|
Super Categories: 50% Affiliate, 50% Ad Farmer
Skills and tools needed:
Knowledge of affiliate programs, banner advertising systems, and exactly how to use the large indexing website that you will be running are all necessary. These are all software tools that you’ll either buy, have a software designer build for you, or perhaps you can find the pieces for free and slap them together. Basically, the only real knowledge you’ll need to know is how to use the tools that this system requires, and those tools usualy come with instructions.
Description of a Directory Owner:
A directory owner has a database-driven website that is free for the public to browse, although it may or may not charge for people to make submissions to it. An owner of either a website directory or an Article directory will spend the vast majority of their time reviewing submissions by webmasters. This is easier work for the website directories, but then again, many more webmasters submit their website than they do articles, so I would speculate that the work load is balanced between the two.
Directory owners make their money in two ways, they usually have some kind of banner ad and/or affiliate links on their site to monetize all of the increased traffic that they get, (although these are pretty darn ineffective since the majority of the traffic is just webmasters trying to post) or they charge a fee of some kind for submissions. (Usually the most visible additions or the ones included fastest.)
Unfortunately, the Google AdSense program is usually not available for these websites, and contextual ads are usually not worthwhile because the subject is not very targeted. (Perhaps if you make a directory on a single theme it would be more worthwhile.) Therefore, Banner Ads and affiliate links typically cover a good 20% of the visible pages of these websites.
Lifestyle of a Directory Owner:
As a new directory owner, you will review and either accept or decline submissions all day long. There really won’t be time for much else at all unless you’ve charged too much for submissions or you’ve not properly marketed your site. (It is actually the easiest type of site to market.)
However, once you’ve fought through the beginning stages and have tweaked your ad programs or affiliate links to make some decent money, your goal is to hire out the review work so you can make it even more profitable. More often than not this work can easily and inexpensively be handled by cheap labor in another country like India, and your job would then be to oversee their work while further promoting the site and monetizing it smarter.
At that point, if your directory is popular at all, then you can have quite a little moneytree on your hands and you’ll probably be looking to set up some others! | 
