How do directories make money

This is preferred to listings that have been on your site for a period of time. Promotion campaigns, discount news, giveaway events, etc. Another revenue model to monetize from listing owners is lending them your visitor database. You will help them send promotion news , advertise marketing campaigns to the list of subscribers on your site. By this way, listings will be promoted not only on site but also personally to their email addresses.

As long as your site has collected a big customer database, this method is expected to be an effective money making tool. And, if done well, you will provide useful and relevant information to the target users. Needless to say, once users got interested in what shared from your site, the chance they access such information is higher , which is the goal of listing owners when using this marketing plan.

Moreover, besides monetary benefit, your site also earns good reputation from this strategy. Your site will be seen as a quality site for helpful and reliable knowledge sharing, which in the long run leads to higher traffic and bigger revenue.

You can sell advertising by allowing banners, text ads, and video ads to be put at some specific positions on your site. Collecting membership fee from listing owners is another business model. It can be made on an annual basis, or month.

Similar to Paid listings, but, instead of charging per listing, this method will charge per listing owner allowing them to be active on your site in a predefined period of time. Based on the quality of audience on your site, listings owners will decide whether to join or not.

Membership fee is beneficial for listing quality control. Once deciding to join, listing owners will be more serious and act accordingly, and of course, spammers will be reduced significantly. You can also apply this fee for site visitors. However, consider this method carefully. In my opinion, membership fees should only be applied to high quality listings, to which members are willing to pay to get access.

Otherwise, it should be easy and convenient for visitors to join your directory site so that you have more opportunity to build a solid traffic to your site, which provides an ideal condition to attract more listings. As a result, it will create the balance in the number of both sides of customers: listing owners and site visitors.

More directory owners pay to have listings on site whereas visitors will keep coming back to your site due to its rich and informative content. In a nutshell, there are a number of ways to make money from Online Directory Business:.

To effectively make money from online directory business, it is important to bring the most value for users. Running multiple directory websites is a great way to generate multiple revenue streams with minimal investment or overhead. Print publishers will often sell premium directory listings to their advertisers to increase the value of their print advertising packages. Web designers will often start a directory website as a foot-in-the-door to sell their web design services to local businesses.

SEO companies can run their own directory website to boost search results for their clients. Other opportunities to sell complimentary products and services include selling items that every small business needs - like business cards, social media marketing, promotional products, business consulting, and even plaques and awards that highlight their premium listing on your directory website.

As you can see, there are countless ways to make money from directory websites, but it all comes down to the time and effort you put in. Are you ready to monetize your own directory website? Get started today with Ideal Directories. Interested in Learning More? We'd love to hear from you. Contact us today to learn more about the Ideal Directories platform and how you can launch a business directory and coupon website in your market. Premium listings can also include extra services beyond the directory.

Use the directory as a lead generator to increase your marketing, web design and development revenues. A lot of the business that will be listed in the directory, could require help for easy tasks like creating and maintaining a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account. They could be looking for design, photography or marketing services. They could even need a full website. Selling ads can be another great source of revenues. It goes without saying that a directory should have a blog too.

In a lot of cases the blog comes first and the directory follows. It will make it much easier to attract traffic, blog posts allow to sell extra ads space and also affiliate products for extra revenues. Learn how to convert free into paid listings. The technique with the highest conversion rate, according to our statistics, is still telemarketing.

Create a script of the telephone pitch, try to speak with the owner or the highest manager on duty only. Introduce the directory and inform him that his business has already been listed for free.

Explain what the premium listing can bring to his business extra visibility, a backlink, more traffic to his website and ultimately real clients and close the sale asking if they are interested in purchasing a premium listing. Giving away few free featured listings to market leaders can also be a good idea. NAP citations are exactly what business directory websites provide.

The most important thing is that the address and phone number are formatted exactly as they are formatted on Google My Business page. When you have a similar number of reviews and a Google My Business page of similar quality description, pictures, videos, offers, and so on , the number and quality of NAP Citations are what make the difference to appear on the Google Map Pack.

Appearing or not on the Google Map Pack today, can make or break any local business, so NAP citations are very valuable. They must be of very good quality and possibly not all hosted on the same server. Make sure your directory websites have enough backlinks and content to all have a decent DA Domain Authority.

One other metric people look at is ahrefs. Create a page where you offer to submit business listings into your list of Directories and provide up to 40 NAP citations. You can easily do that with our invoicing plugin. Making a living with an online directory website requires research, dedication, and patience.

It can be a bit hard at first, especially if you are building a brand new website, but it can become extremely rewarding too. Do you want to learn how to change the WordPress profile picture without a plugin? Check out this tutorial!

Paolo developed his first WordPress website in In he met Stiofan O'Connor and together they started building and marketing successful themes and plugins for WordPress. View more posts. The 6 rules to monetize a directory website and start make a living online.