directory muse-how to test

[keydow]

I want to create a directory listing for tourist related services. i would give a free 3 month trial after which i would ask the service owner to pay a monthly membership.

i dont know how to test it however. i believe its a passive rather than active interest product meaning people might purchase it if its put in front of them but wouldnt necessarly activley go looking for it.

if this holds true using adwords to test would be ineffective. i was considering using a telemarketer for a day (cost €200) to ring target companies and get feedback. however im not sure this would be accurate either as people may say they would purchase a listing at the end of the 3 months but people dont always do what they say.

any other suggestions for testing this type of muse?

Also does anyone have any experience of directory listings as muses-do they work?

thanks

[thetraveller]

Hi:

I have one niche directory that is getting tons of visitors and I am doing well with it.

The revenue is NOT form listings - site owners aren't breaking down the doors to get listed but rather from advertising. It is a very hard sell to get site owner to pay to get listed. Why should I pay when I am already in the search engines etc is a very common comment. Not to mention that there are tons of directories out there already that don't charge.

The only way that you will get some to list at a cost is to show them that you have lots of visitors that are looking for what they are selling. Whether that is hotel rooms, tour guides or information packages. The problem is that without visitors you don't get sites and without sites you don't get visitors. When I opened my directory I had over 5000 listings that I entered into the database (or more accurately wrote software to do that for me).

To help get indexed by the search engines I listed the site with other directories that just listed directories (i.e. directories of directories). That worked like a charm. My site now has a Google page rank of 4 and shows well in Google for example.

This brings me users that are interested in what my directory lists and by extension are open to advertising in that area. Google adwords has been good to me and also have been affiliate links thru large advertising houses.

I spend maybe 2 hours a week keeping the site up to date and approving new requests for listings.

I hope this helps. Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more about this.

Iain

[keydow]

Iain,

thanks for the advice. how long did you spend developing the site and did it take long to generate the traffic you required to make the site a success?

[thetraveller]

Iain,

thanks for the advice. how long did you spend developing the site and did it take long to generate the traffic you required to make the site a success?

I was able to get the site up and running in about a month (including writing the software to import the initial list of sites and descriptions) but it has taken abut a year to get the traffic up and generating reasonable revenue.

[tbone2345]

I was able to get the site up and running in about a month (including writing the software to import the initial list of sites and descriptions) but it has taken abut a year to get the traffic up and generating reasonable revenue.

can I ask what reasonable revenue is?
comparable to a day job or enough to justify the time per week and time already invested?