Are you one of those netizens seeking passive income online or establishing an online business to get huge returns without spending tons of cash? A directory website is a great place to start if you want to make money online.
What is a Directory Website?
A directory is a set of the information listed in a hard copy like books or newspapers. But that won’t help you earn revenue. Instead, you can use a directory website to build links and listings of any product or information, which creates relationships to generate business leads and high-quality traffic to your website.
The majority of people nowadays use the internet to find information. A directory website with multiple filtering options can assist in reaching the appropriate audience. Having a directory website enables you to earn huge revenue.
Some killer tactics enable you to earn money through a directory website.
- Paid Listings
Paid Listings are the core directory options that allow business owners to list their business on your website. You will get paid for providing additional services to feature those business owners’ websites. You can offer editing, publishing, multiple category field access, uploading contents to your website, membership subscription packages, and pushing listings with the bump up and payment gateways.
- Advertisement
When your website has huge traffic, you can allow an advertiser to place an ad like text, banner, and videos on your website. From this method, you can generate a great income. Ad networks like adsense, Chitika media.net, and info link are always looking for dedicated directory sites to post their Ads.
- Affiliate offers
Affiliate marketing is a better way to generate huge commissions from the offers provided by the various marketplace. You need to add those offer links to your directory website, and if your visitors click on the offer and purchase it, you will earn a good amount of cash.
- Claiming a listings
If you manually list all the renowned business names in your directory. Those businesses will verify and claim their listings and pay you for that.
Based on these killer tactics, you can launch a directory website in various categories of niches. This article will list the eight most demanding directory niches to earn easily.
1. Real Estate Directory Website
There are many ways to make money online, and one of the best and simplest ways is to run a real estate directory website. People can find the best real estate services in their community by building a local business directory website. You can also create a national or international real estate directory website to connect buyers and sellers of property worldwide. Also, you can create a premium listing service for real estate agents to list their best offers and listings on your website.
A successful real estate directory site has some basic features to grab visitors.
- Enables proximity search to find an exact location like a city
- Allow a user-friendly front end submission system for the agents and user
- Advanced filtering option to sorting prope rty search
- Google Maps API support for locating the property
- Property comparison facility
- Easy chat between property owners
But these features are not enough to earn you more revenue. It would be best if you implemented other killer tactics I mentioned to make money with a Real Estate Website.
- Allowing Google Adsense into your website space to feature Ads
- Offering elite packages with more additional features.
- Getting sponsored by other real estate sites.
- Enable affiliate offers on your site
After getting all those features enabled on your site. You have an endless opportunity to earn revenue from your directory website.
You can create your real estate directory website using the WordPress Homlisti theme and useful plugins. This theme comes with a complete bundle of packages to effortlessly build a successful real estate website.
2. Restaurant Directory
Earn with a restaurant directory website easily. The best thing about this website is that it is completely free to use. You only need to post your restaurant listing and wait to get visits from people searching for restaurants in your area. Most restaurants will pay you directly into your bank account each month. The task is very easy to operate without any extra effort.
The restaurant directory offers menus and prices for different meals interactively from various restaurants. You can compare any restaurant with other customers’ food quality reviews and ratings. Finally, without wasting time, you can decide which restaurant to visit.
Some important features of a Restaurant directory website are
- Mobile friendly and responsive design for the mobile visitors
- Easy Front end submission of listings for Restaurant Owners
- Allowing restaurant review and rating system
- Interactive listings and editing features
- Enabling Subscriptions facility
- Allow adding photos and videos of the restaurant
- Advanced filter and search options
- Upload Restaurant Menu from the interface
- Adding location, business hour details from the dashboard
- Allowing payment gateway and discount options for restaurant deals
When you are done with offering these important features, you can also earn extra income from the Ads network and sell coupons from Affiliate offers.
3. Business Directory Website
Business directories are a great way to increase your online presence and earn more money. They are essentially directories of businesses, similar to the phone book, where people can find local companies listed online and also help them rank higher in search engines. Most business directories have an affiliate program through which you can earn money by referring new customers to the directory. It is one of the best marketing strategies for people to find business and give potential customers a high chance of finding you on the internet.
Useful features offered by business listing websites.
- Front end submission forms for business owners
- Easy user account management.
- Business locating through Google Maps
- SEO for Business Profiles
- Advanced filtering for searching business categories
- Chat features between the business owner and visitors
Tips to earn cash with a Business Directory site
- Offer paid listings to ventures
- Allow Adsense, Sponsorship, and affiliate offers
- Offering products and services that are complementary
Looking for a local directory of your own? Not a big deal! Just use the Classima theme to create business directory website in WordPress.
4. Yellow Page
Users of directory websites are continuously on the lookout for new businesses. Many users are looking for similar businesses. The Yellow Page directory is a free platform to promote your business and get the most leads. It is the world’s largest directory where businesses can find and connect with potential customers by searching for local businesses by name or address. The Yellow Pages have proven to be a powerful marketing tool.
The Yellow Pages directory makes it simple to construct a company directory website.
Because it contains many listings of various categories, the Yellow Pages directory is fairly difficult to maintain. But can earn you more by promoting any business.
Characteristics of a Yellow Pages Directory Website
- You have the option of adding listings to the site. A user-friendly frontend submission method is required.
- Allow photos and videos to upload for a listing.
5. Classified Directory Website
It would be best to consider offering your items and services on a classified advertisements website to generate money with it. You may either hire someone to do it for you or use a classified ads website to do it yourself. List your item and services on the classified ads website, and you must ensure that you produce high-quality material so that people can easily locate you. You can also include banner advertisements on your classified ads website to increase revenue.
Characteristics of a classifieds directory website
- You can add listings from the front end
- Enable advanced search functionality for convenient usability
- Creating member profiles.
- Allow promotion of listings over social media
- Add categories and subcategories
- Allow images and videos to upload for listings.
- Users can add comments, ratings, and reviews.
- An easy chat between publisher and user.
- Add badges for featured classifieds like bump up, on sale, popular, etc.
- Notified with an email to users of new or expired advertisements.
Our functional Classifieds WordPress theme will make creating a professional classifieds directory easier. Classima is a WordPress directory and classified listing theme designed specifically for online classifieds directory websites. This theme comes with all the bundles of a solution to present a very interactive listing website.
6. Course Directory Website
Course Directory is a website that helps students find relevant courses and study at their own pace. It has a variety of courses for different types of industries such as IT, Marketing, Finance, etc. Course directory site provides courses in various fields and is rapidly expanding. The platform has attracted more than 3 million students in a short period.
Many nations have shuttered schools, colleges, and other educational institutions due to the Covid-19 epidemic, and online learning portals and course specialty directories have risen in popularity among students. Course directories like Udemy, Coursera, and EDx have sold courses in huge numbers. You can earn too by creating an LMS WordPress website. Even you can earn by teaching over any renowned course directory website also.
When compared to other web directories, developing and maintaining an online course directory platform is a lot of labor. You’ll need to hire expert developers or utilize an advanced course directory theme or plugins if you’re using WordPress.
The following features are the essentials in the Course directory website.
- Include an interactive course creation module.
- Provide a user-friendly, flexible dashboard
- Allow admission to courses through a sign-up process.
- Uploading of numerous instructional resources, such as word documents, PDFs, photos, audio files, and videos, among others.
- Enable Video conferencing
- Allow performance tracking.
- Easy payment gateways for online payments.
- Provide reporting and certification
- Forum and support from course vendor
7. Job Directory Website
For many years, job search websites have been a feature of the internet. With the help of a job directory website, job seekers can easily find relevant jobs and offer their services to employers.
Employees advertise open opportunities to job searchers using a job directory website. A job directory allows job seekers to find and apply for jobs in their field and profession.
Most employment boards cover all the major industries and provide many opportunities for site owners to gain significant income.
Some essential features a Job directory must have
- Allow job listings through front end submissions
- Provide individual dashboards for employees and candidates
- Advanced filtering and searching options for finding relevant jobs
- Allow job alerts to job seekers
- Enable Wishlist for applicants to mark job categories
- Track applicant progress
- Enable easy UI and responsive design
- Easy chat and email support between employee and applicant
Easy steps to follow to earn money with job directory sites
- Take fees for posting jobs
- Charge for resume access and sorting
- Offering featured employer profiles and resumes
- Enable backfill positions
- Allow promotions and ad hosting
- Allow Google AdSense to post Ads
8. Coupon Directory Website
The coupon Directory website is a popular directory that helps you find coupons for your favorite products. It has a wide range of coupons for all kinds of products.
Online business owners may increase their sales by promoting and marketing their items free on these coupon directory websites. Small companies may also utilize these directories to boost their visibility while offering an appropriate discount to online shoppers.
Affiliate marketers may also profit from the items they advertise by distributing discounts and codes. Coupons and deals listing sites, add affiliate links to earn commissions.
These online coupon listings can help you sell almost anything quickly. There are many great deals and discounts available to online buyers. These deals or coupons platforms are easy to set up and manage compared to other directory websites because they only require adding listings and other basic features.
Things to consider for WordPress deals/coupon directory site
- Businesses can use the frontend submission module to add deals/coupon codes.
- The ability to limit how many coupon codes a user can use.
- Offers must have a time validity for start and end.
- Allow users to tag listings to find their favorite categories of interest.
- Possibility of sharing deals on social media.
- The ability to highlight listings in dedicated widgets.
- Suggest coupon based on previous searches
Building a successful directory website can be time-consuming and difficult. It is, however, worthwhile in light of the multiple revenue streams it can generate with little investment or overhead. Launching a directory website has become incredibly simple thanks to CMS platforms such as WordPress.
There are many free and paid WordPress themes and plugins that can create various types of web directories on the market. As a result, by carefully affecting target niches, you can easily turn them into profitable businesses with the right selection of themes and plugins. If you need to find directory plugins, Here is the list of best WordPress directory plugin.
