Explosive Web Directory Sale Boosts Online Business

Internet News reported that R.H. Donnelley, a telephone directory company, just clinched a major deal to purchase Business.com, a web-based marketing directory, at a hefty price of $345 million. I'd say that's quite a sweet deal even if you take into consideration the value of the domain name which they bought back in 1999 at $7.5 million. Their current cash flow is $15 million and they are expecting revenue over $50 million for 2007. Not sure what the up-to-date value of the domain name is now but if just going by revenue then that's almost 7 times the yearly revenue. Donnelley obviously are seeing some significant potential and that is an explosion both to the domain name and web directory businesses.

Not that this will repeat again anytime soon or can compare to it, but certainly gives a boost to the web directory business. It's easy to start one up with either a free or paid directory script, a domain name and hosting. It by any means does not require a significant initial investment, just time and effort like in most things. A couple of popular sources for directory scripts are phplinkdirectory and esyndicat. Some of the benefits of a web directory is that it indexes easily with the search engines and can immediately gain traffic just through posting in forums alone since many websites use web directories to get backlinks. Of course the promotion part is necessary but once it's on track you don't need to spend more than an hour a day updating it.... unless you grow so big you have to hire employees.

I have a few web directories, two I started over a month ago and another one a few days ago. I am awating the next google pagerank update, which is around the corner, as expect the PR to increase on two of them and if they do then that would be one of the quickest ways in a short time to get a higher PR. I promote them in a couple of forums with posts & signature links and obtain free links from higher PR & traffic websites. And this alone is enough to get a good start and keep you busy. Right now they are all free directories so I don't charge for links and consider this the best way to go until you build it up and then can make it a paid directory or combination of both.

And make sure if you do start one to submit your links to other web directories too as you do want to get more backlinks, which also can mean potential higher PR and traffic. You are welcome to submit to mine:

Links Daily Web Directory
So Red Hot Web Directory
QLink Web Directory

Reciprocal links are not required though appreciated.

Also place your link for free on this PR6 Website . They do require a reciprocal but the added benefit is that it is also a contest where they are trying to achieve a PR10 and once they do will award the winner the site. Since your directory will be full of links anyway, no big deal to add another one in.

Who knows maybe someone will knock on your door one day offering big bucks for your directory.