Thread: Making money with a free directory?

How many of you are running a completely free directory and are making actually money from it thru sponsored listings, banner spots and adsense? With free I mean not even requiring a reciprocal link.
How are you doing it?

Mike

I tried that with my old travel directory and ended up deleting truly massive amounts of spam for ridiculously insignificant amounts of revenue.

If I was to create another "free" directory, I would charge a $1 submission fee just to reduce the spam.

I have started a free one. And needless to say, the spam made it not worth running.
I will look into that $1 submission fee.
It also seems like all of the good free ones have closed or upgraded to pay.
Or they just sit there with 10k sites in the cue and nobody bothering looking at them.

Running a free niche directory that matches your main sites is a pretty good way to get targeted e-mail contacts.

Originally Posted by Shenron

Running a free niche directory that matches your main sites is a pretty good way to get targeted e-mail contacts.

You are so tempting me to start another niche directory...

I will start a new one about Costa Rica!

I am starting a niche directory about Costa Rica. I think this should work well for me, since my intent is not to make money but get the word out about my real estate firm.
Not sure if I will charge or ask for a recip.
Coming to think about, you don't even have to charge a buck, if you charge a penny, spammers will prolly stay away saying "Heck no man, I ain't paying nothing."

To charge them, they have to give up enough information to identify them.

People tend to spam a lot less when their identities are known.

I currently run a free web directory at Free Web Directory
regular submissions are free.
Going good so far.

Added a couple of sites, what is your goal with it?