Designing A Business Directory To Make Money Online
First you want to think of what sort of business directory you’d like to build. You could build a business directory for local businesses targeting a suburb or city, or you could target a specific country & maybe worldwide if you get enough traffic. You can either target all types of businesses or target a specific niche, it all depends on what you’d like to design your products around.
You need to think of a product that you can offer to businesses that will benefit them. If you can offer a business exposure or traffic to their website for a monthly fee, you’re on your way to running a successful directory. Try to think of something unique that will help businesses get something in return for spending a monthly fee with your business.
Offer something free to benefit the visitors of your site & this can really increase traffic to your site & get your branding out there. Some sites offer a free listing while others offer link exchange & various other services. The bottom line is you need to offer your site visitors something of value for visiting your site otherwise it’s likely to get minimal traffic.
If you’re just starting out then it’s always best to charge a low price for your featured listings. I wouldn’t charge anymore than $5 per month if I’d only just started getting traffic to the site. You want as many people as possible to join so they can benefit from your product & hopefully tell everyone about it. If you’re offering something of good value to a business for a great price, it won’t take long for your site to start getting traffic. You could also do PPC (Pay Per Click) to increase traffic to your site.
Designing a directory is time consuming & will have to be updated regularly if it’s to be successful. You will need to spend around 12 hours per week managing the site to update content, process orders & approve business listings. But it’s well worth it in the end if you can build up enough clients, you will generate income from adwords & also your clients. You could also offer various other services like web design & SEO to generate income.
One of my favorite business directories is http://www.businessdirectory.com.au you can build your own website, list your business free & check out some of their articles. It’s a great site & offers some good products to the customers.
