Making over $1000 a Month from a Local Directory

Your directory looks really nice.
Are you currently making 1k+ monthly from this directory?

Start charging for featured home page listings, featured category listings etc. Also site wide listings in sidebars. Once you have enough free listings to get started you can stop offering free listings and start charging a small nominal fee for a basic listing (same level as the previous free listings).

Featured listing is definitely a good way to make money

That's a good idea. I live in a small country town so I can see a use for this. How did you set up the site?

How do you get the traffic? through seo or you advertise it somehow?

Give the end users what they crave to make them become your clients clients

Hi Chris, just a quick search for business services in Wambourne shows that your directory is ranking number 4 on the first page of Google.

Here's what I'd do first if I were you. Get the directory to rank in at least the top three for the business categories that get the most monthly searches.

Your blog could use some onsite SEO which should help you even more in the rankings.

Once you get ranked up in the top fold you have leverage to charge for featured listings.

Keep working, it's looking good. Directory sites can be more difficult to monetize then in the past, but with the rankings and traffic you'll be in a good position.

I would maybe make the categories navigation easier to see, instead of hidden under a hover navigation bar.

I love directory sites, but as for someone who needs a plumber for example, what would prompt them to search for a directory site as opposed to just searching "plumber in Wombourne"? That's always been my hiccup.

With a directory type website it would be quite hard to do proper on-site SEO. Ofc, proper titles, metas, nice site structure (categories and sub-categories) is a must. Your main focus should be on off site SEO and social media. Build some strong backlinks, make yourself visible through the magic of SM, get some targeted visitors and a loyal user base - accomplish that and you will have something you can offer to businesses in exchange of money of course

-Regards-

There are some indirect benefits:

- Local directories do get traffic. I built one years ago for the Atlanta area that still gets ~400 uniques a month. (Haven't touched it in a couple of years)
- They give business owners yet another place to establish their NAP (name, address, phone)
- Can be a decent backlink to the business' site
- The NAP and backlink could also improve the sites overall organic rank resulting in more traffic for the business

A directory isn't just listings though - or rather shouldn't be just listings. Articles, videos, pictures, etc. It should be a resource as well as a directory of local businesses.

Nice site - Being from Sedgley originally i know Wombourne well - great place!
I notice you have a 'what-to-do' category with community announcements. Why not publicise this to local organisations and groups - that they can post (or you can for them) their upcoming meetings etc etc. That way you will get more traffic and then can charge for the listings...Good luck with the site.

Hi Chris

I used this theme for my directory sites and found it was excellent.
City Directory WordPress Theme | Business And Events Directory Theme
I also used a scrapper to collect all the email address from all of the businesses in my local area, sent them an email so they could add their businesses to the directory.
See Russ above for a great scrapper.
I also got business cards with something like "For More Customers Claim Your Free Listing here" with my url, tel no and skype address on it and went around all the businesses in the local area.
As well as getting lots of listings I got an 'in' to talk about other work.
It took a while to fill up but once you start getting a lot of listings it's easy to up sell to featured listings or banner ads.
I used OIOpublisher Ad Manager - Control Your Ad Space to automate the sale of ads.

Hope this helps

John

We are currently just building ours. Basing it in our local town with has a hinterland of about 10 mile radius with population of about 55K in that 10 miles.

We are taking a different approach. The directory, while important, is also a lead in on our telephone campaign to all the local businesses within that circle. I honestly don't care if the directory never makes a shilling just so long as I become the go to "internet guy" for all the businesses that we sign up. It's completely free for them by the way.

Once we have enough of them signed on we plan on adding premium listings which will allow photos and videos of the business and the coup de grace - local coupons. All of this will be chargeable, of course. There are about 1500 businesses in the target area as well as another 1000 schools, organisations etc. If we can get 20% (and I believe we can) of the total to pay that's 300 businesses paying say €20 per month giving a gross income of €72000. We're also looking at some way, maybe exclusive offers, of getting local consumers to actually sign up as site members, thus giving us a list to market local businesses to, for a fee of course. Then, once the businesses trust you and see that you deliver you could launch a Bob Ross type campaign.

Oh, yeah. You get as many of the participating businesses to promote the site in store! A flyer in every shopping bag, so to speak.

Once you're nicely ensconced locally in the "permission marketing" game you use your existing lists and customer base to move into something like a "Local Loyalty Card" or "Local Reward Card" where each retailer contributes to a central fund according to his client's card usage which is then used to reward local-shopping cusotmers (minus a small admin fee, of course!). This would also be a paid service.

All of the above ignores that you are now a trusted "internet guy" to at least 300 (and probably many more) businesses - think if the design and marketing work that could generate!!

In my opinion, there's at least €500K per year to be had from this and that's without referrals etc. etc. not to mention expanding to other towns and cities.

I probably should write a WSO!

I have a directory site (4 months old or so) and not seeing a lot of traffic (200/mo). Per my Google Analytics, I am being found for the business owners name and/or the business name. Although, I am not doing much to generate traffic. I have considered doing some crowd sourced writing (best pizza in Vegas, best coffee shops, steakhouse, etc.). I would ultimately like to have this be the go to source for locals in town. My only problem is that is it SUPER competitive being such a tourist spot.

I just noticed last night that each listing isn't that optimized (by default) and thought I should optimize each one to rank a bit higher on the first page.

I only have 46 listings (40 free and 6 premium that I gave away).

I love the directory site model, it's just generating the traffic to justify the monthly cost for the business owner.

Hi Chris,

Sent you a pm for another website directory that list its advertising structure. No relation to me...just thought it might be helpful to you.

One other thing. I submitted a new site i built to a local directory the other day. The site is a PR5 do follow directory. The owner of the site gets lots of listings as people want the hi pr link. He restricts submissions to within the country, so its a legit directory. Once sumbmitted he (via auto responer) sends me a few emails re making the most of my listing for SEO purposes - pretty helpful, non spammy emails. I suspect later , i'll get an 'do you need a new website' email..
Good way to go i think.

You could increase (slowly) the PR of your directory by getting some quality hi pr links pointing to it - over time the pr of your site will increase adding value to it.

cheers

I've built a few High PR directories in my area. they do pretty well. Congrats!

I'm not sure if I should start one up on not. On the one hand I could offer this as an up sell for my webdesign services. On the other hand I still have to think this through.

Since you need as many businesses to join as possible do you offer it free for a year then after that start charging? Is it better to have ten small directories or one big one? Do people still earn money from these kinds of sites?