Getting Started

PHPmydirectory is a very robust directory script and has a lot of very attractive features. I’ve used this script on several sites. This script is set up to include detail pages for every listing and is mostly for listing businesses. Each detail page allows businesses to include their full details including address, phone #, URL, images, banners and products. It is by far the best script for running a business Yellow Pages type directory.

It produces static URLs and includes a great admin section. Some of the features it offers that aren’t found in other directory scripts include: [click to continue...]

PHPLD as it is referred to is the easiest and cheapest directory script you can get. It currently costs $25 per license, $75 if you want it unbranded. It is simple to set up and has some nice advanced features making it very attractive if you want to set up a directory fast.

Using this directory script I was able to build a blog directory and later sell it for exactly $8,000.00 on eBay. I had invested only $25 in the script, $200 to have a database of blogs imported and $50 for the actual database. So I invested $275 into the site and in under a year I turned around and sold it for eight grand. That’s a ROI of 2,809%. [click to continue...]

The directory script I am most familiar with is Indexu from nicecoder.com. Indexu has been around for a long time and luckily today Indexu is more robust than ever and produces lovely static URLs. All SEO’s know static URLs reign king over dynamic URL’s.

By static URL’s I mean:
yourdomain.com/page.html or yourdomain.com/cat/subcat/etc/ not
yourdomain.com/cat-8.php?=session9023498273kl2kd9 etc. It also allows you to include custom text
and html in every subcategory. This gives you more of an opportunity to include unique content on every page of your directory. [click to continue...]

There are many different web directory scripts out there, both free and paid. Both have advantages and I will go over some of the most popular scripts that are out there, first free than paid.

Free Directory Scripts

Free directory scripts have one main advantage… they’re free! If you are on a limited budget then these are the way to go. You can get your feet wet before diving in and purchasing a paid directory script. There are disadvantages though to using free scripts. Usually free scripts aren’t that robust, are not supported, require you to link back to the script owner’s site and a lot of the time have bugs in them. Another thing you want to be aware of is that when you do use a free directory script you run the risk of having to stick with it even after your site makes money. It can be hard to migrate data later on if you decide you want to upgrade to something more robust. So be warned. [click to continue...]

Picking the right niche to start a directory under makes all the difference in the world when it comes to making money.

Of course many factors play a role in determining which niches are money makers and ones that aren’t.

If you haven’t started a directory yet and are looking for a good niche then this is what you need to do.

1. Make A List Of Your Passions

It’s easier to work on and stick with something if you enjoy it. If you pick a niche that you love then you will be more willing to put effort into it and will most likely be more successful in it. [click to continue...]

Before I get into what type of directory is better to build let me explain what each is.

A General directory is one that has no focus and covers a wide variety of topics. They contain categories for everything… from art dealers to online Casinos. General directories like this include dmoz.org, google.com/dirhp, botw.org as well as dir.yahoo.com.

A Niche directory is one that is focused on one topic. Instead of having a bunch of general categories they include categories under one main niche. So for example a directory for photographers would have categories for different styles of photography, locations photographers are in, specialized photographic services etc. The directory is focused solely on photographers and that is it, nothing more. [click to continue...]

At the time I started building directories I had a dedicated server from theplanet.com and I still do. I recommend dedicated servers because you have complete control over them and you don’t share resources with hundreds of other websites. Dedicated servers are more expensive though and require a little bit of set up and maintenance but it’s not as complicated as you might think.

I run a dual xeon 3.2Ghz server with 3gb of ram and 2 hard drives, one for backup. That is more robust then what you’ll need so you can go with a smaller dedicated server if you like or you can buy shared hosting which is what most people use. There are many great web hosts out there and hosting seems to be getting cheaper by the day. [click to continue...]

When I first started building directories I didn’t have a lot of cash so I purchased .us and .info domains which in hindsight was a bad decision. Dotcoms are worth a whole lot more money so I’d recommend only buying dotcoms.

A lot of people think that all the good domains have been taken but that’s not true. You just have to be more creative then you did a few years ago. You can still get dotcoms with your main keyword in them by being original and adding prefixes or suffixes to them that are adjectives, colors, etc. Check out Dotomator to do this easily. You can put a list of prefixes or suffixes in along with your main keyword and it will generate a complete list of domains for you. It even checks to see if they are available or not.

What you can do is visit the resource section and view a listing of occupations, countries, states and top cities by population and use those in either the prefixes or suffixes fields of the Dotomator to generate domain names to use. See example below.

Dotomator domain name helper

Pesky Hyphens

You don’t need hyphens in your domain anymore! For those that think you still need to separate the keywords in your domain with hyphens such as wedding-photographer-directory to get ranked for those keywords are wrong. It’s a tired old myth that needs to be put to rest. Google and other search engines can separate words in a domain and altogether it doesn’t matter what your domain is. You can rank for keywords without having them in your domain. So get creative!

I use Godaddy to register all my domains because they are by far the best in the industry and offer a nice admin section to administer your domains. When you own hundreds of domains it’s good to have a registrar that offers tools to easily navigate through them and administer them. It’s also super easy to push domains into someone else’s account when you go to sell your sites. And doing that is free.

It is quite easy to start your own directory but if you’ve never worked with software scripts before then it can be daunting. It took me awhile to learn what I know and I remember how frustrated I would get when I couldn’t figure something out. And by no means am I a programmer. I don’t know PHP, CGI, PERL etc. If you know any programming languages I envy you!

Luckily scripts make it easy to run dynamic websites that require databases without having to know any programming languages. If you are already familiar with installing scripts and setting up MySQL databases then starting your own directory will be a breeze. And if you’ve never installed a script or set up a database in your life you’ll learn how in this guide.

Once you finish reading through this website you should be able to dive right in and have your first directory set up in little time. If you already have a directory then what you learn here will help you profit more from it.

I truly wish someone had released information like this when I was getting started. It would have saved me literally hundreds of hours of pain and heartache learning all this stuff by research and trial and error.