How to Monetize Your Directory Website (Even If You Have ZERO Traffic!) Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 So in today's video I'm gonna be breaking down four different ways that you can monetize your directory website and more importantly I'm gonna be breaking down how you can make these business models work even if you are a brand new directory. Let's get into it. Friends what's going on, welcome back to the channel. So in today's video we're gonna be talking about how to monetize your directory business.

00:20 Now I'm gonna be diving into the four most popular ways that directory sites usually monetize and that is number one ads, number two affiliate marketing, number three listing or premium listing fees and then finally also lead generation. Now these business models are tried and tested and there are tons of directories out there that make a lot of money with these specific business models.

00:44 But the reality of the matter is also that you actually need to have a somewhat established directory in order to make any meaningful money off these business models. So what I'm gonna be doing today is first of all walk you through how each of these business models work but I'm also gonna be recommending a fifth way to make money off your directory website that doesn't require you to have an audience or any type of traffic.

01:08 Now we've got a lot to cover so let's dive straight into the first one which is ads. Okay so the first business model is ads. There's nothing particularly exciting about it. You essentially add banners that look a little bit like this onto your website. I actually struggle to find any directories that we're currently using it but because it is such a passive way to make money people do end up using them on directories.

01:31 Now what does that all mean for making money? So first of all the way it works is that you first of all can use a platform like Google AdSense in order to create sections on your website that then allows Google to add banners that you see everywhere. Now Google will pay you for the amount of impressions that you generate for them. This is typically referred to as CPM, cost per thousand impressions.

01:56 Now the way that it typically works in terms of how much they'll pay you is really down to your niche and you know how much traffic you generate. Now an average that I think you can work with here is $2.80 for every thousand impressions. Now please keep in mind that impressions doesn't mean website visitors. You can have a website visitor that might generate multiple impressions for you but ultimately really what you want to look at is if you have a CPM of $2.80 and you generate a hundred thousand impressions that will

02:28 then lead to about $1400 in revenue. Now few thoughts on ads. First thing is that you know if you are going to go down this particular path try and be in a niche that has higher CPMs like finance or B2B because if you're creating for example a directory that kind of curates you know finance tips and all those kind of stuff that's typically a more valuable audience on a Google which means that you'll just get paid more.

03:00 Now the more page views that you generate so ideally you want to have a setup where you get a little click throughs the more ad impressions you'll generate and that will ultimately end up generating more money. Now I personally am not a fan of using Google AdSense on my site. If I were to go down the path of using ads or sponsorships I think a good alternative is to actually reach out to businesses in your niche directly and just to sell it to them directly.

03:25 You'll be able to make more money. There's also a lot more flexibility with the business model so you can you know sell it as a monthly subscription that type of stuff and ultimately you know if you already have a bit of traffic and you're known in the industry it will be somewhat easy to actually make quite a bit more money off it. Okay now the next step up from ads is affiliate marketing.

03:45 Now affiliate marketing is also kind of like an ads model with the main difference being that instead of getting paid per impressions you actually get paid per click and more importantly conversions. So I'm on this site called no code supply code which is an awesome directory that has a bunch of no code tools and tutorials and the way that this site works is there will be a bunch of tools listed in here.

04:08 So let's take for example whale sync and on these listing pages there will be a bunch of links so if for example I click on the whale sync link it will redirect me to whale sync but what has actually happened in the background is that whale sync recorded that the traffic came referred from no code supply. Now if I were to go ahead and upgrade to a paid account what would happen with affiliate links is that it automatically registered the sale came from this directory and then the directory will get paid a cut of the

04:39 revenue that was referred. Now this is a great model in certain niches because you can actually get paid quite a bit of money. Now I have used affiliate links a lot in my YouTube description so if you scroll down below you'll see a whole bunch of links about all the different tools that I talk about. So I can kind of speak to how it works in the no code slash SaaS space.

05:05 So for example if you were to go down and click on the Webflow affiliate link and you then go ahead and create an account and then upgrade to say a paid plan I will get paid 50% of your first year of whatever you pay them. So if for example the CMS pay plan is $25 a month then I'm going to get $150 over the course of the year. Now these models work well when you have established a site that is well known and well trusted in a niche because one it will attract a lot of traffic but secondly people are more likely to want

05:41 to learn more about what you're recommending. They're more likely to want to click through and then they're also more likely to want to upgrade. So if you are trying to use affiliate marketing with a new directory that no one knows here you'll probably struggle to get a lot of clicks on your links and therefore a lot of conversions which means that oftentimes the actual value of your traffic isn't particularly well.

06:03 But on the other hand if you have something like no code supply which has been around for a while and probably generates a lot of traffic and also has a lot of trust in the market then this is a fantastic little moneymaker because the value of every single website visitor will be very good. Okay so the next business model is listing fees and now as we're switching from ads and affiliate models into say listing fees or premium listings things start to get a little bit more hands on and you know the quality of your site

06:28 really becomes a factor. Now typically the way that these kind of sites work is that you basically either have free accounts that then lead to premium listings where you can upgrade or in this particular case on Bolt Jobs it's just a single one off fee there are no free listings. Now the reason why these models are so popular is because you can obviously make more money per traffic.

06:58 However one thing that is important to keep in mind with this particular model is that you know the quality of your site becomes way more of a factor. Now when you're just getting started people don't know who you are. I would actually recommend starting off with a freemium model because one thing that is also very important is that you actually build the number of listings that you have on your directory.

07:20 So typically what you'll see with new directory sites is that they start off with freemium model and then they have a paid upgraded option and as your site kind of gets more credibility people get you know you start delivering more value to the actual people that are listing on your site that's when you start seeing your conversion rates from free to paid go up.

07:39 Now as you're just getting started you know especially when I look back to my time with the unicorn factory at the beginning it's very hard to convert traffic into sign ups when people really don't know if there's any point even signing up to your site and it's even harder to get those people that do sign up to then sign up to a paid plan. Now it does happen so you know I definitely recommend starting off with a paid plan to at least give people the option to upgrade to a paid plan if they want but typically where

08:05 things get really nice and juicy is when you start to really have a track record in the market and people know that your site consistently delivers value because what you can do then is one you'll convert traffic into free sign ups at a way higher rate and you will also see that you can actually convert that free sign up into a paying customer a lot easier as well and that ultimately means that the overall value of your traffic just skyrockets over time.

08:32 Now there are a few things that I would keep in mind here. The first thing to keep in mind is that you need to make sure that you're attracting the right type of traffic in order for this to work. If you are running campaigns or putting social posts out that are targeting the wrong people or targeting the wrong type of intent then it doesn't really matter how good your site is your traffic will just not convert.

08:57 So often times what you'll end up wanting to do is really make sure that your SEO is good you want to make sure that potentially you've got some Google search ads going because that will just ultimately attract more high intent traffic. Another thing that is important to keep in mind is that you know when it comes to going from free to paid conversion reputation is everything so you actually need to develop a track record of actually delivering value you need to make sure that you're capturing case studies testimonials

09:22 all those types of things because you just simply see that those types of directories work a lot better then. So that is essentially it you know you just want to build a well trusted directory that can occasionally take time and also require a bit of traffic to get started but once it's going it is a super great business model. Now the last of the main business models that I'm going to be talking about is lead generation fees.

09:49 Now this is hands down my favorite business model and the example that I'm going to show you is actually from one of the members of the MVMP community and the site is called townhouses.nz. So this guy called Alex runs it. Basically the way that these types of sites work is that real estate agents or brokers can basically list their properties on this site and then the purpose of this site is that the site generates a high quality leads for these brokers and so basically you'll come to the site you'll fill out the

10:18 contact form as someone who's looking for a townhouse submit the form and then that information will then be forwarded on to the broker and that essentially counts as a lead. Now why is this such a good model? So the first thing is that in the case of lead generation fees you don't get paid for exposure you get paid for results which I personally think is a way better model because you essentially only get paid if you're actually generating value which means that it will keep you on your toes.

10:54 The second thing is because you are actually delivering results you can actually charge a lot more per successful result. So I've got a little arbitrary example that I want to walk you through here. Let's say for example you build a directory that helps mortgage brokers get leads. Let's say we identify that the value that we're generating for them is roughly $600 to $700 per qualified lead.

11:18 I typically then like to think about what the average lead to sale conversion rate will be for the broker and then price my lead fee based on that because if you price it in a way that they're always making money they'll keep coming back and ultimately it's a good sustainable business model that way. Now really what the name of the game is then is to attract as much traffic to your site as possible so that you can then generate as much leads as possible because that lead that is generated is essentially associated with

11:49 a dollar amount. Now once again one of the main challenges that you're going to run to in the beginning is that if people just don't know who you are it's going to be harder for you to convert people but even in scenarios where it's hard for you to convert people if you can attract a lot of people just the sheer amount of value that you'll generate through this particular model will make you a lot more money than all the other models that I showed you before.

12:14 Again that statement is niche dependent. Now here are a few things though about this particular model that can kind of make it hard to work. So the first thing is this model only works if you actually have sellers that are willing to do this model with you. So you really want to find a niche where generating leads is super tough. And if you find a niche where it's really tough for individual sellers to find work then it's a lot easier to make it work.

12:42 However on the other hand if you're in a niche where people are just flooded with work all the time then it's going to be very hard for you to A get them on board and B to actually charge them out of money that kind of makes sense. And then the second thing that is really important here is that you also need to make sure that the quality of your leads that you're generating for your sellers is incredibly high because if you start attracting low quality leads for them they will just not buy any more leads off your site

13:11 and ultimately end that business relationship. It also hurts your reputation and ultimately turns this really nice business model into something that's just absolutely unsustainable. Now ultimately the question now becomes well how can I make these business models work? Now the main reason why these business models are recommended over and over and over again is because they're tried and tested.

13:30 There are tons of directories who have gone out there and made tons of money using these business models. But there is oftentimes something that isn't mentioned which is that in order for these business models to work you need to be able to generate traffic. And essentially if you find yourself in a situation where you know no one knows about what it is that you're doing you'll get no traffic to your website.

13:50 If you get no traffic to your website you'll get no sign ups and no sign ups means no conversions or upgrades and that essentially means no sales. Now I refer to this as the directory flywheel. You can call it whatever you want. I literally made this name up. But really if you are trying to think about how can I make these business models work it all boils down to the same thing.

14:11 The first thing is you need to generate impressions because once you generate impressions people know about what you're doing that will translate into traffic. As soon as you start generating enough traffic that will generate sign ups or conversions. Now it might not necessarily be paid sign ups but someone might join your newsletter, someone might create a free account, someone might create a free listing.

14:32 And as soon as you get through the cycle of creating these conversions that's when you start to see sales. So those people who use your site get value out of it over and over again they'll actually see the value in upgrading to a paid account and as soon as you get to that point you will get to the point where you'll start generating revenue and that essentially then starts the flywheel that will then allow you to take that revenue that you're generating and put it back into impressions.

14:57 Now once you have this flywheel moving beautiful things happen but one of the biggest challenges that I see people have is that they can never get this flywheel going and that is ultimately why a lot of directory businesses end up never going anywhere. So why does this happen? Now there are a ton of reasons but I think I can boil it down to a specific problem.

15:21 The specific problem again is you're not generating impressions. Then the question is why you're not generating impressions and typically the reason why you're not generating impressions is because you're focusing on low result strategies in order to generate those impressions. Now what are those strategies? There are two that typically always stand out to me.

15:42 Number one is you're just going all in on SEO. Now does SEO work? Absolutely. Now there are a lot of people who have basically built directories that basically are self sufficient because of the organic traffic that they generate. But here's the thing. Number one it actually does require some technical expertise in order to get your SEO to the point where you just attract tons of traffic.

16:07 The second thing is even then it takes time and this is time that you really don't have. You need to be generating impressions as fast as possible and waiting for SEO to kick in will just be a really slow burn. The second problem that I see is the content marketing strategy. Now content marketing seems intuitively like a good path to go down but in order for you to do that effectively you actually need an audience.

16:35 So if you're starting at zero it's incredibly hard to get any type of results from content marketing. Let's say for example I create a new Instagram account for my running directory and I have two followers. Now who's going to be clicking on my ads? Who's even going to be seeing my ads? Who's going to be seeing my content? No one. And so ultimately it doesn't really matter if you spend tons and tons of time trying to build up your Instagram account or your SEO.

17:02 This is something that is a bit of a slow burn and will ultimately be difficult to get to the point where you start seeing results fast. Now the question is what is the answer? How can we get this flywheel going? And luckily the answer is so simple that literally anyone can do it and the answer is using paid ads. Now paid ads are like a cheat code. Paid ads is essentially what got the unicorn factory from zero to being the largest freelance market players in New Zealand.

17:33 And there are so many reasons to love paid ads but here are some of the ones that are probably the things that I like the most. The first thing is paid ads doesn't care about your track record. It will deliver results instantly. All you need to do is create a Facebook ads account or create a Google ads account, upload your ads, hit the play button and they will start delivering immediately.

17:57 The second thing is it is so easy to pinpoint target people. So on Facebook you can target people by their interests, their age, their location, those types of things. If you use Google you can target people based on the type of stuff that they're Googling or the things that they're watching on YouTube. So you can actually make sure that your ads are not just seen by any odd random but it's been seen by people who are most likely going to be your customers.

18:23 And then finally, and this is the thing that is really the real good thing about this, is that it's scalable and it's predictable. So once you find the ideal combination of the audience that you're targeting, the ads, then you can just spend more money and it will basically increase the impressions that you get. Now I don't want to simplify it. It does take a lot of like experimenting and stuff in order for you to see it work.

18:49 But the most important thing is that you will start generating traffic and once you start generating that traffic you're going to get answers about your business that will allow you to get to the point where you'll build a super profitable business a lot faster. Now how would I approach doing this? The first thing is start off by targeting people in your niche and run ads to them.

19:11 Now instead of bringing them straight to a page where you want them to pay an upgrade, actually capture them by using lead magnets or by offering a free resource or by offering free signups. Because as soon as you capture the information you can actually re-engage them by email and you don't need to keep going back to your paid ads platform in order to get them back to your site.

19:37 Always offer a paid upgrade option because ultimately if you have a paid upgrade option there the chances that someone does upgrade to one of your paid offers is a lot higher and that will immediately translate back into revenue that you can put straight back into ads. And ultimately that brings me to the last point which is the best thing that you can do at the very beginning is spend as much money on ads as possible in order to drive traffic and the best way to do that is to just reinvest the money that you're making

20:07 from the actual sales that you're making through your initial ads. And once you get into the habit of setting that up it will become a lot easier for you to generate really meaningful traffic and as soon as that happens implementing more of those original business models becomes a lot easier. Now just in case some of you haven't spent any money on ads let me quickly break down how it works.

20:30 So typically what you do is you take a set amount of money and then you start running ads. Now the first metric that you want to look out for is CPM. So it's basically how much is the ad platform charging you for every thousand impressions that it will generate for you. So basically every time you see like an ad on Facebook or Instagram that's one impression.

20:51 Now as soon as you know how many impressions you're going to generate then the next metric that you want to look at is how many people actually click on the ads. That is referred to as the click through rate. Now this is going to vary depending on the quality of your ads, quality of your placement, those types of things. But I think you know a good starting point is to kind of assume that it's going to be on the lower end so anywhere between 2 to 5 percent.

21:15 But over time as you start experimenting with different ad copy, different ad creative, different audiences you'll see that it just naturally gets better over time and the better your ads get the better your results will get. Now this then brings us to the next step. Now with the clicks you're generating traffic to your site now the next thing that you want to measure on your site and you'll need something like Google Analytics for is how well does that traffic convert into sign ups.

21:41 So if you have for example a free sign up on your site you want to basically say for every thousand clicks that I get how many actually convert into free accounts. And so if for example 30 out of a thousand convert into paid accounts then you know that on average 3 percent of people will create a free account as a result of visiting your site. And now you can already say hey for every $500 I spend on Facebook ads 30 of those people will create accounts.

22:12 That brings us to the next point. You then want to see how many of the free accounts actually upgrade to a paid account. Now again I've just thrown arbitrary numbers in here because your conversion rate is going to be dependent on factors like the pricing, the trust, those types of things. But let's just assume that out of all the 30 people that sign up we get maybe one to two premium listings.

22:35 Now we know that for every premium like every one and a half premium every $500 we spend we get about one and a half premium listings and then you can translate those premium listings into actual revenue that you're making. And so that way you can actually predict how much money you should be making based on the ads that you invest in. Now at the beginning you won't know what a lot of these figures are so you just got to run ads and you just got to keep track of these metrics and tools like Google Analytics.

23:07 Also keep a spreadsheet that type of stuff. But as soon as you've kind of identified OK what your funnel looks like and how well you converted each stage then one you'll know whether or not you're running ads profitably and two you'll also know what area you need to focus on most in order to improve results. So if for example your click through rate is bad then what you would want to focus the majority of your time on is how can I make my ads better so that more people click on it.

23:33 Say your ads are great but no one signs up then what you want to do is focus on optimizing your website for free sign ups and so on. You kind of get the idea. But really what paid ads will allow you to do is to really visualize every step in the process and once you have visualized how it works you understand how you generate revenue based on the amount of money that you spend on ads.

23:54 It's kind of simple as that. Now few quick notes on channels to use Facebook Google search ads display ads and LinkedIn ads. I personally always start off with Facebook and Instagram ads. The audiences that I target on there are usually more low intent because they're currently going through the process of scrolling through Instagram so they're not necessarily in buy mode.

24:14 However I find the fact that I can pinpoint target people and experiment with different ad creative and different messaging is actually more insightful than anything. And then eventually what I'll do is once I have my offer down once I have my pricing down then I'll switch to more high intent traffic sources like Google search ads. You'll typically spend more money on Google search ads simply because the CPMs are higher because more people are bidding on high intent traffic.

24:43 But ultimately it's a really great way to attract high quality traffic to your site and if you can make the mass work that we just went over even those ads can be super profitable. Now there are also going to be certain instances where you might want to use LinkedIn ads. For example if your target audience is primarily on LinkedIn then you might want to think about that.

25:04 LinkedIn is traditionally a bit more expensive than all the other platforms but again it just comes down to the fact that you know the value of the actual audience is typically a lot higher as well. And then another ad platform I use is Google display ads which I mostly use to retarget people who have engaged with me. Now I don't want to over complicate things but the key to all of this is to essentially get your flywheel going by just buying traffic.

25:29 Now I want to answer a question for anyone who might find themselves in a situation where they're on board with this but they don't actually have the budget to spend on ads. Now the reason why I'm bringing this up is because when I started the Unicorn Factory I was in that exact situation. I had literally minus $600 in my account and there was no money going to be spent on ads.

25:50 So the question is well how do you get to the point where you have enough money that you can actually invest in ads and basically kickstart your flywheel. And my number one advice is stop selling $10 listings. Stop trying to do affiliate marketing. Stop trying all of those things I mentioned before because those are low return business models. Now what you want to do instead is you want to focus on generating cash quickly by selling higher value services to your niche.

26:19 Now what does this mean? So you can use the consulting model essentially to basically find your ideal customer within your niche. So if you're building a site that reviews mortgage brokers then your ideal target customer is going to be a local mortgage broker. Then what you want to do is you want to have a look at the kind of things that they're doing in the operations right now and you want to identify what the main pain points are in the business.

26:45 For example is creating social content consistently a bit of a pain? Is you know following up with leads a problem? Is you know I don't know it could be a ton of things but essentially what you want to do is you want to research the market figure out you want to talk to some people and you want to figure out what are the biggest pain points that your ideal customer have.

27:05 And then what you want to do is you just want to create a simple offer that addresses that particular pain point. So let's say for example a big pain point is people are super inconsistent with creating their social media content because they're spread so thin across different areas of their business. Come up with a simple offer which is something along the lines of I will create all of your social media content for the next three months.

27:27 That includes and now you deliver three to five deliverables. So includes free posts per week on Instagram three posts on Instagram stories that kind of stuff. You will get all of the ad creative all of the ad copy and I'll put it in a database for you so that you can access it whenever you want and you only need to deliver it. Then give them a specific timeline when you deliver the work.

27:53 If you say hey this will be delivered in two weeks then it makes the whole process a lot easier and then just see a fixed price. So do anything between five hundred two thousand per project. I actually just like recommend it being on the higher end. I even think the five hundred is probably slightly low. But really if you are trying to get your hands on your first ten grand and you're charging two grand per project then all you need to do is really just convert five customers and you're in business.

28:20 Now the way that you get these customers to basically fund your directory is with your directory. So the first thing that you want to do is create a free listing for the business on your directory. Make it really awesome and then use that as a tool to reach out to them. So just for example message them and be like hey I'm building a directory for XYZ.

28:41 I was researching different businesses and I came across yours. I created a free listing for you. You want to check it out and let me know if you want me to make any changes. Then also say hey by the way I used to help businesses with their social media marketing content if this is something that you'd like to have a chat about specifically in your niche I'd be more than happy to jump on a call with them.

29:04 That then sets you up for basically a strategy call where you can basically just add a whole bunch of value by sharing tips and tricks and all those kind of things. And then at the end of the call you can just pitch your service. Now along the way you're going to lose tons of people who are either just not going to respond to your email because they're not interested.

29:22 Sometimes they don't want to jump on a call with you because they're busy. Other times they won't want to spend money because they either don't have it or it's not a priority or they've already got a good solution in place. But the thing about it is is the more people you reach out to eventually you'll get to the point where just through the sheer law of numbers you will convert enough people into paying customers and that is essentially what will set you up to then start generating revenue.

29:48 You can then reinvest in to ads. Now why does this model work, why am I even recommending this because this is not really a traditional directory business model. If you are in a situation where you cannot afford to spend $500 on ads then your priorities just need to change towards cash generation. Now the reason why I recommend this is because this model will allow you to make way fewer sales in order to make a lot more money.

30:17 Yes it's a lot more hands on but if you play your cards correctly you can also outsource the work so often times if the work is simple you can actually document how you would do the work and then hire a student to do the work. Another real good benefit of going down this particular path is when you start working with people in your niche you're actually building trust and authority that will ultimately benefit you then down the track when it comes to actually selling your directory services.

30:45 And another thing that I see a lot of people do is even though people start off with this particular business model just to get the ball rolling to get some funding essentially down the track what you can do is you can actually just continue using that as a revenue stream and typically that becomes the biggest of all revenue streams and if you end up wanting to sell your business having a revenue stream like this will be incredibly useful.

31:10 Now if your goal for your directory is just to build a site that kind of runs itself and doesn't require much upkeep and maintenance and service work then just do it until you have generated enough money that the site runs itself and this will really be the fastest path to getting your directory off the ground and really making any of the business models that I mentioned work.

31:33 Now quick little recap. The biggest reason why a lot of the directories fail to take off is just that they don't they are using business model that just require traffic in order to work. The you know the key to success is generating a lot of impressions so that you generate a lot of traffic and that traffic then translates into sign ups and those sign ups then translate into sales.

31:58 But the problem is when you're just starting out you kind of need to kick start the flywheel and that is oftentimes something that people struggle with. So the answer again is paid ads. Facebook ads, Google ads, whatever it is that you want to do. The reason why this works is because it works immediately you don't need to wait for the SEO. You can also highly target people and that leads to faster conversions and if you don't have the budget for ads stop the first four business models I talked about and just focus on

32:25 selling high value services to businesses in your niche. As soon as you've built up your war chest take that money invest into ads and that will make using those other four business models a lot easier. So that is it. A pretty in-depth video. I hope that you got value out of it. If you did please let me know. Other than that I'll see you back in the next video. Bye. Bye. . .