Hosting a Niche Directory on your Site

[jdeb]

I'm keen to hear feedback from anyone who has installed a directory onto their e-commerce site.

By directory, I mean that - subject to human review and possibly a small fee - a relevant site owner in my niche can create a listing that is effectively a page on my site where they control the main content, links & images.
People using our site would enter the directory section from our resources / advice top level category and browse the index of the directory to reach a listed site's dedicated page.

The idea for it came up when we were discussing ways to get more backlinks. Offering people a whole page directory listing seems like a good way of negotiating a link in return that isn't just from the other site's link page.

I'm looking for everyone's stories on this: your reasons for doing it, how you went about it and the tools you used and what your results where, in particular: was it worth it?

We aren't thinking about starting a new site for the directory, it would be added onto our main site (which is old and has good PR etc etc). However, it would still be good to hear from both sides of the fence on that issue.

Over to you.

J

[KeriMorgret]

Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered?

Thanks!

[jdeb]

Thank you Eric,

Speed is also one of our priorities and I'd be delighted to have good reason to buy some more server vrooom.

The charge for a listing idea was just being thorough, I doubt we really will, after all, we want backlinks. Affiliate links are a better of raising some nice lunch money.

You're spot on about the niche relevancy & user experience - we hope the directory will be popular, judging by all the calls we get about related products that we don't sell!

Was your site selling any / many products? Was there some clever tracking going on around people who left the site through the directory?

J

[EricPacifico]

I have a some experience in this. I added a directory package to an already up-and-running site, utilizing eDirectory (http://www.edirectory.com/) and we kept it on the same domain (ex: directory.example.com). Overall, aside from a few hick-ups, the installation and implementation went well, and search engines are crawling the directory. The tough part is to make sure that your template on the edirectory, matches your site. This was easy with navigation and not so easy with banner ads, but we eventually got it looking good. Depending on the size of your site, expectations of your directory and resources, you may want to consider diversifying the hosting of the directory onto separate (virtual) machines, but that's of course up to you.

The one thing I did want to mention is that when creating a directory, especially if you're considering charging for ANY aspect of it, is thinking of it from a visitor prospective. Why would I want to pay (or spend time uploading to) a directory to host info/images/etc I could do elsewhere, or am already doing elsewhere? Having a niche site might negate that question, tho. Good luck!