Business Directory Idea

[troublie]

Hi all,

I am thinking of start a business directory listing by niche here in my city. The thing is, I want a paid directory, since I will do SEO for most of the listings/categories.

I will make for example a directory about restaurants. So domain will be restaurantsin<city> or restaurants<city>.

Then I want to make some categories like "japanese" "pizza" "seafood" "chinese" and etc.

Then I want to list just ten business per category, to justify the price ($100 in my currency, actually USD50,00). Now since I will do SEO for the whole site and this takes some time, even without any competition (which is zero here, just google places listings) I want to close the deal with at least 10 business and put the directory online, and take a good part of that money to do PPC through google and facebook (which again is cheap, since there is almost no competition even on adwords) to gain some traffic, and letting them know about this too.

I am planning to sell the service as I said, paid traffic local directory.

Has anyone have any opinion on this? Anyone here has worked with 100% paid directory before? Am I going wrong on this?

Thanks


edit: when I said $100 I mean $100 per month

 

[Andre2812]

Why don't you do SEO for the businesses themselves?

 

[the_demon]

ummmm..... Google Places?

 

[eochoa8]

Why don't you do SEO for the businesses themselves?

Well, the OP can get them listed on the directory first (just so he can get a foot on the door) and then he can then upsell his SEO services to them (the businesses).

Good luck man!

 

[troublie]

Well thanks for the replies!!

To explain a little bit more, I am in South America, and here in my country SEO is currently starting to grow. For me it is so more easy to sell advertising than SEO. A lot of local business does not even have a website atm (working on that already, selling websites) but SEO here in my current area is not worth to sell yet. Big companies knows what is it and they are doing it already, but small local business not.

Like I said, I can run a PPC on a local keyword here in my city for just $40 (USD20) for the whole month on adwords, already tested by me, with excellent results. I am just affraid that this model will not work because of the 100/mo pricing, but I think that it is time to take action to see if I am right or wrong.

Of course, the business owners can run the PPC campaign if they want, but seriously, this is something rare here, almost no business do it (small city) even if it is worth it. So I think that sooner or later people will start to figure this out and stop using the directory. Also another thing is that I will put a cap on each adwords campaign keyword, because if I have like 10 ads at 100/mo I am planning to spend no more than 400 in adwords for each category.

I don`t know I was thinking of that but I see some flaws that it is holding me back to sell it.

 

[skripel]

okey, as I understand you the income in your city is pretty low, so the income from local companies is lower than average and requires some work (plus you cant outsource it).

The market is unstable and you are a beginner in IM. My suggestion is do IM which is automated. You will make much more money with clicks, CPA or affiliate if you do white hat or even gray hat.

I wanted to make a directory in the beginning as well, but honestly it requires much more maintenance than you think. And it is really hard to fill it up with the customer, specially ones that will want to pay. Good idea tho.

 

[troublie]

Yeah I know, it is much more complicated.
Just to clarify, the market for local business it is not that low. It is good and etc, but business owners are not on that tech thing yet.

I am doing some CPA with 3 WP blogs and see some results already, but I am working on these blogs in parallel.

I am just gathering the more info that I can to mix online with offline marketing to create some consistent income, and working smart of course.

Currently I am selling websites (from $250 to $1000) and will start offering twitter/facebook management ($500 both). I have some experience with google places but SEO on google places is something that I can`t sell here.

So currently this is my idea, facebook/twitter management and websites.

Now I am brainstorming to try something good to sell ads to these business, like this business directory which I am having some doubts. Maybe PPC management it is a better option to this business directory idea?

How should a PPC campaign management must be charged?