, and image and text ads in the main content areas of the site.

The Link Ad unit got 1 click I think out of a couple of thousand uniques, which I guess isn't too surprising but of course I'm also trying to do better. The link unit in the main directory categories did not get any clicks. I changed this to a text rectangle that blends okay and it has gotten 2 clicks (one worth about $2.50 and another worth $1.18, but my image ads are averaging closer to 25 cents each...I thought this was interesting because I had heard image ads were worth more usually, but that has not been the case for me so far). My sidebar banner has gotten no clicks.

My best performing Google Ads have been large rectangle image links right in the main content area of the submission page on the directory site. I think this is really the best place for any of my ads because most of my users are submitting links to the directory. What I mean is, people are clearly going there with a purpose, because almost 80% of visitors submit a link, so they aren't playing around and looking through directories, they are going right to the submission site and doing what they want to do. This is not surprising of course but it's good to verify. So, the image ads are quite prominent. Also, this past week I have put an image ad right above and right below the actual submit button, and I have gotten more clicks. I really don't know if they are clicking the images by accident or if they are just focused more on the ads because they are there even after the user submits. I think the latter because even though the ads are close it's still very easy to click the submit button.

I also have a Google Search bar that has not generated any revenue, but given that I need a search bar anyway I will leave that as it is.

In my first 3 weeks I made $2.14 with adsense on about 2,700 uniques. In the next 3 weeks I have made $5.23 (in addition to the previous $2.14), so I am seeing some progress.

My next step will probably be to get rid of all other ads and do just adsense (which, in the beginning, was not generating anything for me and that was why I started diversifying). I might also try more text rectangles instead of images to see what happens.

I know this is just one case and there are a ton of variables, but hopefully this will be helpful to some people. There seem to be a lot of directory-page sales on flippa so perhaps other people are in the same situation. I was tempted to call it crap and say I got ripped off, but I think if I am creative enough I can harness this traffic in some way. The seller was supposed to link my directory submissions page with my Aweber account but I'm still trying to get him to do that 6 weeks later like he promised. Even then, I don't know how responsive that list would be, but better to have a list than no list for sure.

The only thing I can say is to track everything and look at your users. I have definitely seen some click throughs for products and services geared towards individuals from India, but I have not seen sales, so I might keep trying but with different products. If anyone has ideas for things that might sell to this market I'm all ears.

Good luck to anyone else with this kind of site!