Stumped !

06 Jun

Posted by admin as Directory News

This surely put a smile on my face, the evil smirky kinds

****Once again let me make it clear that i am not targetting anyone (i so love DP for stimulating my blogging senses)

Now this guy “aspidov” asked a simple question ” what does your directory offer? ” :: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=355997

~ Million dollar question, what does your directory offer to users? !not webmasters?

Never knew that the directory owner community would find it so hard to answer this, i am stumped myself ;-)

So what do you think were the responses ? (i think most didnt even understand the question)

This is how the story goes

You can find a frog for one thing, the ability to submit to more than one category at a time.

And finally we see some hope with jg123, yeah…..so he got the question, but then the story continues and then we have Blogmaster getting candid as he confesses that his plan is yet to be formulated.

Ah, we have a man who just seemed to have striked a chord.

mhamdi replies

will be soon launching an “mp3 search engine“.
I don’t host any of the mp3, just looking for them in the web so I guess nothing illegal.

Revelant enough; a simple, my hands are clean idea but a lot of returning visitor, bookmarking type of value.

Then we have a member getting all charged up, something to do with the question format.

Its seems that the question was out of syllabus and needed some corrections. The question seems fine but the answer seems wrong again.

p.s.Directory are not made for webmasters, unless you admit that you are selling links and nothing more.

Then we have NRLMedia, i like the guy and well like always we have a diplomatically correct answer. The only part that makes sense to me is “The Highest Editorial Standards”

Not many got the question correct so lets continue more

Now the drama is beginning, (the usual stuff at DP)

Scoopy gives a shot and speaks from the opposition

Although I think it would be a good idea to offer the “people” something valuable (other than an easy to use & well organized listing)… “people” are not your customers… webmasters are. They should be the ones a directory owner wants to please.

I am speechless

Freewebspace speaks about pagedata, i am a little clueless and now i am getting stumped too.

“The Pheonix” subtly mentions the hardtime DPer have been giving him and i dont blame that guy, i guess its too make PHPld supporters at the helms of DP.

Tolra, finally admits that this is a basic question with much to ponder on and hits a mark with his responce

For virtually every feature we offer users there seems to be something also offered to webmasters, so for example we offer the users the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds of news pushed live from listed sites, i.e. product announcements from clothes sites, but this also requires webmasters push their news to us.

The user gains feeds on their topic of interest while the webmaster gains an advertising outlet.

I love this and some hard hidden reality to go with it (only seen by smart directory owners)

As such I think that anything we do for users will also be of benefit to webmasters. The reverse of course isn’t true

The smarter one are coming and i like what Obelia says next

It’s interesting how the focus on pleasing webmasters has led to a loss of focus on the visitor experience. As far as I’m concerned, visitors will be looking for relevancy and usefulness, as well as ease of use. I’ve tried to achieve this by maintaining strict guidelines for inclusion, and having a search feature that lists matching categories as well as matching websites.

Antonio speaks for a lot of us, including me when he states that

“Mostly directories are for webmasters.”

And finally jg123 speaks, and this one is a hit too.

Really what most directories are offering as their meat-and-potatoes service is an easy way to search for related sites. Since generally speaking web directories list newer sites it is a good place to search if you are thinking of starting up a blog or want to scope out your competition’s web presence, just because you have a blog or a website does not make you a ‘webmaster’. So I would say the goal of most directories is to have a comperhensive listing of relevant related sites to search, for a web savy person. To that end I have been incoporating multiple search methods into my directories, including search box via keyword, a-z listing and listing via page rank.

I agree as ease of Navigation is the first thing that any directiory can offer to an end user and keep him coming back for more.

Littlebobek give charity (seperate dedicated blog post for you brother), now that cool.

The fight continues with Dubz, starting the spitfire and well i love his blog directory.

Dubz owns Bloggeries and for a bloggers point of view he does have a few good thing to offer. His directory has an active forum to help a blogger, free reviews, free blog polls and he promises a tutorial soon.

He adds

Things are coming along running a resource is MUCH MORE exciting than just a directory and part of the reason I had a ~25% traffic increase in May was due to the additonal features than just a directory. Cool thread!

And i would forcast that this is the future of the directory business with the lines between OBC and good directories thinning by the moment.

I make a useless entry and then i have the ultimate responce

My directories offer Free links in retun for Green Rep
No link back needed - One is Appreicated.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=326942

I am loosing it…so no comments

and i can assure you off many more interesting things to come…but let me stop here

~~~~~~
Why are we directory owners getting stumped, searching for words on such a simple question ?

The fact is that, we are building directories as a regular business model not as business resource.

There is a fine line between the two with the former being a regular business model either becoming stagnant over a period of time or completely dying out, unless you constantly feed it with google juice.

The “Business Resource” model is here to stay, it about building a business model that can sustain itself on it own and does not have to forever survive on a continious paid link juice diet. A little link baiting here and there will be involved and Aviva is doing wonders with that.

A business resource would revolve around building quality content arround the main business model (in this case a directory) in terms of functionality and interesting content.

This is one area that most directories (including mine) are lagging in, we know the truth about people choosing to start directories - comparitively less effort in maintainance and easier to monetize.