Monetizing a free directory; sending and receiving free relevant traffic.

Most administrators use link directories in order to sell links. In addition to the sale of regular links and featured links, there are several modifications available that would enable link directory administrators to sell links on categories, known as category sponsorship. Since the link directory administrator will either follow a "paid" or "free" model, the purpose of site monetization must be addressed -- especially in the case of the "free" directory model. Because while submitting to a directory will be free to the end user, the cost of operating a free directory is absorbed by the administrator.

Adsense provides the easiet method to monetize a free directory. Every directory owner's dream is to have their directory rank high on the search engines in order to attract organic search engine traffic. From the total number of humans who visit the directory, a small percentage of them will click on the google advertisements, and will help offset the costs associated with hosting, link development, and advertising. I've always thought about how adsense is comparable to television commercials. Each individual link advertisement is akin to a particular commercial. Clicking on an adsense link is like watch a television commercial. In this structure, google keeps for itself a hidden percentage of the total cost of the advertisement, and dispurses the other hidden percentage to the site owner. Note : Apply to Google Adsense.

Text-link-ads provides a secondary source of income to free directories. When a free directory becomes popular enough according to Alexa, and also achieves a high pagerank from Google, the directory will be accepted into the TLA program. Note : You may advertise on the simple machines forum directory through Text-link-ads. The total cost paid to text-link-ads is shared in a 50% - 50% structure. This means, for example, that if TLA says that it costs $15 to advertise on a directory, TLA will keep $7.50 for itself, and will pay the site owner $7.50.

Most modern free directories are upgraded versions of link farms. However, relevant directories target a specific and a relevant niche. When a directory targets a specific and viable niche, then link directories cease to be link farms. In the case of the simple machines forum directory, the targetted niche is forums that are powered by a specfiic forum software. While the content of the forums are different, they share one thing in common: they are all running the same forum software.

In order to build pagerank, it is important to offer goods and services to those who use the directory. Since pagerank is Google's measurement of how many quality and relevant websites are linking to a particular domain, it is in the interest of our directory to have many SMF forums linking to us. How? Since self-interest is one of the main motivators of human behavior, it was important to approach the question from the point of view of catering to the self-interest of those who would promote our directory.

All forum administrators want quality traffic. So now the question becomes, "How can I help deliever quality traffic to those who promote my directory?" The answer: Traffic exchanging! When many forums link to our directory, our pagerank increases (my self-interest). At this point, I need to communicate our strength and weight of our pagerank back to those sites who linked to this directory (your self-interest). To answer this, I am sending traffic from the directory's landing page -- the page with the highest pagerank -- to random forums. Note : Read more about our free traffic exchange. Upon each screen refresh, a new random site that is already listed in our directory is pulled and is visited by search engines and humans alike. In other words, promoting this directory will help to promote your forum.