Question For Nikolas - Topsite Directory Difficulty?

I was thinking about opening up a directory in the future.

What kind of problems did you come up against? Any major issues? What was the hardest thing about getting it set up?

I would also like to know, what kind of scripts do these sites use. I have seen many directories with the same script.

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Ok let me answer.

The major problem in creating a directory, is that there are thousands of them. I would suggest you to create a niche directory, and do not use any of these free scripts that people use in their directories.

As for mine, I created it from scratch. I haven't use any ready script, because I believe there is no reason to have a duplicate site. The script that everyone uses is the phpLinksManager.

If you do not have enough time to deploy your own script make sure that you'll make a lot of changes to the script that you are going to use, because otherwise people will only visit your site to submit their sites, and nothing else.

Another major problem is the submittion thing. When you start, you must put some records, just to make it look non empty. When you'll get some traffic - pagerank the main problem is that there are so many submittions that people will have to wait a lot of time to get listed. For instance right now I have about 2500 records in the queue, and there are about 10 - 30 records per day in the fast inclusion program (people that give back a link, or pay to get listed fast)
So I suppose the whole maintenance work of a directory site can be a pain in the ass.

Is it worth it?

Does it make enough of a profit to really consider it to be worth all of the time you put into it, or is it just a labor of love?

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I can't really say because my directory is actually two sites. There is the site that you see in www.thetopsites.net which is a directory, but the greek version is more like a portal, with news etc. and there are also some other sites in my portfolio, and every site of them helps each other. Having a directory alone would not make much, but having this in addition to other related sites can make some good profit.

For instance you can create a game directory. It could be a benefit for your proffesional gamers site, as the visitors that you have to the one site will visit the second too. This way you are making more from the same audience.

Thats awesome. Thanks so much for some insight.

I might just do that. There is only like 1 or 2 game directories that I have seen that are worth anything, and they dont seek out sites to add. It might be a good way to drive traffic to my forum too.

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Sure it will be. You can use this site to promote your forum

I'm thinking about starting a directory now, thanks for the advice Nikolas.

I want to make it a quality directory, one that is actually worth submitting too, and I'll probably REQUIRE a reciprical link.  Obviously no one is going to want to do this if the site and the categories have no PR so I will just point 5 or so hard links from my site to the directory.  Next update with some luck should bring a PR4 and possibly a few categories with PR.  After that I should have no problem getting people to do reciprical links with me.

I still have some questions:

Should I have the reciprical links point to another site (not the directory)?  Backlinks arent important to the directory as much as they are to my other sites.

Is there any good way to check up and see if people are still linking to you a few months down the line?

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Well reciprocal links are not helping so much ( site  links siteb, site b links site a ), but you will need to have pagerank in order to convince people to give back a link to you.

I started having required links back after the pagerank 4.

To check your backlinks, you can write a simple script, or download a ready one. I think there are some free scripts for this job.

I shouldnt I have said recip.  What I plan to do is give people a directory link for a link from their site to another site of mine.

Thanks for the help

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You are welcome

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