Strategies

For any directory (or search engine) to be valuable it must be accurate, credible, easy to navigate, and small. The fact that a Google search will yield two hundred twenty million results for a search is just not of any value. Rarely does anyone go beyond the first page of search results.

A crucial goal of this directory, then,  is to perform human reviews of websites, preferably by people who are expert in that particular field, in order to gain credibility with the public and produce very refined results. Human review is more accurate than algorithm driven machine selections. To be successful, however, a human reviewing system must  provide proper incentives so that the reviewers are knowledgeable and motivated to maintain the integrity of the list. That is where your choices of price fit in.

That is why we provide an economic incentive to our members. There is a slight charge to get listed in the directory and this charge varies depending on a number of factors (which are discussed later). Charging someone for inclusion on a successful directory is not at all unheard of. The premier human edited directory Yahoo has done it for a long time and charges hundreds of dollars. Obviously tour new site cannot delver the volume of traffic that such a large site can but we believe our system can deliver other value. W see a problem with the Yahoo model in that it doesn't take into account the variance in demand between different categories (i.e. a lawyer site compared to a childcare site, for example). Smaller sites and companies suffered because of that. Then pay per click came along and was able to correct the problem by having the website advertisers bid against each other, auction style, to determine the value of being listed. The different categories competed and eventually established a price level that matched each category's demand. That was one of Google's keys to success when they acquired Overture and added their search engine together with the pay per click revenue stream.

Thus, in the past, economic incentives have been a major reason for some of the major changes and innovation in the methods used to provide relevant websites to web surfers. Providing economic incentives is what you will be achieving when you select the proper price level. By establishing the price your downlines will have to pay, you are, in effect, determining your own pay check. If you charge too much you will drive business away. Charge too little and neither of us get compensated for our work of editing and building this directory. How much is too much? How much is too little? Again, because of the vagaries and multitudes of websites and categories it is impossible for me to say (and it may be difficult for you to say as well). I placed a default price of only five dollars on the directory website. The five dollar default price only applies to categories that do not yet have any participants in them. The market may say five is too much or it may say it is too little. Eventually, my initial default setting becomes a minor issue, though, as more peers are added and their prices eventually determine the  pricing.

So what happens if you choose the wrong price? Well, you can always modify it afterwards; that is one option. But also equally as viable is that someone else (another webmaster) may come along who sees the benefit of this system and signs up despite your error. They select a better price more in line with what the market accepts, and they start generating revenue. You will then still get a commission on their success. An example of this can be seen in the initial price I set on the website. Is it too high for your category? Well, if you know this then simply sign up for the ten dollars and lower the price to what the market will bear. Is it too low? Again, just sign up and raise the price. Am I going to be upset because I didn't charge enough from the beginning? Not likely. And by raising the price you automatically raised the default price for that category. You just gave me a raise because the default price is calculated according to the mean price that the peers are charging in a particular category. Bear in mine the price is determined by averaging the votes of the webmasters in that category. When I say you can raise the price it is within the context of your voting. 

That brings up another revenue source that needs to be mentioned. Another economic incentive derives from visitors that visit your site and come over to the directory and register for other categories (this is where the default price really comes into play). These are placed in your downline also and provide you the commissions based on that category's price. The only difference is that you can't establish the price nor the review requirements for them. Those will be established by the default in that particular category. Unless that category is empty, or they submit a request for a new category, the default price they pay is established by the members of that category. Just as rising prices in a category raises the price to those coming in, lowering prices results in lower prices also. Whenever anyone registers from your website for any other category, they will be in your downline and you will still receive commissions on their results just as on your downlines in your own category. Everyone that registers at your site in in your downline and you receive commissions on their monthly payments regardless of what category they are in.

What types of sites should use this directory? Well, there are plenty of incentives for both new and/or well established high traffic sites to get involved. New sites need traffic and to get it they need outside links which this directory will provide. By us requiring that this directory be placed on every registrant's website as part of the requirements we are establishing a huge peer to peer pool from which to draw visitors from. For a new website that is an extraordinary opportunity. But at the other end of the spectrum, the well established site with plenty of traffic may not be as much interested in traffic (though that is still important) at their stage but they may be looking more to increase the quality of their traffic and/or to capitalize and monetize their successful website. To them, the directory on their site becomes just like another affiliate program that pays when they supply customers to it.

But then, even beyond all these benefits, this system brings all the many features of a multilevel marketing system without the hype. A small site can land a big mega site as a customer and the big mega site can land thousands of small participants. everyone gains. And the commissions continue to roll in for as many levels deep as the accounting is practical for.

Incentives for getting actively involved early on are also built into the system. Just like any other MLM system, the end result of success is, unfortunately, market saturation which isn't a good thing for those joining towards the end. Those at the end, who sign up last, usually have the hardest time to attract new customers while those at the beginning have a wide open playing field. But in our system even those at the end have an opportunity to profit. As the market matures, the review requirements and the prices may drop as competition among the various peers for new registrants intensifies. This means new entries at the near saturation point may, in effect, have an easier time to get their site listed and reviewed. At full saturation I would expect new sites could be added very inexpensively. Perhaps reviews may become more important as the directory matures. But then again, perhaps diligent reviewing by the peers may create such a high quality directory that website owners would be more than willing to pay a premium price to get listed in the internet's most accurate and highly used directory?