Advice on building a Business Directory Please

[Devamatt]

Hi there

I am starting to consider building a UK business link directory with one of the two domains below (undecided which yet!).

If anyone has any advice, pointers, pitfalls etc etc etc then please do let's hear them!!

The domains in Question are FindBusiness.co.uk or GetBusiness.co.uk

Cheers

Matt

 

[BFTUK]

Find business would seem more suited.

Pitfalls, is sourcing the data or attracting businesses to submit their listings.

I would suggest you allow fee submissions and monetise the traffic that you will get from having a large directory.

I would imagine you'll want a custom built script, as most of the standard directory scripts would most likely lack features that you would require, so think carefully about the spec and requirements you want.

 

[Devamatt]

Find business would seem more suited.

Pitfalls, is sourcing the data or attracting businesses to submit their listings.

I would suggest you allow fee submissions and monetise the traffic that you will get from having a large directory.

I would imagine you'll want a custom built script, as most of the standard directory scripts would most likely lack features that you would require, so think carefully about the spec and requirements you want.

Thanks for that I was thinking of free listings for a couple of years to try to get it busy, then later down the line offer premium/featured listings for a set annual fee, or perhaps the pay for featured listing should be available from the begining? Otherwise, as you say monetise the traffic and utilise the email database I would build for other 'partner' projects etc...

I think you're probably right on the script, my web builder has said similar in that there will be no free suitable scripts and we will have to custom build or buy one suitable if there is one out there?! Does anyone know where we can perhaps buy good directory scripts to get us started?

 

[yesterday]

Does anyone know where we can perhaps buy good directory scripts to get us started?

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/developed-web-sites-sale/14380-developed-web-directory-monsterdirectory-co-uk.html

yesterday

 

[paul]

Unless you can offer something unique I wouldn't spend too much time on this. The days where you could throw up any old site with minimal content and get it indexed and ranking well, are over.

The only way to make this work is if you 1. offer something different and 2. you have unique content on all pages.

Also everyone thinks that they can attract advertisers, however, as someone who owns several of these types of sites I can tell you it's not easy.