[thelist] Creating a local directory from the ground up

Asif Suria asifsuria at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 17 22:01:44 CST 2005


Hi Alex,

There are already a gazillion directories out there
and a few them are local and free. To get a feel for
your potential competition, check out this website. It
has the most comprehensive list of directories I have
ever seen.

http://www.directories.myfinancedirectory.com/index.php?c=1


Asif

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--- Paul Bennett <Paul.Bennett at wcc.govt.nz> wrote:

> Hi Alex, 
> 
> A few thoughts....
> 
> (1) In NZ we have established services like UBD
> (http://www.ubd.co.nz) and YellowPages
> (http://www.yellowpages.co.nz) which effectively
> squash any small players attempts at getting in on
> the same market - have you checked whether similar
> services exist in your area?
> 
> (2) The footwork in getting this type of thing up
> and running would be significant - businesses are
> likely to look at free internet advertising with a
> high degree of scepticism when initially approached,
> and you may end up with 100 plumbers, butcher shops
> and corner dairies - so you have to ensure that you
> get a good spread of businesses in those first 100
> listings in order to justify paid listings once the
> service is established.
> 
> (3) You may just then want to hand pick 100
> business, list them and then contact the owners to
> ensure they have no problem with it. All the damage
> you can do if they do object is provide them some
> free advertising for a while, and if they accept
> then you may have a potential customer next year.
> 
> (4) You also have to justify charging for listings
> later on. Businesses will expect god traffic numbers
> and a way of measuring the impact that your site has
> on their business. They will also expect you to be
> aggressive in the marketing and advertising of your
> own site.
> 
> (5) Your database situation sounds dodgy - I've run
> applications with up to 100,000 records with not a
> problem. It may be more of an issue with your host /
> server / database software than databases being
> 'unstable'. In my experience, a well maintained,
> secure db with a well coded, secure application
> attached is extremely stable.
> 
> Just my 5c worth :)
> 
> Paul
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf
> Of Alex Beston
> Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 2:32 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] Creating a local directory from
> the ground up
> 
> hi List
> 
> Im thinking of setting up a directory for local
> SME's - is it worth the trouble?
> 
> anyone tried the same?
> 
> Things Im worried about are being told "no, we dont
> need any free internet advertising" and "No, Mr
> Jones isnt in today" (when he is) and any other
> fob-off-du-jour
> 
> A few I ideas I had were to create a write up about
> the company - describing what they do / sell in
> about 3 paras with a brief product list & a photo.
> do the first 100 for free and then start charging a
> fiver per year after an initial trial month. have a
> basic / standard / website listings. so the basic
> would be a link with about 100 word description and
> contact details, the standard would be something
> they give me to put up and upto about 300kb of media
> and the website, anything they cant get on to a
> page.
> 
> on the implementation side, I would not have it
> dynamic at all as sql fell over a couple of days
> ago, so I cant trust it. I would create a static
> page once info has been put into the db and recreate
> after each modification - seems more stable that
> way.
> 
> the url would be something like -
>
[domain]/[location]/[category/[business_name]/index.html
> 
> thoughts?
> Alex
> 
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