In a course of two weeks, I recieved a few emails asking me how to make money from a general web directory. Some asked is it even possible to make money with a General Web Directory? I don’t know why I was being asked so many questions like that until I realized I was getting a few hits from 2Blog.in where he called me a Guru of Directories. I saw this post a while back but that was the one that came in my mind when I wondered about that. Therefore, I decided to write my thoughts about this issue as well as some of the other well known directory owners in the industry.

I believe that it is possible to make money with a general web directory, but those QBC Directories (yes I know the term is overrated) doesn’t stand a chance in making good money as they used to. I would like to start out with the quotes and then present my own view in details.

I asked Mikey of Zorg-Directory the question which is stated in the title.

Mikey Replied:

Yes. It requires a lot of time and effort though. Money can help a lot but is not totally necessary.

I didn’t just want to rely on source therefore I also asked Bruce of Authority Directory

Bruce Replied:

Yes I think general directories can make money, but the directory owner needs to be patient. The directory has to be properly promoted, maintained and allowed to mature. It is not a way to get rich quick.

I also asked Brian of Seo Web Directory

Brian replied:

You can but it’s harder than it used to be. I noticed a drop in submissions since Google reduced PR, seems like people are losing confidents in general web directories. As you know there is more benefits to directory submission than PR. I feel that the way forward is niche directories.

Ok people we know what is going on with Google. Directories used to sell alot of links because people were abusing the resource and was trying to manipulate PR. Which made directory owners greedy and buy links to increase their Pagerank, so they can make ten fold of their investments. Which kinda didn’t work as we can see. Alot of people think it was not good for directories, but I think it was actually better for the industry. Now we will not have any more crappy directories.

How can you not make a crappy directory and still make money. Well first of all…[This post is too long, read it and you will definately learn something]

Alright Directory owners, after a long time I am writing some tutorial for directory owners and It feels great. For those who are wondering what a category Icon mod is, It is a mod that allows the user to display unique icons next to main categories on the homepage. A display of that can be seen at my template called Areebu Theme. This is available for Download in my freebies section.

Let me begin with where I got the Idea to work on this mod. There was a thread started on Digitalpoint forum by a member asking for the category icon mod. Shabu, aka Vegabond on the forum replied with a link to phpLD Forum thread which contains the codes.

Now all I did was use the smarty tags to show the images for only the homepage categories and show a default icon for the rest of the subcategories. To do this method you will have to get the category ID for all your main categories. You can find it by simply logging into your Directory Admin Panel, and than going to the categories section.

Simply look for the categories that have Top tag for their parent id, and bring your mouse over. Look in your status bar, and it will show the Cat ID.

Now download any .png Icon at the size you desire but make sure that all of those have same size. I prefer 48 x 48 px, and also for your sub categories in inner pages pick an icon with the dimensions of 16×16 px and name icon.png

Say you have 16 top categories, so get 16 icons and name them each according to their category.

So for example the icon for Art’s name will be 1.png

Upload them to your template’s image folder. Then open main.tpl

Locate:

 <a href="{$smarty.const.DOC_ROOT}/{$cat.CACHE_URL|escape}" title="{$cat.TITLE|escape}">{$cat.TITLE|escape}</a>{if $smarty.const.CATS_COUNT} <span class="count">({$cat.COUNT})</span>{/if}

Replace it with:

 {if $category.ID eq 0}<img src="{$smarty.const.FULL_TEMPLATE_PATH}/images/{$cat.ID}.png" border="0" alt="{$cat.TITLE}" align="left" style="margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" />
{else}

<img src="{$smarty.const.FULL_TEMPLATE_PATH}/images/icon.png" border="0" alt="" style="margin-right: 2px;" />{/if}<a href="{$smarty.const.DOC_ROOT}/{$cat.CACHE_URL|escape}" title="{$cat.TITLE|escape}">{$cat.TITLE|escape}</a>{if $smarty.const.CATS_COUNT} <span class="count">({$cat.COUNT})</span>{/if}

This code will add unique icons next to appropriate main categories, and add a default icon to all the subcategories in the inner page.

This mod does require some work, but It is worth it. If you are not willing to work and don’t want the hassle. Rob aka An0n have a better version of this mod because his version have a backend also, so all of the main.tpl stuff can easily be modified through admin panel. He also offers very good customer service support, so If you have the cash and no time, than I will definately recommend him.

I hope this helped alot of those who were eagerly wanting this mod.

Show me some support and digg this topic as well as add it in other social bookmarks.

I will relate that to Google’s recent behavior toward directories because i believe Google is in its ovulation period at this time.

All of this started in late 2007 when google entered its Premenstral Syndrome (PMS) when the first mood swing toward directories happened because before directories were loved by google and was used by most SEO Companies for their clients. This first mood swing caused google to penaltised all the highly advertised directories such as Alive, Aviva, Big Web Links, Directory Dump, and many more. This penalty caused these sites to loose their rankings in SERPs to an extent that they would not even rank for their own name. Followed by this mood swing, there was a temperature change and made google more angry toward these directories, and then Google lowered their Pagerank (PR). Most of these websites i listed were PR 6 or above, and they were lowered to pr 3 and lower.

With the penaltisation of these directories some of the new directories got high pagerank and much love from google (Sudden Mood Swing). One of this love was shown toward Directory Journal which was awarded a PR 7 in a very short time, and followed on the next update it was as well lowered to PR 6. Google’s sense of smell was becoming more sensitive as it was taking more steps into the PMS. They started sneaking in and peeking at what was going in the directory world. Many more directories were penaltised and were degraded in Pagerank. Google was smelling Paid Links which were there since the start, but Google’s sense of smell got more and more sensitive.

This article is too long, so read the full one in the post page.

Alright everyone, hold tight. This is the first contest launched by Balkhis. I have prizes for upto 8th place. All sites are allowed to participate. Blogs, Directories, or any other website.

Here is what you will have to do:

Write a blog post (bloggers), directory listing, or figure out some way to expose balkhis to your users. The site that sends me the most traffic until March 11th, 2008 wins. I will keep everyone updated on who is ranking high. Feel free to use any image from this site. I will be adding more images in a day or two.

What are the rules:

You must be subscriber to this blog.
You must have atleast one comment on the blog other than this post.
You must use the website you are putting in the contest as your main website (exception contact me).
You must use a valid email address when posting comments.
Exceptions meaning, you are allowed to enter more than websites, but to do so you need to post a comment in this post and mention your sites, and i will email you (hence why valid email) that yes it is approved or not.

Prizes:

Ladies Only: You get to spend a 2 days/nights with me. *Just kidding* Real prizes below

1st Place Winner:
Custom Website Design by Uzzz Productions. (Wordpress, phpLD or plain site) - $800 Value
468 x 60 Banner spot on balkhis on the header.
Balkhis T-Shirt
$50 Cash - (Paypal Only)
Blog review at Balkhis ($50 value)
Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory.

2nd Place Winner
468 x 60 Banner Spot on Balkhis
Custom 468 x 60 Banner Designed by Uzzz Productions
Blog review at Bloggeries
$25 Cash (Paypal Only)
Balkhis T-Shirt
Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory.

3rd Place Winner
Free phpLD Linkback License for one domain ($25 Value)
125 x 125 Banner Spot on the sidebar
Custom 125 x 125 Banner designed by Uzzz Productions
Balkhis T-Shirt
Featured Listing on Madmouse Web Directory and Deep Link Listing Web Directory.

4th Place - 8th Place
Balkhis T-Shirt
Site-Wide Text Links Under the Category Contest Winners
As you see some of these prizes are offered by other webmasters and i would like to thank them.

Steven Lincoln of Madmouse and Deep Link Listing
David Duval of PHP Link Directory (phpLD)
Rob of Bloggeries Network
Uzzz Production Team

If any other sponsors are interested in offering prizes to Balkhis Contest Winners, please contact me using the contact form, and i will make sure to get back to you as soon as i can.

Well what are you waiting for get to work, you guys have only one month to win this contest. Spread the words.

If you haven’t seen Balkhis T-Shirt, watch my video about easy money online. I am wearing that.

Hoping to see some good results here.

Often times, it becomes a questionable thought whether design matter in seo and indexing rate. Often times people double guess themselves and leave the design part out. Often because a quality design costs alot. Perhaps, that is a personal choice, but in reality does it matter or not?

This question was raised by a MOG at Digitalpoint:

I believe that YES the design matters in increasing the index rate and a better SEO. A smart SEO Company once taken a project, make adjustments toward the design and how the content is organized to shape it in a way so it is both user-friendly and Search engine friendly. While many webmasters due to various reasons could not get unique custom seo-friendly designs, but here are some advices that you might want to be looking into unique, or free designs when you get them.

Believe it or not, but the design does not have to be tableless. It helps the bot crawl faster if the site is tableless, but the structure of the content matters the most. Using the effective <h2><h3> tags respectively plays an essential role when you have the content organized.

In all cases of design how ever it looks, in the coding, the content should appear above everything, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the sidebar. Why? Because sidebar tends to contain multiple links, Site Navigation link, Sponsor links, Partner links, and such.

Even if the design is coded completely tableless, it can have the sidebar before the content. Various ways to go about it and fix this issue. Always keep the content on the left side and sidebar on the right side and that solves the problem easily eh. Make sure when inserting the <td> or <div> it comes after the content <td> or <div> tags.

We can’t all have sidebars on the left hand side, because then all websites will look the same. Well now you need a good designer because their creative minds work miracles. They can have the sidebar on the left side using the div properties, or the Master Table law to make the design SEO Friendly. In all cases you must have a valid .css file. To check the validation feel free to use the w3 services because they exist for a reson.