Setting up website directory - advice

redned_2

Hi, Im just looking for a bit of advice/wisdom really. Im thinking of setting up a directory website where I would charge people to advertise and just wondered if anyone can reccomend any directory software/website companies to do this, or offer any related advice.

Thanks in advance.

uropachild

Hi there! I used to work for an online directory and trust me when i say even the major players are all struggling. There's just no money in that anymore. They are all branching out into other areas now to stay in business. Just my honest advice.

You'd have to think really hard about why they would want to pay you as opposed to taking out a free listing.

redned_2

No thats good advice, I suspected as much!

Im looking at a niche market and not expecting to charge much if at all to start with, but plan to put lots of useful information and customers would also use the site to list opportunities (free) so hope to build the site up that way.

TheGam

Hi,

I totally have to agree with Uro. Apart from the fact it has been done billions of times over, even the companies with massive networks and traffic resources struggle with this one.

If you are getting the webspace free or very cheap as you can do these days and you are willing to do/learn the html/code or use a free opensource packadge then its worth it just to learn about it all, so you can start the cogs turning for more ideas you can do.

If you are thinking about paying for a web design company to do it, don't do it, not because they can't, but because whatever it is costing you, you have prob less than a 1/100 chance of getting back in profit as a first timer, especially with a non unique idea.

The web is like having a shop in deep dark space, you don't get much walk by traffic. You can eventually get some organic traffic from search engines, but will need to start off with link swapping, the busy sites often won't swap with sites that give them little traffic back.

That's chicken/egg problem 1

Chicken / egg problem 2 is people won't pay or probably even list adverts for free on a site that is not getting half decent traffic, as it wastes their time. People won't come and spend time on a site without a decent amount of adverts for them to search through.

However, if websites and programming websites interests you, just do it for the hell of it if it doesn't cost you much/anything. I had a project slightly more original than this 6 years ago, but couldn't afford to pay someone to write the custom software, so I taught myself PHP just to do the project.

I am now employed full time by a company to write code in C# / SQL, but still have personal sites in PHP. I had no real programming experience till this point.

Hope this helps and give it a go if it interests you, I just wouldn't spend money thinking it's the next big thing if I was you.