Building a business directory web portal is a long, time consuming, and arduous process. However, the financial rewards may be worth the effort. In this post, we will consider how to monetize your business directory in various ways and turn your site into a profitable business.
Covered monetization strategies include ...
- Sale of listings
- Claim listings
- Charge visitors to see the best ads
- Creating a membership site
- Commercial promotion
By the time you're done reading, you'll be well equipped with practical strategies and tools for monetizing your business directory web portal. Let's get started so you can learn how to monetize your directory today!
1. Selling ads
Whatever your directory site niche, making money from your listings, in one form or another, will likely be your main source of income in the long run. You can include anything related to your niche. Popular lists of directory sites include ...
- Hotels
- Restaurants
- Stores
- Property
- Jobs
- Services
- Events (edit)
You can easily monetize your business directory by charging businesses and making them pay to have their listings displayed on your directory site. Charging a recurring fee to run an ad will ensure that you receive a guaranteed monthly payment. Similarly, you can also charge a one-time fee to display an ad for a specified period of time.
Premium Listings
Many directory sites provide a smartphone scale for listing rates and features. Premium listings can make a lot more money, but they will need to ensure that a business listing stands out from the crowd. To do this, consider offering premium features like ...
- Larger listing templates
- Images
- Additional text space
- Social media links
- Scores and reviews
By allowing businesses to select the features that suit their service, they will happily upgrade from the basic listing format. Which, in turn, will help increase your income.
Another alternative is to charge companies a fee for a specified number of ads per month. This goes quite well with property or job directory sites, where companies may want to list 10, 50 or more properties or jobs per month. Subsequently, premium prices may be charged for higher volumes of listings.
Use a directory theme
If you're using a WordPress business directory theme, it probably already has a paid listings feature built in. Some themes use WooCommerce onboarding, while others integrate directly with payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe.
Depending on your topic, there may be even more than one way to charge for your ads. For example, the Listify Directory theme offers built-in options to charge for listings based on individual submissions or through a monthly subscription.
GeoDirectory
If you are using a generic WordPress theme, you will need to install a directory plugin to turn your site into a full directory web portal. GeoDirectory is a powerful plugin that will allow you to grow your directory site from a fledgling business to global success.
GeoDirectory will allow you to charge companies for placing listings on your site and will help you manage this procedure. Although the core GeoDirectory plugin is free, you will need to purchase the Pricing Manager premium suite to implement the pay-per-listing feature.
The Pricing Manager plugin offers unlimited pricing packages, the option to assign listings to prominent 'featured' positions on your site, and five default payment gateways. If you choose to use Stripe or PayPal, it can also offer free trials and recurring payments.
Top Tip for Marketing AdsTo market listings, you will initially have to contact a large number of companies and sell them the benefits of listing them on your site. Make sure to also integrate Google Analytics for WordPress to get good statistics on the number of visitors your site receives each month and the conversion rates of current listings.
2. Claim listings
The other key way to monetize your business directory is to allow businesses to claim your listing. Claiming listings is modeled after Google Business, Yelp, and a few other great directory sites, below. It consists of a directory site that publishes all the listings within its niche on its site for free. Businesses can then log into your site and claim / update their listing with additional information… for a fee.
There are numerous benefits to this approach ...
- Your site lists all the businesses within your niche, not just the ones that have paid for a listing. This makes it a truly useful resource for your visitors, as it provides them with all possible alternatives for them to select.
- It keeps your site relevant, as companies will make sure to keep their listings up-to-date with the latest information that potential customers or customers may need.
- You'll save countless hours of your own time updating your site, as companies will take care of logging in and modifying their own listings.
- Selling is less difficult as all listings will be posted on your site and businesses can choose whether to upgrade to a premium listing.
- Receive a one-time payment, or earn regular income, each time a business requests a quote.
Once companies claim a listing, you can offer a tiered payment structure again. Businesses can pay an amount for your claim based on the features they choose to display on their list. Alternatives could include adding photos, a logo, testimonials, links to more than one URL, the option to reply to reviews, adding important information like additional contact details and opening hours, and much more.
GeoDirectory - Claim Lists
Again, the 'claim a listing' feature is one that is built into many WordPress directory themes. However, if you choose to use the WordPress GeoDirectory plugin, you will find that it offers the premium breadth of Claim Listings.
This plugin adds a 'claim listing' button to each listing on your site. Businesses can contact you using this button, and once you have reviewed and verified the app, you can grant them access to update the information on your list.
Top tip for claiming listings - This is a great option for those who are just starting to monetize their business directory site. It means that you can create a useful and meaningful site, which will lead to a growing following of regular users. This, in turn, will increase the likelihood that businesses will want to pay to claim your listing on their site.
3. Charge visitors to view top ads
Charging visitors to view top listings is another effective way to monetize your business directory. This method of earning money will not work for all types of directory sites. But, for example, if you are running a job directory web portal, your users are likely to be convinced that they are paying to view the positions applied for. Many job sites hide their highest paying jobs, or the types of jobs that receive the most interest, and then charge an additional fee for visitors to view.
WPMU DEV Pay per View is a paywall plugin that will allow you to charge your audience to view the content on your directory site. You can choose whether you want to charge visitors a one-time payment or a subscription to access blocked content. Users can pay through PayPal and later log in with Google, Facebook or another specific social network account to view the corresponding listings.
Pay per View is part of the WPMU DEV membership package. This offers a 30-day no-cost period, so you can test the plug-in before agreeing to the financial commitment required by WPMU DEV.
Top Tip for Charging Visitors to View Top Lists - Make sure the listings you are charging your visitors to view are high quality, sought after, and cannot be found anywhere else online. Otherwise, you will find that people will not be prepared to part with your money.
4. Creating a member directory site
After charging visitors to view top listings, another method of monetizing your business directory is to convert your site to a membership directory site. This entails blocking all listings on your site and charging those who want to view your content a monthly subscription.
To encourage people to sign up for your member directory site, you will need to provide more than just on-demand listings. Create a go-to site for users in your specific niche, containing helpful blog posts, how-to videos, thought-provoking podcasts, live webinars, and more.
It is also a good idea to add forums to your membership site and organize meetings or events. By creating an engaged and interactive community around your site and providing essential information along with your listings, you will be able to attract and retain members.
A well-known example of a member directory site is Angie's List. This is a very popular member directory site that shares honest reviews of services provided. However, it also provides the best lists, helpful questions and answers, photo galleries of completed work, and a helpful blog full of tips.
MemberPress
MemberPress is a powerful WordPress plugin that can quickly and easily turn your directory site into a membership site. Once you've installed this plugin, you can instantly block your content, create numerous tiered membership plans, accept and manage payments, design impressive landing pages to increase subscriptions, and much more.
MemberPress is a premium plugin and offers a 14 day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the product. For more information on using MemberPress, see our post on setting up a membership site with MemberPress. Or check out our Paid Member Subscriptions review if you want to check out an alternative membership plugin.
Top tip for creating a member directory site - Marketing and retaining subscriptions will be at the forefront of everything you do as a member directory site owner. Use WordPress plugins for social networks to help drive and generate interest on your site.
5. Commercial promotion
(*5*)
Ad display is the final strategy we will discuss to help you monetize your business directory. Market advertising space to companies or join the Google Ad Sense schema, are options that will help you increase your income. If you decide to go the ad route, make sure the ads are relevant to your site and don't distract your content and listings too much.
Advanced Ads is a useful free WordPress plugin that will help you manage your ads. Create and display an unlimited number of ads, automatically insert ads into posts and pages without coding, schedule ads to show and expire, and much more (plus you can purchase their premium Selling Ads plugin to automate the sale of ad space in your web portal).
Top tips for business promotion - Be careful of displaying too many advertisements on your site. Ads greatly impact the experience your users receive, and too many ads will result in high bounce rates and low numbers of returning visitors.
Final thoughts on how to monetize your business directory
As you can see, there are numerous alternatives for monetizing your business directory. Think carefully about your niche and audience for your web portal. Then select the strategy that best reflects your site's needs to monetize your business directory. Good luck!
What strategy will you use to monetize your business directory? Share your thoughts in the comments below ...
